| “ | You ch-nks aren't real Americans! | „ |
| ~ Marian harassing the Chong family. |
Marian Borland is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Intolerance". She is a racist who has her son's Chinese-American classmate murdered because he won a school prize that she felt her son deserved.
She was portrayed by Kelly Bishop.
Early life[]
Marian and her husband Ron have two sons, Randy and Carl. The latter goes to a magnet high school for students who excel at math and science, while the former is an underachiever who works with his father in the family's fishmonger business.
She favors Carl, and believes that he is entitled to academic success, so much so that she becomes angry and vindictive when a classmate gets better grades. She is especially angry when Carl's classmate and friend Tim Chong, who is Chinese-American, wins a coveted academic scholarship that opens the door to MIT; she believes that Tim does not deserve the prize because he is not a "real American", and makes several harassing, racial slur-laden phone calls to the Chong family.
Eventually, she manipulates Randy into promising to kill Tim in hopes that Carl, as the next best student in class, will get the award. She and Randy wait for Tim to leave school, and then Randy shoots and kills him before they drive away.
"Intolerance"[]
NYPD Homicide Detectives Phil Cerreta and Mike Logan investigate Tim's murder and find out about the bad blood between the Borland and Chong families. Further investigation reveals that Marian and Randy both lied about their alibis, and that Ron owns the same kind of gun that was used to kill Tim. They briefly arrest Ron, but forensic examinations prove that he planted his own fingerprints on the weapon, presumably to protect his wife and son. Cerreta and Logan arrest Marian and Randy for murder.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette run into trouble while prosecuting the case when the trial judge rules that the search warrant that produced the gun was improperly obtained, meaning that the gun is inadmissible as evidence. Stone tries to get Marian and Randy to plead to manslaughter, which carries a lighter sentence than murder, but Marian refuses, sure that the jury will acquit them. She is proven wrong, however, when the jury finds them both guilty of murder after Tim's girlfriend, Katie Silver, testifies that she saw Marian and Randy shoot Tim.
Days later, however, Cerreta and Logan provide Stone with irrefutable evidence that Katie had been too far away and facing in the wrong direction to have seen the Borlands kill Tim. Marian and Randy's guilty verdicts are overturned, and both go free.
External links[]
- Marian Borland on the Law & Order Wiki
