Initially broadcast two months after President Clinton's acquittal after being impeached over charges arising out of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Before sightseers discover the dead body by Castle Clinton in New York, a woman sightseer says, "There's the restroom. They should name that after the President." In this episode, the grand jury is presided over by Independent Counsel William Dell, who appears to be out of control, leaking testimony to the press and taking a strong interest in people's personal lives.
Sam Waterston's character, Jack McCoy's full name is John James McCoy. He gives his full name in the episode Sideshow in order to have it placed on a grand jury subpoena.
William Dell is based on Ken Starr, the leader of the independent council that investigated allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the White House, specifically harassment of interns by staff members and sexual assault committed by President Bill Clinton, though Starr's investigation went off on a tangent when he started investigating the President's involvement with Monica Lewinsky. Like with Mr. Dell in this episode, Mr. Starr's investigation wasn't really focused on investigating criminal wrongdoing but rather the sexual habits and orientation of certain government officials. Mr. Starr was an extremely conservative, Republican Christian who believed that homosexuality and sexual relations for any reason other than procreation were wrong. He was eventually brought up on charges of official misconduct for leaking details of grand jury testimony in an effort to ruin the careers of certain government officials whose sexual habits and/or orientation he found immoral, including President Clinton. His final report's relevance and purpose were also heavily criticized for making controversial accusations about exactly what Clinton did. The report claimed "the details are crucial to an informed evaluation of the testimony, the credibility of witnesses, and the reliability of other evidence. Many of the details reveal highly personal information; many are sexually explicit. This is unfortunate, but it is essential." This accusation was proven to be false. Because Starr regularly leaked tidbits to press about the lurid, lengthy sexual details that were mentioned in his report, he was criticized for using the scandal as a political maneuver and was charged for violating legal ethics by presenting information irrelevant to an investigation as evidence of legal wrongdoing. Also, it is unclear whether Starr had the legal authority to ask Clinton questions about his sexual relationship with Lewinsky, as the OIC was convened solely to investigate allegations made by a couple White House interns that they were sexually harassed by White House staff and sexually assaulted by President Clinton. Questioning about a sexual relationship void of assault appears to be both irrelevant under the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) as a whole and under Rule 413, which allows questioning about separate allegations of sexual assault (which was never asserted about Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton). In the end the accusations that President Clinton sexually assaulted interns was proven to be false.
The storyline of this episode is continued in Sideshow (1999). Jerry Orbach (Detective Lennie Briscoe), Sam Waterston (EADA Jack McCoy), Benjamin Bratt, and (Detective Rey Curtis) all play their Law & Order (1990) characters in that episode whereas Richard Belzer (Detective John Munch), Michael Michele (Detective Rene Sheppard) and Zeljko Ivanek (ASA Ed Danvers) all play their Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) characters in this episode.
Independent Counsel William Dell asks McCoy whether Kincaid was "another one of your lovers at the D. A. 's office" at the time of her death. McCoy does not reply. Although several earlier episodes of "Law and Order" had strongly hinted that Kincaid and McCoy were lovers, this is the first time that such a relationship is explicitly mentioned or depicted.