Jack McCoy
John James McCoy is a fictional character in the television drama "Law & Order". He was created by Dick Wolf and Michael S. Chernuchin and has been portrayed by Sam Waterston during both the show's original run from 1994 to 2010 and since its return in 2022. He is one of the longest-tenured characters on the show, with both he and Lt. Anita Van Buren (portrayed by S. Epatha Merkerson) appearing in 17 seasons. He has appeared in 369 episodes of "Law & Order", four episodes of "", two episodes of "", two episodes of "", and the made-for-TV  movie "". Waterston's performance as McCoy on the New York–based series was so popular that it resulted in him being declared a "Living Landmark" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, along with fellow longtime series cast member Jerry Orbach (who portrayed the popular police detective Lennie Briscoe for almost 12 years). Character overview. 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 as 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". He describes himself as a "junkyard dog". He has developed a reputation with both colleagues and rival attorneys, once referred to as "the top of the legal food chain" by a rival attorney during a trial. Following the 17th season (2006–2007), Jack McCoy is appointed interim district attorney, taking over from Arthur Branch (Fred Thompson). McCoy's appearance on "" 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. 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 "" 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". Personal life. It is implied that McCoy lives alone on the West Side of Manhattan. 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. McCoy says that his determination and unyielding work ethic are a byproduct of having been harshly punished by his father for losing at anything. He also revealed that his father was a racist who once hit him for dating a Polish girl. McCoy disliked his father, calling him a "son-of-a-bitch"; however, he admits he could have easily become like him. 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". 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. 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. 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. During a conversation with (fictional) New York Governor Donald Shalvoy, 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; 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. He also has a nephew, which indicates that he has at least one sibling. By 2008, his nephew had a young daughter. McCoy has a reputation for having romantic affairs with his ADAs. 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. In the episode "Scoundrels", McCoy reveals that defense attorney Sally Bell (Edie Falco) had been  one of those ADAs. He at one point was revealed to have had a romantic relationship with his frequent courtroom adversary, defense attorney Vanessa Galiano (Roma Maffia). Kincaid initially makes it clear that she is not interested in a romantic relationship, and McCoy agrees to her stipulation. 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, 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. Defense attorneys have used his sexual history against him. 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. 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. 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. He does retain some of the wild streak from his youth; he is a fan of The Clash and he rides a Yamaha motorcycle. He is opposed to the Iraq War. 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 illness and affect his reputation. McCoy leads the effort to prevent an unjust punishment for the boy. 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. 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". McCoy was educated by the Jesuits. 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." When a man 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. Notable conflicts. 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 "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit". 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. Reception. "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." 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."