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What’s more dangerous: cheating on your husband or giving a sandwich to a homeless guy? SVU says: the sandwich.

Recap:

A pretty blond parties at a throbbing nightclub and grinds between a man and a woman with a suspiciously large Adam’s apple. Her battered body is found by a jogger the next day; she’s lying in a rowboat bobbing on the river behind the mayor’s mansion. The victim is in a coma, and has no ID.

First interview: the too-nervous jogger, still clutching her jogging stroller. “You were far from home. Were you going to meet your lover – with your baby?” Amanda asks, in a tone conveying that this would be pretty despicable, even by SVU standards.

But it turns out the jogger was going to buy Adderall from the two teens who were rifling through the victim’s pockets. The pimply teens are considered, then quickly dismissed as the rapists, but not before they turn over a hotel key card they found in the victim’s pockets.

The Medical Examiner makes a special guest appearance to declare: (1) the victim has scars from a hernia operation done by a surgeon who wasn’t American, (2) DNA on the victim’s body is from three different men, and (3) it would be more convenient if the victim were dead, because then we could better estimate when she’d been assaulted.

(Yikes. Many ME’s have a dark perspective, but, wow, Dr. Warner, that was cold.)

Olivia and Nick rush to the victim’s hotel and (without a warrant or subpoena) demand that the manager let them into the guest room, guest safe, wi-fi records, surveillance video and his personal office. He cowers and complies. The detectives find all the trappings of a What-Happens-In-Vegas-Stays-In-Vegas-style weekend: fishnet stockings, leather and lace lingerie, and lots of cash. They also find the woman’s passport, and are soon Skyping with her shocked but impeccably polite Canadian family.

Turns out, the victim is a music blogger married to a pleasant TV host a couple decades older than her. The sad, sweet husband flies in from Canada, and Nick has to break the news that the guy’s wife was probably in NY to cheat on him. The husband nods with resignation. “This trip was an adventure for Ariel,” he says. “She had to give up a lot of her dreams when we started a family.”

Wow, that’s an understanding husband. Did you guess he was the killer? (I did.)

But our detectives soon reconstruct Ariel’s NY adventure and find many feistier suspects. First, a meek public school principal who says Ariel asked him about moving her kids to NY. Second, a scruffy sound guy who hung out with Ariel all weekend but claims he would never cheat on his girlfriend. Third, a hunky musician named Santiago, who’s hemming and hawing to Ice-T when a sexy brunette sashays into his apartment. Amanda yanks off the brunette’s wig, revealing the meek (male) school principal beneath!

You see, the cross-dressing principal and his cousin, Santiago, enjoy threesomes, and had been hoping to enlist Ariel in one on the night she was killed. She freaked out when she detected a little extra something under the pretty principal’s skirt.

But the killer wasn’t any of these guys. In fact, Ariel didn’t cheat on her husband at all. After she had an innocent dinner with the sound guy, she offered a homeless man her leftover sandwich. The random homeless guy followed her into a park, assaulted her, and set her body adrift in the rowboat.

The moral of the story veers swiftly from: “Don’t cheat on your husband, or he just might kill you,” to: “Don’t feed homeless people.”

In a dramatic final scene, Ariel dies. Luckily, the detectives find a cell-phone video she made (moments before her assault), in which she declares her eternal love for her husband. “And, kids,” she says, in a shameless grab at your tears, “I realized that having you is the greatest adventure I ever want to have.”

Verdict: B-

What they got right:

Special victims detectives often learn the deepest, darkest secrets people keep. And these officers are often the bearers of bad news, when they have to share these secrets with the victim or perp’s relatives and loved ones. The relatives are often devastated, as the husband was tonight. The scenes between Nick and the husband accurately portrayed how hard these conversations can be, and demonstrated a gentle, competent, and sensitive way of handling this.

There was some good police work tonight, as the detectives pulled surveillance video, got DNA tested, and obtained cell phone records – all methods that would be used in real life much as they were used on tonight’s show (albeit at a much slower speed).

