Law & Order: Trial By Jury - Cancellation

Cancellation

NBC announced on May 16, 2005 that Trial by Jury would not be returning for the 2005–2006 fall television season. The rival CBS procedural Numb3rs debuted in the midseason in late January 2005 and consistently beat NBC's Medical Investigation in the ratings, sending the latter show into hiatus and eventual cancellation, freeing up the time slot for Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Despite Trial by Jury 's pedigree, Numb3rs ratings remained strong, often beating Trial by Jury in both overall and key demographic ratings.

Trial by Jury is the first series of the Law & Order franchise to be cancelled, although TV Guide reported at one point that NBC had reconsidered its decision and would pick up the series once again, or hand it off to Turner Network Television (TNT), which also airs reruns of the original series. The sets were reused by a series Wolf produced for NBC entitled Conviction which premiered Friday, March 3, 2006, lasting only one season before cancellation. In an October 2005 interview with the Associated Press, Wolf stated that NBC had assured him Trial by Jury would return for the fall of 2005 but had "blindsided" him by cancelling it instead.

Court TV (now truTV) re-aired the entire series, including the episode "Eros In The Upper Eighties", which never aired on NBC before the show's cancellation. TNT has aired the episode "Skeleton" on occasion, as the conclusion to the original series episode "Tombstone".