Jack McCoy

Jack McCoy brings 24 years of experience with him as he is introduced as Executive Assistant District Attorney by Adam Schiff (Steven Hill) in the season five premiere episode "Second Opinion". He quickly establishes himself as more unconventional and ruthless than his predecessor Executive Assistant District Attorney, Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty). He often bends—and sometimes breaks—trial rules to get convictions, finds tenuous rationales for charging defendants with crimes when the original charges fail to stick, and charges innocent people to frighten them into testifying against the actual guilty parties. McCoy is found in contempt of court 80 times for such behavior, and his tactics occasionally incur negative publicity for the DA's office. His underlying motivation, however, is not, he maintains, corruption but a sincere desire to see justice done. To that end, McCoy has gone after defendants accused of perverting the justice system to arrange wrongful convictions with just as much determination as his more mundane cases. Such aggressive actions in the courts have earned him the nickname "Hang 'em High McCoy".[4] He describes himself as a "junkyard dog".[5] He is well-respected in the legal community, once referred to as "the top of the legal food chain" by a rival attorney during a trial.[6]

Following the 17th season (2006–2007), Jack McCoy is appointed interim district attorney, taking over from Arthur Branch (Fred Thompson). McCoy's appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on the November 13, 2007, episode "Blinded", marked his first appearance in the Law & Order universe as district attorney. The replacement for his former position is Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), a prosecutor with a penchant for recklessness not unlike McCoy's own in his younger days. This occasionally presents political difficulties for the new district attorney. More than once, McCoy berates Cutter for reckless conduct, in the same manner as he was berated by district attorneys when he was executive assistant district attorney.

In the season 19 episode "Lucky Stiff", McCoy begins his election campaign for New York County District Attorney after serving the last season and a half as interim DA. In the season-19 episode "Promote This", in 1991 his wife Ellen (whom he was divorcing) is revealed to have unknowingly employed an undocumented immigrant as a nanny. This causes McCoy political havoc during a murder case where the motive was racism against illegal immigrants of Hispanic descent. In the episode "Skate or Die", the place where his final campaign fundraiser would be held is discovered by the organizers to be owned by a man who served a 20-year prison sentence for racketeering. Eventually, the final campaign fundraiser is held at a Chinese seafood restaurant with a kosher section.

McCoy is hand-picked for the interim DA position by Governor Donald Shalvoy (Tom Everett Scott), and the two initially have a friendly, productive working relationship. By the end of the 18th season, however, McCoy discovers that Shalvoy is involved in a prostitution scandal that is tied to a murder case he is prosecuting. Angered and disappointed, McCoy orders Cutter to start investigating Shalvoy, who retaliates by lending his support to McCoy's opponent in the election. In the last episode of season 19, "The Drowned and the Saved", Cutter uncovers evidence that Shalvoy tried to buy a Senate seat for his wife Rita (Alison Elliott), who ordered the murder, and threatens him with public disgrace unless he resigns. McCoy's opponent suddenly has no patron, giving McCoy good prospects for victory.[7] In the opening episode of season 20, McCoy is revealed to have won the election; he serves as DA for the remainder of this final season of Law & Order.

Law & Order originally ceased production in 2010, but McCoy (though not seen) was still occasionally mentioned as being the Manhattan DA in the spin-off series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in several episodes through 2011. A reference to "the new DA" in a 2013 SVU episode would indicate that McCoy had moved on from the position presumably sometime in 2012; his replacement was unnamed. However, McCoy was the DA again as of 2018, showing up in the SVU episode "The Undiscovered Country". As of 2022, he once again appears as the DA in the revival of the original Law & Order, with ADAs Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) and Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) working under him.[8]

It is implied that McCoy lives alone on the West Side of Manhattan.[9]

While he is a brilliant legal mind, McCoy has more than a few personal demons. He was abused by his father, an Irish Chicago policeman who had also beat Jack's mother, and who eventually died of cancer.[10] McCoy says that his determination and unyielding work ethic are a byproduct of having been harshly punished by his father for losing at anything.[10] He also revealed that his father was a racist who once hit him for dating a Polish girl.[11] McCoy disliked his father, calling him a "son-of-a-bitch"; however, he admits he could have easily become like him.[11]

While not a nationalist, he cares enough about his heritage to be offended by a suspect's father's insinuation that two murder suspects committed the crime because of their "Irish temper".[12]