Perhaps the writers based this episode partly on this real-life story of political intrigue, sexuality, and riverbed murder. Mississippi’s first openly gay mayoral candidate’s body was found floating in a river this February; another man was charged with his homicide.

What they got wrong:

Amanda was working a week after she got shot?! Most cops would be able to milk that for at least a few months of paid leave.

What was the Medical Examiner doing examining the living, breathing victim? The ME is in charge of examining corpses. A live rape victim is examined by a sexual assault nurse examiner. SANE nurses are specially trained in sensitively handling victims of this most intimate crime. (And they don’t go making cracks about how it would be easier if the victim was dead.)

There is no real-life ME who can say whether a hernia operation was done by a Canadian versus American doctor. I kept waiting for Dr. Warner to say, “This was done by a red-haired, left-handed, sixty-two-year-old midget surgeon located somewhere in the Mongolian desert.” This is the sort of magical science that only exists on TV.

Why was Olivia so mean and cranky with the hotel manager? She bullied and threatened him into letting her into the guest room and his office. Just bring a warrant. It would be a piece of cake to get – and would guard against later arguments that Olivia violated the Fourth Amendment. Sure, Ariel isn’t going to move to suppress any evidence found in that room. But what if the killer had checked into the room with her? He would have a privacy right in that room, and thus standing move to have any evidence suppressed. The best practice in the situation is to stop yelling at the poor manager and just get a warrant.

What do you think, SVU fans? Can Dr. Warner determine the body-mass index of a surgeon based on the scar he leaves? Is she the one who killed Ariel? And what’s really more dangerous: charity or infidelity? Leave your comments!

See you next week for the season finale.

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I’m delighted to welcome my friend, the talented writer Thomas Kaufman, to the Prime-Time Crime Review to talk about one of our favorite TV shows.  Check out Tom’s terrific new collection of short stories, ERASED.  And enjoy his guest post!  – Allison

If you watch the series BREAKING BAD, you know it’s terrific. Series creator Vince Gilligan has assembled a lot of talent, both in front of and behind the camera, to make one of the best shows on TV. If you break the series down, it’s not that different from dozens of other shows — BREAKING BAD has its share of murders, chases, gun fights, and explosions. So what makes it so good?

For starters, the show is like an extraordinary chess match, particularly the last two seasons, when the protagonist, high school chemistry teacher and meth cooker Walter White, gets involved with a drug lord named Gustavo Fring. At one point, Walter tells Fring, “I think your game goes deeper than that.” And the game they play in BREAKINGBAD is deep indeed.

Then there’s the suspense. One of the techniques Gilligan and his writers use is uncertainty – often the audience, along with Walter, is in the dark as to what dangers may be lurking. In fact, when Walter has to adopt an alias, he calls himself Heisenberg, a reference to Werner Heisenberg, a physicist whose uncertainty principal won him the Nobel Prize. This uncertainty helps make the show suspenseful. Imagine plying a chess game where you cannot see your opponent’s moves. That’s what it’s like to watch BREAKING BAD.

Another part of the joy of BREAKING BAD is the dialogue. Now, when people talk, they might mean what they say, but they also have a deeper meaning, a subtext to their words. Actors need subtext to make their work believable. And one of the best actors on the show is Anna Gunn, who plays Walter’s wife, Skyler.

Skyler knows Walter is in a battle of wits with Fring. She is of course worried, for Walter, and for their family. But she’s also worried about Walter – he is changing in ways that confuse and frighten her. Vince Gilligan said he wanted to take Mr Chips and turn him into Scarface. This transformation is clear to Skyler.

At one point during Walter’s conflict with Fring there’s an explosion and three people die. Skyler speaks with Walter on the phone and nearly whispers, “What happened?” On the first level she’s referring to the explosion, but on a deeper level she’s asking Walter, what happened to you? How did you become this way? That’s why BREAKING BAD is so damn good.

