8.4/10331 votes#1 - Red Ball
Season 16 Episode 1 - Aired 9/21/2005
A young girl is abducted in broad daylight, and the only link to the girl is an ex-convict who wants a deal before he's willing to talk.
Director: Matthew Penn
Writer: Dick Wolf, David Wilcox
8.1/10371 votes#2 - Flaw (II)
Season 16 Episode 2 - Aired 9/28/2005
Green and Fontana bring SVU Detective Olivia Benson onto their scene when a DOA has her number on his cell phone. This crossover starts on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S07E02 Design (I).
Director: Jean de Segonzac
Writer: Chris Levinson
7.9/10289 votes#3 - Ghosts
Season 16 Episode 3 - Aired 10/5/2005
Fontana and McCoy pursue a man believed to have murdered a young girl ten years earlier despite numerous obstacles.
Director: Constantine Makris
Writer: N/A
7.2/10265 votes#4 - Age of Innocence
Season 16 Episode 4 - Aired 10/12/2005
The bombing death of a husband set to remove the feeding tube of his wife, who's in a persistent vegetative state, focuses the investigation on the protesters.
Director: David Platt
Writer: N/A
7.8/10279 votes#5 - Life Line
Season 16 Episode 5 - Aired 10/19/2005
Police turn their attention to the murder of an undercover reporter, but realise that the killer isn't as guilty as he appears.
Director: Rosemary Rodriguez
Writer: N/A
7.8/10292 votes#6 - Birthright
Season 16 Episode 6 - Aired 11/2/2005
Teenage suspect Traci Sands dies in police custody after being arrested for the murder of the man who reported her to child protective services. Rodgers reveals that she died because someone outfitted her with a benecrine I.U.D. that reacted with Sands' sickle cell syndrome and ended up killing her. Fontana and Green follow the trail to a charitable clinic and nurse Gloria Rhodes, who believes she is saving the world by sterilizing women that she does not believe are worthy of having children. McCoy faces former assistant district attorney Paul Robinette in court as Robinette defends Rhodes.
Director: Constantine Makris
Writer: David Slack
7.3/10255 votes#7 - House of Cards
Season 16 Episode 7 - Aired 11/9/2005
The team investigates the killing of a single mother and the abduction of her child.
Director: Michael Pressman
Writer: N/A
7.7/10242 votes#8 - New York Minute
Season 16 Episode 8 - Aired 11/16/2005
Detectives discover that the owner of a trucking company has been smuggling illegal aliens and suspect that a citizens border-patrol member has killed him.
Director: Don Scardino
Writer: Nicholas Wootton
8.4/10320 votes#9 - Criminal Law
Season 16 Episode 9 - Aired 11/23/2005
The deaths of three women with the same name lead Fontana and Green to the nine-year-old conviction of Leland Barnes, who had shot and killed his wife in an office full of people. With two of the three witnesses against him dead and Jack McCoy on the hit list, the detectives struggle to determine how Barnes, who has been in prison the entire time, got someone on the outside to kill the only people who could keep him in jail. The investigation leads them to Leland's two sons, with surprising results.
Director: Edwin Sherin
Writer: David Wilcox
8.3/10311 votes#10 - Acid
Season 16 Episode 10 - Aired 11/30/2005
After the daughter of one of Van Buren's college friends is found dead in her room, a suicide, Van Buren joins Green and Fontana in hunting down the man who burned her face with acid months earlier, ultimately leading to her suicide. Van Buren is unsucces
Director: Michael Pressman
Writer: N/A
7.3/10271 votes#11 - Bible Story
Season 16 Episode 11 - Aired 12/7/2005
The case of a man who defiled a copy of the Torah turns into a religious battle for McCoy.
Director: Rick Wallace
Writer: N/A
7.4/10264 votes#12 - Family Friend
Season 16 Episode 12 - Aired 1/11/2006
After Philip and Valerie Messick are attacked in their home, Green and Fontana follow the trail to a small-time thug named Jay Fleckner. After Valerie's testimony unintentionally helps free Fleckner, he is found dead, and detectives soon realise that Bob Cerullo, a family friend of Valerie and her late husband, was the triggerman. Unfortunately, when McCoy attempts to prosecute Cerullo, a retired cop, he threatens to claim that he deliberately planted evidence in his past cases in an attempt to get McCoy to drop all the charges.