McCoy has been divorced twice (one ex-wife having been a former assistant) and has an adult daughter, Rebecca, with first ex-wife Ellen. One of his ex-wives left him because he worked too many late nights.[13] A gossip columnist writes that McCoy has not seen or spoken to his daughter since 1997, and McCoy receives an envelope containing pictures of his daughter.[14] He does not open the envelope; rather, he places it in his bottom left desk drawer, next to a bottle of Jim Beam. In "Fallout", the last scene shows McCoy meeting his daughter (Jamie Schofield) at a restaurant.[15] In one episode, he mentions Rebecca has taken a job in San Diego, and that she drove up to Los Angeles to meet him there for dinner while he was attending a conference on official business;[16] the governor uses this to try to smear McCoy, wrongly implying that he used public funds to visit Rebecca. In the season-20 episode "Dignity", McCoy mentions to EADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) and ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza) that his daughter is either pregnant or a new mother, thus making him soon to be or already a grandfather, which revealed that he has a grandson named Linc in the season 22 finale. He also has a nephew, which indicates that he has at least one sibling.[17] By 2008, his nephew had a young daughter.[18]

McCoy has a reputation for having romantic affairs with his female ADAs.[19] Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) mentions this when they first meet; he tells her he has had affairs with only three of his ADAs, but by the end of the episode, she realizes that he has only had three female ADAs before her; eventually, Claire Kincaid becomes the 4th out of four ADA's.[20] In the episode "Scoundrels", McCoy reveals that defense attorney Sally Bell (Edie Falco) had been one of those ADAs.[20] He at one point was revealed to have had a romantic relationship with his frequent courtroom adversary, defense attorney Vanessa Galiano (Roma Maffia).[21] Kincaid initially makes it clear that she is not interested in a romantic relationship, and McCoy agrees to her stipulation.[20] However, throughout the two seasons in which the two characters appear together, they are implied to be having an affair, with the relationship eventually confirmed in the season 9 episode "Sideshow", long after the Kincaid character had exited the show. Kincaid is killed in a car accident,[10] a source of ongoing pain for McCoy; her death is implied to be the motivation for his legally questionable prosecution of an alcoholic who has killed several people while driving under the influence.[22] Defense attorneys have used his sexual history against him.[23] Since Kincaid's death, McCoy has kept his relationships with assistants professional, albeit friendly.

McCoy's affairs with his ADAs have often had explosive consequences. For instance, his former ADA Diana Hawthorne (Laila Robins), with whom he had a sexual relationship, was found to have suppressed evidence so they could win a case, resulting in an innocent man going to prison. During her trial for intentionally engineering the wrongful convictions, Hawthorne claims that the convictions earned McCoy a promotion he was seeking. Ironically, in the same trial, during which McCoy is forced to admit he was having an affair with Hawthorne, he is being represented by Kincaid, with whom he is presently having an affair.[4]

In "House Counsel", McCoy tries to prosecute a mobster for bribing and murdering a juror. The man's lawyer, Paul Kopell (Ron Leibman), is one of McCoy's oldest friends, with whom he had a competitive relationship for years, and he proves to be equally aggressive in his approach to his work. As Kopell repeatedly stymies McCoy's prosecutorial efforts, McCoy takes the position that Kopell is not acting as an independent attorney, but as a participant in organized crime, and eventually prosecutes Kopell for conspiracy in the juror's murder. He tells Kopell's wife Anna (Jessica Walter) that the prosecution is not personal, but she angrily replies that McCoy simply wants the final victory over a rival. By the end of the episode, though he has won the case, McCoy is so troubled that he does not even want to share an elevator with Kincaid.[24]

While McCoy was not exactly a part of the 1960s counterculture, he did protest against the policies of the Richard Nixon administration, particularly the Vietnam War. In 1972, he published an article in the New York University Law Review in defense of Catholic priests who had been opposed to the conflict.[25] He does retain some of the wild streak from his youth; he is a fan of The Clash[26] and he rides a Yamaha motorcycle.[27] He is opposed to the Iraq War.[28]

Unlike his predecessor Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), McCoy embraces the option of the death penalty, claiming it is a suitable punishment for particularly heinous crimes and a useful threat in plea bargaining. This often leads to heated arguments with his more liberal colleagues. In "Savages", when the death penalty has just been restored in New York following the election of Governor George Pataki, Kincaid asks McCoy about the probability of executing an innocent individual. McCoy responds that, with the lengthy prosecution process and opportunities for the defendant to appeal the verdict, the probability of wrongful execution is unlikely. Kincaid asks McCoy if he is able to accept the probability of "unlikely"; his hesitation indicates that he has never considered the possibility. In later seasons, his view towards the death penalty has apparently changed: in season 18's "Executioner", he is deeply troubled hearing of a gruesomely botched execution in South Carolina, and in season 20's "Four Cops Shot", he resists efforts by a U.S. attorney to prosecute a suspect in the murder of a police officer under a federal death penalty statute.

