Law & Order character
Michael "Mike" Cutter
Time on show	2008—present
Preceded by	Jack McCoy
Succeeded by	Incumbent
First appearance	"Called Home"
Portrayed by	Linus Roache

Michael "Mike" Cutter is a fictional character on the long-running NBC series Law & Order played by Linus Roache. The character debuted in the show's eighteenth season premiere, broadcast January 2, 2008.

Character overview

Career history

Within the continuity of the Law & Order franchise, Cutter is the Executive Assistant District Attorney, following the appointment of his predecessor Jack McCoy to the New York County District Attorney seat vacated by Arthur Branch.

He works closely with Connie Rubirosa, the Assistant District Attorney who had previously aided McCoy. Because of this, he has occasionally discussed McCoy with her—usually with complaints—in an attempt to understand his new boss. As evidenced by his first appearance, he was familiar with former District Attorney Arthur Branch, having apparently been in Branch's office on at least one occasion ("Called Home"). In the episode "Executioner" we find out that he is against the death penatly. In the Season 19 episode "Lost Boys", Cutter goes after polygamy even when McCoy tells him the case is about murder, not polygamy.

Personality

Tactics

Cutter is just as dogged in his pursuit of justice as his predecessor, Jack McCoy, but is more willing to bend or even break the rules in order to secure a conviction. Roache describes the character thusly: "Sometimes he's a little dangerous; he's not necessarily a comfortable kind of guy." (...) "He cares about justice ... but he sometimes takes these leaps out-of-the-box and is kind of non-linear." ^[1]

For instance, when the detectives are searching for kidnap victims who were threatened with death during a city wide power blackout, they found a likely hideout. The presiding judge refuses to sign off on a search warrant without further evidence like police records which were impossible to access with the computers inoperative. Cutter orders the detectives to enter the premises anyway without official authorization, gambling that he could be able to justify it later ("Darkness"). Another example was in "Quit Claim," which features a case where he nearly suborns perjury.

Earlier in "Tango," he realized one of the jurors was attracted to Connie. He made no mention of this, and encouraged her to cross-examine witnesses in his stead. When Connie learned the truth, she felt Cutter "pimped [her] out to the jury". Though she was upset with him at the end of the trial, the hostility was apparently brief, and all the following episodes have portrayed a stable working relationship.

Other methods of Cutter's include guilt tripping (potential) witnesses. In near the end of "Darkness," Cutter uses a man's daughter to make him to testify. In another episode, he convinces a young girl that her relative may face serious charges unless she talks. He even once intimidated a defendant in "Bogeyman"; by implying that is a member of a Scientology-like group called "Systemotics", Cutter exploits the defendant's paranoia to earn a plea bargain.

Preparation

More than his predecessors, Cutter is seen working hard to prepare himself for each court meeting. Examples of this include:

• In episode 18.3, "Misbegotten", Cutter is shown rehearsing defense counsel's summation speech so that he can work out his own rebuttal.

• Often visible is a wooden baseball bat Cutter keeps in his office, which he sometimes holds when discussing or concentrating on aspects of a trial.

• Writing on a whiteboard, similar to sports coaches and educators, as seen in "Strike".

Notes and references

This article about television in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.