Jack McCoy
McCoy prosecutes the case himself and obtains a guilty verdict; he then resigns as DA so the governor will appoint an interim successor, thus denying the vindictive Payne the chance to run him out of office and replace him with a lackey who would fire every ADA on his staff.[14] In one episode, he mentions that Rebecca (Jamie Schofield) 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.[18] The ADAs with whom McCoy had affairs included Sally Bell (Edie Falco), who later became a defense attorney;[19] Diana Hawthorne (Laila Robins); and Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy).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."[25] 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."[26] According to Tucker, 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".