| “ | I'm sorry, Molly. They're forcing me to do this. | „ |
| ~ Atkins disingenuously apologizing to her client while framing her for murder |
Sheila Atkins is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Divorce". She is an unethical divorce attorney who murders a woman to win a case.
She was portrayed by the late Jill Clayburgh.
Early life[]
Atkins is a divorce attorney who is notorious for bending the law as far as it will go to win cases and get the biggest possible settlements for her clients.
She took on Molly Kilpatrick as a client when her husband, Gary, filed for divorce. When Gary petitioned the Catholic Church to have their marriage annulled so he could marry his fiancée, however, Atkins engaged him and his attorney, Paul Redfield, in a war of attrition for two and a half years, with each of them using every legal trick in their arsenals to make the divorce as acrimonious as they could.
When Molly told Atkins that Gary was hiding money from her, Atkins deluged Redfield with motions trying to uncover Gary's hidden assets, only for Redfield to respond with complaints to the New York State Bar Association's Ethics Committee accusing her of malpractice, courtroom misconduct, and misappropriating her client's funds. Atkins, meanwhile, filed just as many complaints against him.
The final straw for Atkins was when Dr. Linda Burke, the psychiatrist evaluating Gary's request for annulment for the Archdiocese, recommended that the Church grant his request. Unable to stand the thought of losing the case, Atkins drove to Burke's office and tried to persuade her to change her recommendation. When Burke refused, Atkins flew into a rage and stabbed her in the chest with a pair of scissors, killing her. She then erased Burke's report from her computer and fled the scene.
In "Divorce"[]
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis investigate the murder and learn of Molly's erratic behavior since the divorce and her fervent opposition to the annulment, so they bring her in to their station house to question her. Molly, who has been deeply depressed and dependent upon Valium since the divorce, seems as if she is about to confess when Atkins arrives, demanding a halt to the interrogation.
Atkins then tells Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross that Gary and Redfield conspired to defraud Molly by undervaluing the former's company, and that she had wanted Burke to say so on the record. McCoy and Ross briefly consider Gary a suspect until his brother Gary and Molly's son Billy tell them that she had threatened Burke and was popping pills and crying uncontrollably on the night of the murder. McCoy and Ross have her arrested, and Atkins offers to have her plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter in return for a lenient sentence. However, Molly's other attorney, Peter Behrens, talks her out of the deal.
Meanwhile, McCoy receives a notice from the Ethics Committee asking for all files related to the case, and he and Ross find out that the request came from Atkins. The trial judge orders her to tell McCoy what Molly told her about the murder, but she refuses to do so until he accepts her earlier offer for a plea bargain and issues a subpoena for Gary's and Redfield's financial records so she can prove that they are illegally hiding money from Molly. McCoy agrees, and Atkins tells him that Molly had confessed to her that she killed Burke, even as a bewildered Molly insists that she is innocent.
Redfield refuses to comply with the subpoena, however, and tells McCoy and Ross Atkins' abusive litigation. Ross uncovers the ethics complaints made against Atkins, and that she had tried to enjoin the Archdiocese in opposing Gary's request for an annulment, only to withdraw the petition two days after Burke was murdered. McCoy deduces that she withdrew the petition because she knew Burke was not going to testify, which she only could have known if she killed her.
McCoy and Ross make a deal with Redfield to avoid prison time for his tax fraud if he surrenders his law license and wears a wire during a business dinner with Atkins and gets her to incriminate herself. Redfield confronts Atkins about the petition and accuses her of murdering Burke, threatening to put her in prison unless she gets Molly to agree to the annulment and drops the fraud complaint against Gary. Panicked, Atkins agrees to his terms, thus proving her guilt. As she storms out of the restaurant, Briscoe and Curtis arrest her for murder.
During her allocution, Atkins makes an insincere apology, which provokes an angry outburst from Burke's husband. She is then sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.
