A baby is found frozen to death in a hospital emergency room. The case leads to accusations that the landlord of the building the baby and her mother lived in hired people to turn off the heat and harass tenants to get them to move out.

Detectives Briscoe and Logan investigate the murder of Dawn Bryan. The young African-American woman once had a bright future ahead of her. She was a good student and was even voted most likely to succeed. It seems to have all come tumbling down when she got hooked on crack. She was shot with a .45 caliber gun and their first suspect is her supplier and sometime live-in boyfriend who goes by the street name of Skate. The dead woman's family are devastated by the loss of their daughter but they feel they lost her long ago when she became hooked on drugs. When the evidence points to a family member as the likely culprit, ADA Stone and DA Adam Schiff both feel a good deal of sympathy. Paul Robinette however doesn't think anyone should have leniency and pushes for a grand jury indictment.

A woman is killed after opening a mail bomb. The investigation leads to the discovery of a bitter research dispute between her ex-husband, a noted physicist, and a younger researcher that he double-crossed.

A judge throws out all of the prosecution's key evidence and dismisses murder charges against a wealthy defendant. District Attorney Adam Schiff suspects that the judge, an old friend, may be on the take.

Did a baby's biological father kill one of the baby's adoptive parents in order to get him back, or because of his outrage that the child was adopted by a homosexual couple?

The main witness in the deportation trial of a purported Nazi war criminal is found beaten to death in her home. Suspicion soon falls upon the former guard, as well as a white supremacist entrepreneur who supported his cause.

As Cutter and Rubirosa prosecute a mentally disturbed woman for the deaths of two British researchers, they begin to suspect that the defendant's brother may have orchestrated the entire episode for personal gain.