When I was growing up, crime shows were always from the point of view of the police. Shows like BREAKINGBAD or THE WIRE would’ve been unthinkable back then. Today, as we explore the dark side of a Walter White or a Stringer Bell, we see ourselves. Granted, we would not do the things they do, but through the writing, directing, acting, cinematography, editing, and sound, we identify with these “heroes.” Walter’s problems become our problems because the writers allow us to understand Walter. And because we understand him, we identify with him, even as he grows more violent and more proficient as playing the game.

Because, believe it or not, BREAKING BAD is a game and we all know the rules — there aren’t any.

Check out ERASED, A new collection of mystery and suspense from PWA/St Martin’s Press Competition winner Thomas Kaufman.

Thanks to years behind the camera, Thomas’s work as a cinematographer informs his writing of ERASED and Other Stories. Filming interviews with Holocaust survivors, cops, PI’s, con men, and killers, Thomas has kept his eyes — and his ears — open.  He has shot multiple projects with Academy award winners Charles Guggenheim, Barbara Kopple, and Mark Harris.  Plus, his time directing and shooting TV crime shows gives his work the feel of what’s real.

‘Kaufman is a welcome new voice in DC crime fiction.” – George Pelecanos, author of WHAT IT WAS
‘Fast and funny, with a huge heart. Kaufman is clearly a writer worth keeping an eye on.’ ­ Steve Hamilton, author of THE LOCK ARTIST

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Prisoners fathering children with prison workers; rogue cops going on killing sprees targeting other cops: Tonight’s episode took several real cases of official misconduct and turned them into a fairly unrealistic but fast-moving story about mental illness, rage, and revenge.

Recap:

As Amanda leads a human trafficker on a perp-walk from police headquarters, she’s shot in the shoulder by a sniper hiding on a nearby rooftop! Finn rushes her to the hospital, where she recovers in a slurry morphine stupor. Finn promises to find the bad guy who hurt his partner.

Our detectives cycle through the requisite colorful suspects, including: (1) the “dragon lady” trafficker who was being perp-walked, (2) a hippie druggie friend of Amanda’s no-good sister who had a beef with Amanda for shooting the sister’s no-good boyfriend, and (3) “Escobar,” a notorious drug dealer who tried to kill Finn fifteen years earlier, but failed when Finn’s beloved partner, Luis (who we’ve never heard of before tonight), took the bullet.

Escobar fathered a child with a foxy prison nurse named Anna, who subsequently became an ex-prison-nurse. For a minute, we suspect that she’s helping Escobar plan the attacks.

But then another cop is killed by a sniper – this time, the victim is the son of Finn and Luis’s former lieutenant. And then Anna herself is gunned down, which saves Escobar from having Finn gouge his eyes out with a metal spork in perhaps the most inappropriate interrogation technique in the history of SVU.

But the spork interrogation proves fruitless. Because the killer is apparently Finn’s ex-partner, Luis, who confesses that he shot all those people because of a dispute with NYPD about the pension he received after he took the bullet for Finn.

But in another twist, it turns out that the sniper is actually Luis’s pretty 25-year-old daughter, Gloria. See, her father had his police pension revoked for bureaucratic reasons, which made them lose health insurance, which made Gloria’s cancer-stricken mother die, which made Gloria lose her place in the police academy because she was overcome with grief. Gloria blames NYPD generally, and Finn specifically, for all her family’s woes.

Gloria tapes a manifesto, kills a few more people, and leads NYPD on a massive manhunt, before she finally busts into her family’s old house and takes hostage a pregnant mom and young son who now live there. Finn goes to talk to her, and in a dramatic show of remorse and courage, whips off his bulletproof vest and invites her to shoot him. Instead, she goes to shoot the innocent mom and kid, at which point Finn tackles and arrests her.

Amanda shows up at the hostage-taking scene with her arm in a sling and morphine still on her breath, in just enough time to share a heartwarming but nonsensical exchange with Finn about how partners will always take a bullet for each other.

