Benjamin Stone

LawandOrderCharacter


name = Ben Stone
time on show = 1990—1994
succeeded = Jack McCoy
proceeded = None
start = "Everybody's Favorite Bagman"
finish = "Old Friends"
portrayed = Michael Moriarty

Benjamin "Ben" Stone is a fictional character portrayed by Michael Moriarty in the TV drama "Law & Order".

Character overview

Stone works in the Manhattan District Attorney's office under Alfred Wentworth (in the pilot episode) and Adam Schiff. It was Schiff with whom he is closest, treating him as a kind of surrogate father (his own father having been an overbearing alcoholic, as revealed in the episode "Prescription For Death".)

Career within the show

Stone became Executive Assistant DA in 1985 after convicting con artist and murderer Philip Swann (who, in the 1993 episode "American Dream", enters a civil suit against Stone when the validity of the conviction is called into question). Stone's assistants have been Paul Robinette and Claire Kincaid, both of whom revere him as a kind of mentor. He is a more conventional litigator than his successor, Jack McCoy.

A strict, unyielding boss, Stone can be very difficult to work with; in the pilot episode, Detectives Max Greevey and Mike Logan, intimate that Stone "eats ADAs for lunch." Even so, Stone is usually rather soft-spoken; he is fond of using harmless words like "sir" to convey his contempt for the people he prosecutes.

The 1990 episode "The Troubles" establishes that Stone is a Catholic who was mostly raised by his Irish grandmother. He is divorced with one daughter, who is never seen on the show, except by way of a photograph of a young child kept on a shelf in his office. (The child in the actual photograph used on the set was Moriarty's own son, Matthew.)

Stone will occasionally let his faith and strongly-held convictions (he is pro-life and opposes the death penalty) cloud his judgment. By the 1994 season, he has become disillusioned with the compromises his job increasingly require. The last straw is in the episode "Old Friends", which portrays a racketeering case in which the main witness, whose safety Stone had personally guaranteed, is murdered by the Russian Mafia. Wracked with guilt, he resigns. He is succeeded by Jack McCoy as Executive ADA.