He has shown mercy on occasion, such as the 1997 episode "Burned" in which he prosecutes Terence Lawlor (Sam Huntington), a teenage boy with bipolar disorder, for murdering his sister. The boy's grandfather, Carl Anderton (Robert Vaughn), a wealthy CEO (and good friend of Schiff's) who also proved to suffer from the disorder, had attempted to get his grandson to plead guilty and go to jail rather than plead insanity and be committed to a mental institution, fearing that a public revelation of the boy's illness would provide enough evidence to reveal his own. McCoy leads the effort to prevent an unjust punishment for the boy.[29] Similarly, in season seven's "Deadbeat", he declines to prosecute a woman who is the sole caregiver for a boy dying of cancer, although he implies that he may do so once the boy has died.[30]

McCoy was raised Catholic, but does not appear to be in practice, and has not been for some time; he describes himself as a "lapsed Catholic".[31] McCoy was educated by the Jesuits.[32] On several occasions, religion has been the subject of various cases. In the episode "Thrill", in which two teenaged boys are accused of killing a man for fun, McCoy finds his case particularly complicated when one of the suspects confesses the crime to his uncle, a priest. When the confession tape is labeled privileged, McCoy ignores the bishop's request to preserve the sacrament of reconciliation and instead tries to use the tape as evidence. When Detective Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) tries to dissuade McCoy from doing so, reminding him that he is a Catholic, McCoy responds, "Not when I'm at work."[33]

When a man (Bruce MacVittie) is accused of killing a drug dealer who killed the man's son, a priest (Denis O'Hare) confesses to the crime. Though McCoy personally believes that the priest is covering for the man, he prosecutes the priest, instead. At the end of the episode, McCoy says that he lost his faith after the death of a childhood friend.[34]

McCoy's unconventional and sometimes ruthless professional conduct has put his job in jeopardy more than once throughout the series. Some of the more serious occurrences are:

• In "Competence" (season five), McCoy withholds from the defense a witness statement indicating that an individual other than the defendant had a motive to commit the crime. Under Brady v. Maryland, the prosecution is required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. McCoy's reasoning is that he was not going to call the witness at trial and that he is not obliged to "...turn over irrelevant and potentially misleading evidence." When the defense eventually learns of the withheld statement and accuses the DA's office of misconduct, DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill) is angry about McCoy's judgment call, and suggests that McCoy is at grave risk of being disbarred. At the resulting hearing, a judge declares that McCoy pushed the envelope, but that the ambiguity of the law did not prove his actions were unethical.
• In "House Counsel" McCoys close friend Mark Kopell has cross the line, when a hitman of who works for mobster Vincent Dosso. Kills David Lampert a man who served as a juror for the state. McCoy has no choice but to prosecute Kopell for conspiracy to commit murder.
• In "Corpus Delicti" (season six), McCoy tries to prosecute a man, first for insurance fraud involving a wealthy widow show horse owner, and then, when the widow disappears, for her murder. When McCoy is unable to prove her murder without her body, he repeatedly questions the defendant as though the fraud against the widow is a fact, and her murder, therefore, must have been the logical consequence, despite the judge's repeated instruction not to do so. The judge declares a mistrial because of McCoy's repeated refusal to follow the instruction. When the widow's body is found several months later, McCoy reacts as though he will naturally be able to re-present his case. When Schiff recalls that McCoy did want more time to find the widow's body, McCoy responds as though his emotional nature sometimes gets the better of him, but he smiles as though he knows well that "his emotional nature" was a stalling tactic to delay the case until the widow's body was found.
• In "Pro Se" (season six), McCoy defies a direct order from Schiff to remove Kincaid from the prosecution of a murderer with whom she had made a plea bargain for an earlier charge, saying to her privately, "It's my case. I choose who sits in my second chair."
• In "I.D." (season seven), McCoy is jailed for contempt of court after accusing the judge of lacking even "the appearance of impartiality," although the judge is later forced to recuse himself.
• In "Mad Dog" McCoy becomes obsessed with proving that a recently paroled serial rapist (Burt Young) is guilty of the rape and murder of a young woman. McCoy pushes the police perilously close to harassment and considers putting the man under false arrest until Schiff decides to put a stop to it. At the end of the episode, the rapist is killed by his daughter after he attacks one of her friends. McCoy says, "I'm sorry it had to happen this way". ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell) replies, "Not that sorry".
• In "Under the Influence" (season eight), McCoy is prosecuting a drunk driver for killing three pedestrians. He takes a statement from a flight attendant (a citizen of Colombia) who had served the defendant large amounts of alcohol and noted how drunk he had become. Encouraged by McCoy, the airline reassigned her to an international route, making her inaccessible to the defense for questioning. McCoy lies to the defense about having followed all relevant discovery procedures, and the presiding judge – who wants to make an example of the defendant in order to further his political ambitions – urges McCoy to withhold the statement as it could bolster the defense's case. Ross warns McCoy that withholding the statement may lead to his disbarment; McCoy eventually changes his mind and submits it, prompting a plea bargain. The judge initially rejects the agreement and threatens to charge McCoy with professional misconduct, but McCoy counters with a threat to file a complaint with the ethics committee over the judge's handling of the case. The judge accepts the plea, and neither he nor McCoy files any charges against the other. Dialogue throughout the episode implies that McCoy sees the defendant as a surrogate for the drunk driver who killed Kincaid.
• In "Monster" (season eight), McCoy is brought before the disciplinary committee of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, on misconduct charges stemming from his conduct in the case of the drunk driver described in "Under the Influence". Since McCoy had ultimately released the evidence before the case was decided, he is not seriously punished for his actions. In the same episode, he had wrongly prosecuted an innocent man for the sexual assault of a young girl; during the investigation, the suspect had been coerced by detectives Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) into giving them a false confession. When the real perpetrator is caught, McCoy asks the girl's doctor to give the defendant's lawyer false information. The following episode explains that he is exonerated by the ethics committee.
• In "DWB" (season 9), McCoy, in contradiction of Schiff's direct order, sues to invalidate a federal plea bargain to force a suspect to deal with the New York DA's office. McCoy assures Schiff that the federal judgment will eventually be overturned on appeal; Schiff retorts that if it is not, he will expect McCoy's resignation.
• In "Refuge, Part II" (season 9), McCoy again disobeys a direct order from Schiff by instructing the police to imprison suspected Russian mobsters without charge. Near the end of the episode, a suggestion is made that McCoy is ready to resign over this issue, but Schiff simply says, "No martyrs" and allows him to remain in his job.
• "Open Season" (season 13), McCoy plans to indict his long-time rival Danielle Melnick, who has been accused of murder for hire, when she is defending a man for killing of defense lawyer. In the end Melnick is shot and wounded at her apartment building, by a woman who worked for the same organization.
• In "Criminal Law" (season 16), McCoys life is at stake when Leland Barnes, a man who he prosecuted years ago for killing his wife with an office full of people. Barnes gives his son a hit list to murder the witnesses including McCoy who put him in prison.
• In "Invaders", after the brutal murder of ADA Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse), McCoy pushes the envelope even further when he arranges to present a sham prosecution to intimidate a corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration agent to turn state's evidence against Borgia's murderers. When that trick fails, McCoy, hoping the agent would lead police to the killers, orders him released. While the murderers are arrested and the corrupt agent is killed, the severely unorthodox strategies used in the case lead to McCoy being removed from the case by order of the governor of New York. He is replaced for the duration of the case with an attorney from the New York State Attorney General’s Office.
• In "The Family Hour" (season 17), in which a state senator is on trial for murder, medical examiner Elizabeth Rodgers (Leslie Hendrix) cites incorrect evidence during cross examination and later tells McCoy about it. McCoy wishes to disclose the error to the judge, but Branch decides the error is not exculpatory, and he orders McCoy to keep quiet. When McCoy refuses to cooperate, ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza) gives the trial's closing summation instead of him. Although Rubirosa wins the case, McCoy submits his letter of resignation in protest. Branch appears to dissuade him from resigning and says he would not be "in this chair forever". Although McCoy insists that he is a prosecutor, not a politician, McCoy replaces Branch as the DA immediately thereafter.

McCoy has appeared in four episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; however, he is often referred to in the series, and his actions affect the ADAs working with the Special Victims Unit.

Entertainment Weekly television critic Ken Tucker has praised Law & Order's creator Dick Wolf for putting McCoy at the center of "some of the best episodes of the immortal series' 19th season."[36] Tucker elaborates how the character, riding "herd over a couple of stubborn young bucks — assistant DAs Mike Cutter (Linus Roache) and Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza) — McCoy argues, bellows orders, and croaks with outrage when his charges disobey his legal advice."[36]

• Homicide: Life on the Street
  • Season 6
    • Episode 5: "Baby, It's You"
  • Season 7
    • Episode 15: "Sideshow"
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
  • Season 1
    • Episode 15: "Entitled"
  • Season 9
    • Episode 7: "Blinded"
  • Season 11
    • Episode 21: "Torch"
  • Season 19
    • Episode 13: "The Undiscovered Country"
• Law & Order: Trial by Jury
  • Episode 1: "The Abominable Showman"
  • Episode 8: "Skeleton"