Verdict: B-

What they got right:

This was an dramatic riff on the Christopher Dorner case from this February. The disgruntled ex-LAPD cop went on a killing spree targeting other LAPD officers, claiming he’d been wrongfully fired from the force. After a massive manhunt, he was finally located – and killed – in a cabin in Big Bear, California, where he had tied up and taken hostage a husband/wife couple who owned the place.

Tonight’s show also gave an impressively timely nod to case of Baltimore prison guards sleeping with the prisoners. The case just broke last month, when guards at the Baltimore City Detention Center were federally indicted for corruption. According to the Washington Post, “Thirteen of them allegedly smuggled cellphones and drugs inside their hair, lunches and underwear for the man they called ‘Bulldog’ or ‘Tay.’ One tattooed his name on her neck, another on her wrist. Four have carried his children.” That guy must have some charisma.

What they got wrong:

Wow, you don’t want to piss off Detective Finn Tutuola! He turns ruthless and lawless fast. First, he unlawfully invaded the home of Earl Talley, the hippie who was beefing with Amanda about her sister. All that Amanda had said was that she “heard from Earl.” That does not come close to the probable cause the police would need to get a warrant to search his house. Suppress all that “hillbilly crack,” your Honor, and give that hippie a nice civil settlement where he can buy all the Mountain Dew his heart desires.

Finn’s criminal streak continued when Nick held down Escobar in jail, while Finn punched the prisoner’s stomach and pressed that metal spork to his eyelid. Needless to say, any confession they got they way wasn’t going to hold up in court. I’m not saying police brutality doesn’t happen. But, come on, Nick! I thought you were one of the good guys.

Plus, it was silly to have Finn play every role in this investigation. Yeah, it was personal for him, we get it. But special victims detectives are not SWAT members (Finn would not be the one busting into Earl Talley’s house), nor are they EMT’s (Finn should have waited for an ambulance to rush Amanda to the hospital), nor are they hostage negotiators on a suicidal guilt trip.

Finally – here it is again, one of my biggest SVU pet peeves – yet another pretty young woman was the perp. How many of you knew it, as soon as Gloria walked into her father’s living room? Because, as noted last week, it is an immutable law of SVU that any time a pretty young woman has a significant role before the second commercial break, she will either turn out to be a rape victim or a violent criminal. On SVU, women are incredibly dangerous. In real life, women make up 14% of violent offenders in America.

What do you think, SVU fans? Has there ever been interrogation techniques on SVU less appropriate than threatening to spork out a suspect’s eyeballs if he doesn’t confess? Shouldn’t Finn have at least sent a card to Luis’s wife’s funeral? And does having ovaries guarantee a character’s arrest in the final scene? Leave your comments!

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It is an immutable law of SVU that if a wealthy young woman has a significant role before the second commercial break, she will either turn out to be a rape victim or a mastermind behind the assault – even if it was gang rape by a bunch of crazed strangers in a crowded nightclub. Tonight’s episode stayed true to this silly form.

Recap:

Two pretty young women get ready for a night on the town. Bubbly Brit persuades shy Gabby to wear a strapless yellow top. “Jake will love it!” Brit gushes. Gabby, Brit and preppy Jake go to a nightclub and have fun watching the band, until fireworks go off behind the stage. (Um, didn’t we learn that was a bad idea after the Great White tragedy? Are fireworks even allowed at indoor concerts any more? The lawyer in me starting calculating the nightclub’s tort liability, and there were a lot of zeros.)

Anyway, in the midst of the fireworks, someone pulls down Gabby’s top, exposing her breasts. Seeing this, a bunch of scraggly male clubgoers descend on Gabby, push her to the ground, and violently gang rape her.

At first, our detectives think the head of club security, Frank, was the ringleader. But Frank served a couple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is suffering from PTSD. Confused, he admits to the rape, then realizes he didn’t do it, and eventually helps ID the real bad guys.

