Law & Order: Trial by Jury

Trial by Jury focuses on criminal legal procedures and preparation that are rarely depicted on other Law & Order series, such as jury selection, deliberations in the jury room, as well as jury research and mock trials prepared by the defense to use psychological studies and socioeconomic status profiling to their advantage. The episodes usually start with a witness or victim's personal account of a crime. This is a departure from the other Law & Order series, which usually begin by depicting either the actual crime or its discovery/reporting by civilians. The show progresses on from that point, showing how both sides develop their strategies for winning the case. In addition, a few episodes show jury deliberations. The show develops the judges as characters, showing scenes of them conferring with each other and reusing the same judges in multiple episodes. Plot The series follows Bureau Chief Tracey Kibre (Bebe Neuwirth), an Executive Assistant District Attorney assigned to Manhattan's homicide division. Kibre's team, including District Attorney Investigator Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Assistant District Attorney Kelly Gaffney (Amy Carlson), follows up on leads and interview witnesses, as well as participating in trials, during which both sides examine witnesses and give arguments. Similarly, the defense's preparation varies from episode to episode, running the gamut from testing arguments in front of jury focus groups to deal-making between co-defendants. Several pretrial meetings are held where some procedural issue is argued and ruled on. == Cast and characters ==

, Bebe Neuwirth, Fred Thompson, Jerry Orbach, and Kirk Acevedo. Main cast • Bebe Neuwirth as Tracey Kibre, senior Assistant District Attorney (ADA) and Homicide Bureau Chief in the office of the New York County District Attorney ( Manhattan DA). Tracey has a black-and-white view of the law. She is tough, tenacious, focused, and professional. Kibre has a strong working relationship with her staff. As chief of the Homicide Bureau, she is a senior prosecutor, subordinate only to the District Attorney and the Executive ADA. • Amy Carlson as Kelly Gaffney, an ADA. Gaffney is Kibre's Deputy, who often challenges her senior colleague. She sees the law in shades of gray, and as a result is often more by-the-book. • Jerry Orbach as Lennie Briscoe, a DA investigator. Briscoe was the longest-serving New York Police Department (NYPD) detective of the original Law & Order. Orbach succumbed to cancer over two months before the show's premiere, and he only appeared in the first two episodes of the series. From episode 3 onward, he is never again seen or mentioned. • Kirk Acevedo as Hector Salazar, a DA investigator. Salazar retired from the NYPD following an on-the-job injury which would have forced him behind a desk. • Fred Dalton Thompson as Arthur Branch, the Manhattan DA. Branch is a tough Republican, who practices both legal and political conservatism. Thompson was simultaneously a series regular in the same role on this show and on the original Law & Order. • Scott Cohen as Chris Ravell, an NYPD detective assigned to the ADA Kibre's team, succeeding Lennie Briscoe as Salazar's investigative partner. Cohen was credited as a guest appearance for episode 3 before being added to the main credits in episode 5. He did not appear in episode 4. Recurring cast • Candice Bergen as Amanda Anderlee, a New York Supreme Court judge in Manhattan (under New York State's archaic judicial nomenclature, the "Supreme Court" is a trial-level court and not the highest court in the state). • Carey Lowell as Jamie Ross, a New York Supreme Court judge in Manhattan and former ADA. • Seth Gilliam as Terence Wright, an ADA. • Jessica Chastain as Sigrun Borg, an ADA. Crossover guest cast ==Episodes==

NBC announced on May 16, 2005, that Trial by Jury would not be returning for the 2005–2006 fall television season. The rival CBS procedural Numbers debuted in the midseason in late January 2005 and consistently beat NBC's Medical Investigation in the ratings, sending the latter show into hiatus and eventual cancellation, freeing up the time slot for Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Despite Trial by Jurys pedigree, Numbers ratings remained strong, often beating Trial by Jury in both overall and key demographic ratings. In an October 2005 interview with the Associated Press, Wolf stated that NBC had assured him Trial by Jury would return for the fall of 2005, but had "blindsided" him by canceling it instead. Though still having reasonable ratings that could have given the series a second season, the main reason for the cancellation according to Kevin Reilly, NBC's brand-new president of entertainment at the time, was due to the networks acquisition of Sunday Night Football for what was coming in the 2005–2006 season, which took away programming space for NBC. As Reilly would state, "Now that we have football [on Sundays, beginning in 2006], we only have five nights of entertainment programming. When we had six nights, we could accommodate four Law & Orders." Trial by Jury was the first series of the Law & Order franchise to be canceled. The sets were reused by a series Wolf produced for NBC entitled Conviction which premiered Friday, March 3, 2006, lasting only one season before cancellation. The network Court TV (now TruTV) re-aired the entire series, including the episode "Eros in the Upper Eighties", which never aired on NBC before the series was canceled. TNT has aired the episode "Skeleton" on occasion, as the conclusion to the original series episode "Tombstone". The opening track and some of the intro sequences from Trial by Jury would be re-used in Law & Order: Criminal Intent after their show was transferred to the USA Network and remained until its own cancellation in 2011. ==Home media==

On April 25, 2006, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released Law & Order: Trial by Jury – The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. In Australia, Shock Entertainment released Law & Order: Trial by Jury – The Complete Series on DVD in Region 4 on March 7, 2018. ==References==