Ed Danvers is a fictional character played by Željko Ivanek

Željko Ivanek

Željko Ivanek is an Emmy award-winning Slovenian American actor best known for his role as Ray Fiske on Damages. He is also known for playing Blake Sterling on short-lived NBC series The Event and Emile Danko on Heroes....

 in the television series Homicide: Life on the Street

Homicide: Life on the Street

Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...

.

Character profile

A recurring character, Danvers is usually shown only in his professional capacity as an Assistant State's Attorney (criminal prosecutor), although the series did delve into his personal life somewhat when he engaged in a brief romance with Kay Howard

Kay Howard

Kay Howard is a fictional homicide detective from Homicide: Life on the Street. She was played by actress Melissa Leo. In the first two seasons of the show her character was the only female detective or member of the main cast. This was in keeping with the book and the actual Homicide unit in...

. This relationship eventually ended amicably and Danvers later became engaged to an attorney for the public defender's office. A few days before the scheduled wedding, Danvers's fiancee is murdered during a botched robbery at the wedding dress shop. Significantly, the Homicide unit makes the case personal, illustrating how the entire unit, and Al Giardello

Al Giardello

Alphonse Michael Giardello, Sr. is a fictional character from the television drama Homicide: Life on the Street. The character was played by Yaphet Kotto...

 (Yaphet Kotto

Yaphet Kotto

Yaphet Frederick Kotto is an African-American actor, known for numerous film roles , and his starring role in the NBC television series Homicide: Life on the Street .-Early life:Kotto was born in New York City, the son of Gladys Marie, a...

) in particular, has come to think of Danvers as a member of the Homicide "family."

Danvers is usually depicted as highly dedicated and skilled, with a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of practical trial law. He is also flexible, as evidenced in the show's crossovers with Law & Order

Law & Order

Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...

, in which his relationship with New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 A.D.A. Jack McCoy

Jack McCoy

John James "Jack" McCoy is a fictional character in the television drama Law & Order, created by Michael S. Chernuchin and played by Sam Waterston since 1994. He is the second-longest tenured character on the show, after Lt. Anita Van Buren . On January 28, 2009, McCoy's character ended the longest...

 (Sam Waterston

Sam Waterston

Samuel Atkinson "Sam" Waterston is an American actor and occasional producer and director. Among other roles, he is noted for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Sydney Schanberg in 1984's The Killing Fields, and his Golden Globe- and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning portrayal of Jack McCoy...

) is depicted as alternately adversarial and cooperative, depending on the demands of the job.

It is revealed in "Sideshow", a Season 7 crossover with Law & Order, that that, as a teenager, Danvers was a member of an all-white street gang. In 1972 Danvers participated in the racially motivated beating of an innocent African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 man, but was the only one of the six gang members to show real remorse for the crime. This is brought up by an Independent Counsel looking to blackmail

Blackmail

In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...

 Danvers and threaten his nomination for becoming a judge. Even though Giardello and the other black officers in the Criminal Investigation Division publicly back Danvers, he loses his nomination as a result of the publicity.

A naturally quiet man, Danvers is sometimes upstaged in court by more theatrical defense attorneys. He is also not above his own prejudices, which sometimes cause him to (inadvertently) overlook overwhelming evidence. Two such instances are when he falsely assumed that his fiancee's murder was targeted rather than random (despite all evidence to the contrary) and again later when he is too quick to believe a woman's unlikely self defense explanation for murder simply because she too is a state prosecutor; in the latter case, he even goes so far as to conspire with the defense team to minimize the defendant's sentence, although he later reverses his position when he finally realizes she's been lying. In his introductory appearance in the show's second episode, he is depicted as primarily interested in obtaining a high conviction rate so that he can move to a high profile law firm "preferably in Los Angeles," even if that means accepting plea bargains in cases where convictions might be obtained. Danvers is also depicted as overworked, most notably in the series finale, "Forgive us our Trespasses", in which he accidentally allows serial killer

Serial killer

A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

 Luke Ryland to go free on a technicality; the resulting tension between Danvers and homicide detective Tim Bayliss

Tim Bayliss

Timothy Bayliss is a fictional detective on Homicide: Life on the Street. He was a primary character, and was played by Kyle Secor. He was loosely based on the real-life Det...

 (Kyle Secor

Kyle Secor

Kyle Ivan Secor is an American television and movie actor, best known for his role as Detective Tim Bayliss on the crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street.-Early years:...

) even comes to blows before the two are able to reconcile.

Despite the fact that Homicide and the Law & Order franchise share the same continuity, Ivanek has occasionally appeared as other characters in Law & Order and its spin-offs -- even sharing screen time with fellow Homicide character John Munch

John Munch

Sergeant John Munch is a fictional character played by actor Richard Belzer. Munch first appeared on Homicide: Life on the Street. Upon that series' cancellation, the character was transplanted to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the first spin-off of the Law & Order franchise...

-- with no reference to Ivanek's role as Danvers.