The Law is a Fool begins with Carl Norman (Jeff Pomerantz) kidnapping the granddaughter of a former congressman, hiding her somewhere and making demands for her release including $500K and a quick, thrown trial by the DA so he cannot be prosecuted again for the crimes. Quincy (Jack Klugman) works with the police to try and identify clues as to the location of the girl while the DA goes through the motions of meeting the demands which concerns everyone involved as they fear Norman will get away with the crimes.
This is an odd episode which features a lot of legal wrangling and a smug, narcissistic culprit which I didn't particularly enjoy. While there is a mystery surrounding the location of the girl and whether she is truly alive, this wasn't really enough to overcome some other problems such as the obvious strategy which the DA was using that didn't occur to anyone else. Considering that these are supposedly law enforcement professionals with a lot of experience in all types of cases and prosecutions, this came across as rather foolish and naive. Another issue was that the minimal forensic evidence collected and analyzed really didn't help the investigation much at all and the police had to rely on the kidnapper to disclose the location, so this isn't an episode where science or the coroner lab saves the day!
Overall this is a below average Season 8 episode where Quincy doesn't have much to do in the story and as a result is not on very much which makes it less entertaining.