Director: Jean de Segonzac
Writer: N/A
7.5/10270 votes#13 - Heart of Darkness
Season 16 Episode 13 - Aired 1/18/2006
A journalist's suicide becomes suspect after Green and Fontana find evidence at the scene suggesting that it wasn't a suicide after all.
Director: N/A
Writer: Carter Harris
7.5/10268 votes#14 - Magnet
Season 16 Episode 14 - Aired 2/8/2006
Fontana and Green arrest a fellow student after a young man is murdered, but McCoy faces a tough adversary when he tries to prosecute the crime.
Director: Adam Bernstein
Writer: David Black
7.5/10265 votes#15 - Choice of Evils
Season 16 Episode 15 - Aired 3/1/2006
After the body of a teenage boy is found dead in a warehouse, detectives use DNA to connect the boy to a convicted rapist and serial killer, then to the boy's mother, Allison Ashburn, the convict's ex-wife. While trying to solve Danny's murder, Fontana and Green learn that he recently got his girlfriend Tina pregnant, and his mother had seen him recently when she had given him money despite having claimed she hadn't seen him for months. Allison finally admits that she murdered her son after the police arrest her new husband John, but claims she did it to save the world from her son, whom she was convinced would become a monster just like her father. Borgia and McCoy face an uphill battle trying to convict the perfect soccer mom.
Director: Michael Pressman
Writer: David Wilcox
8.1/10279 votes#16 - Cost of Capital
Season 16 Episode 16 - Aired 3/8/2006
The case against a high powered executive accused of killing her lover rests on the executive's estranged husband and unstable teenage daughter.
Director: Michael W. Watkins
Writer: N/A
7.5/10265 votes#17 - America, Inc.
Season 16 Episode 17 - Aired 3/22/2006
After Jeffrey Pope, a private military contractor, is found dead, suspicion eventually leads Green and Fontana to Robbie Howell, the younger brother of a man who died because of Pope's incompetance, and Kevin Boatman, Nick Howell's former co-worker who had witnessed the tragic events in Iraq.
Director: Jean de Segonzac
Writer: N/A
8.0/10288 votes#18 - Thinking Makes It So
Season 16 Episode 18 - Aired 3/29/2006
Fontana and Green investigate when a bank manager is involved in the robbing of his own bank and learn that his daughter is being held hostage and that he had to go along with the robbery or risk losing his daughter.
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Writer: N/A
7.2/10263 votes#19 - Positive
Season 16 Episode 19 - Aired 4/5/2006
When a teenage boy commits suicide after firing on a doctor and hitting an innocent party, Fontana and Green investigate why he was after the doctor to begin with.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.6/10273 votes#20 - Kingmaker
Season 16 Episode 20 - Aired 5/3/2006
After undercover cop Dana Baker is murdered, Fontana and Green learn that the man who killed her had discovered her identity after seeing a photograph of her.
Director: Don Scardino
Writer: David Slack
7.9/10302 votes#21 - Hindsight
Season 16 Episode 21 - Aired 5/10/2006
Fontana and Green are called in to investigate when Green's former replacement, Nick Falco, is suspected of murdering a young woman he had spent the night with.
Director: Jean de Segonzac
Writer: Chris Levinson
8.8/10465 votes#22 - Invaders
Season 16 Episode 22 - Aired 5/17/2006
The family of a man who once turned his customers into the police is slain, and the ensuing fracas pits McCoy against a corrupt D.E.A. agent.
Director: Matthew Penn
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of Law & Order Season 16
Every episode of Law & Order Season 16 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Law & Order Season 16!
In cases ripped from the headlines, police investigate serious and often deadly crimes, weighing the evidence and questioning the suspects until someone is taken into...
Genres:CrimeDrama
Network:NBC
Season 16 Ratings Summary
"Red Ball" is the best rated episode of "Law & Order" season 16. It scored 8.4/10 based on 331 votes. Directed by Matthew Penn and written by Dick Wolf, David Wilcox, it aired on 9/21/2005. This episode is rated 0.3 points higher than the second-best, "Flaw (II)".