False-Hearted Judges (S04E23)

Judge Ellen Barrett (Susan Angelo) appears to have it all - three great kids and a nice husband. But her life ends abruptly when two men enter her house and she and her oldest son are killed. Her husband clings to life while her two younger children escape by hiding in the bathroom. Barrett was killed right after Wade Brownfield (Ari Fliakos) and his crew was brought from Rikers to Barrett's courtroom, where she took away their visiting and phone call privileges. Shortly after that, another Judge, Roland Thibodeaux (Mark Kenneth Smaltz), is gunned down after a game of handball in the park. Thibodeaux had reinstated a manslaughter charge for an assisted suicide case against Franklin Traynor (MacIntyre Dixon), who gave his terminally ill friend enough sleeping pills to do the trick. But it gets worse, and Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Eames (Kathryn Erbe) discover there's a trail of dead judges, starting in the Rockies and working its way east. (iTunes)