One CSI Faces A ‘Death Sentence’ In ‘Redemptio’

CSI: New York‘s Dr Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper) faces shocking revelations and dangerous situations in “Redemptio” tonight at 10:00pm ET/PT. (Spoilers after the jump!)

As CSI Files previously reported, Hawkes is called to a prison in Pennsylvania to witness the execution of Reggie Tifford, who is played by guest star Harold Perrineau. The CSI doesn’t know Tifford, but the inmate has something to confess before he dies. Hawkes doesn’t have long to process the information, though—chaos takes hold of the prison while he is trapped inside. “The prison gets put on lockdown, and there’s a prison riot,” Harper told TVGuide.com. “And obviously, being a police officer in a prison riot is probably one of the most dangerous positions anyone could ever be in. It’s almost like a death sentence.”

Reggie wants to help Hawkes during the riot, but the other man is still reeling from what Reggie told him. “He wronged Hawkes,” Perrineau explained. “After the riot breaks out, he then tries to protect Hawkes, but Hawkes doesn’t want the protection because I did him wrong. I did something really awful to him.”

The revelation forces Hawkes to take a good look at himself. “It makes him take stock of and reexamine how he treated his family in the past,” Harper said. “He’s forced to deal with this person who is a convicted murderer, but he also has to look in the mirror and see how he did not treat people as well as they should have been treated.”

Fortunately, Reggie “really does redeem himself” in the end, Perrineau revealed. “He helps Hawkes through this thing as he helps him solve a case.” That case involves Shane Casey (Edward Furlong), the serial killer the team put away in season three’s “Raising Shane”.

“There’s no question that the Shane Casey character is the worst villain in all six seasons we’ve had on our show,” Harper said. “This is such a genius way of showing how diabolical he really is. He is just bad news.” And it’s no coincidence that Shane is in the middle of the chaos—he has a plan.

“Redemptio” will explain how Shane’s fingerprints ended up on Danny Messer’s (Carmine Giovinazzo) stolen dog tags in “Flag on the Play”. The episode will also provide a set-up for the season finale. “You never know what he’s going to do,” Harper said. “And that is revealed in a very dangerous way in the finale. He takes an action that I think is going to surprise everybody with how scary it is, and that’s the way the season’s going to end. It’s pretty exciting.”