Turns out, there are two sets of bad guys. First set: the scraggly clubbers who actually raped Gabby. Second set: three of Gabby’s rich prep-school friends, who pulled off her top in the first place. See, Gabby’s ex-boyfriend, Alec, wanted to get back at her for dumping him. So his BFF Brit befriended Gabby, got her to wear the flimsy top, brought her to the club, and signaled for the de-shirting to begin. Jake was in on it too. The trio paid a blue-collar kid to “top-shark” Gabby, that is, pull her top off in order to take a topless photo of her.

Who should the detectives focus on: the shirt-snatchers or the gang rapists? The shirt-snatchers, of course! Another immutable law of SVU requires immediate prosecution of any character who is questioned while: (a) carrying oars at his rowing club, (b) wearing tennis whites, or (c) shopping at pricey boutiques. Since our preppy trio did all three, they are immediately indicted.

ADA Barba apparently gets high off-screen, then argues that because the prep-school kids conspired to top-shark Gabby, they should have foreseen the resulting gang rape, and can be held legally responsible for it. Thereupon follow some extremely silly trial scenes (more on that below). Frank realizes halfway through his testimony that someone videotaped the whole assault. Our detectives track down the video, which shows the rich kids thumbs-upping each other before initiating the top-sharking.

Alec, Brit, and Jake all plead guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated sexual assault and are sent to Rikers.

Verdict: C-

What they got right:

The Woodstock music festival in 1999 ended with allegations that several women had been raped while in the mosh pit at the event. The descriptions that came from that event – of chaos within densely-packed crowds, mob mentality, and sexual violence – were captured in tonight’s episode.

What they got wrong:

Barba’s a great character, but he was totally off his game tonight.

First, he said that the DNA on Gabby’s body after the attack would “only show proximity,” not an assault. But there were bite marks, and forensic testing would be able to tell if the DNA was from saliva. If you’ve got someone’s saliva in a victim’s bite mark, that’s not just proximity – that’s an assault.

Worse, was Barba’s theory that he could convict the top-sharking kids for rape. Sure, the kids were horrible. But there was no legal basis to hold them responsible for the gang rape committed by strangers. The prepsters conspired to take a girl’s shirt off and photograph her. Barba implied that because they’d formed a shirt-stealing conspiracy, they would be guilty of anything reasonably foreseeable from a situation where a woman is missing her shirt. But that’s not the case if the resulting crimes were committed by someone outside of their original conspiracy. Maybe Barba meant the kids had aiding and abetting liability. But to be guilty of a crime under a theory of aiding and abetting, the defendant generally must know of the direct perpetrator’s criminal purpose, must intend to aid and abet the perpetrator, and must do or say something that in fact aids and abets the crime. Here, the trust-fund kids didn’t even know the scraggly gang rapists; they certainly didn’t know about their criminal purpose. This conviction wouldn’t stand in real life.

It was silly that there was one defense attorney for all three rich kids. That would never happen in real life; the attorney would have a total conflict of interest. The kids’ best bet would be to turn on each other. They’d each need their own attorney to advise them about that option. Even if the three wanted to share one attorney, no judge in her right mind would allow it — this just sets up the perfect situation for the kids to appeal.

And you already know how unlikely it was that Barba would learn about the incriminating video in the last five minutes of trial. It was dramatic! But moments like that only happen on Perry Mason and SVU.

I’ve got more, but I’ve run out of words. So leave your comments and hit the issues I don’t have room for!

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Tonight’s harrowing SVU about a college systematically mistreating its student/rape victims featured plot twists so shocking they hardly seemed plausible – except that they were drawn directly from allegations made in real-life cases.

Recap: A pretty young college freshman named Lindsey goes to a frat party, where a cocky blueblood named Travis and two of Travis’s frat brothers brutally gang rape her.

Lindsey goes to a hospital, but before a sex kit is done, the head of the college’s Campus Security advises her to take a shower. She washes away much of the evidence. And although she reports the rape to Olivia and Amanda, she also sends a topless Snapchat photo of herself to Travis the next day. (He asked for it, and she thought he might date her if she sent it.) After that photo ends up on the “Slut of the Week” website, Lindsey backs down and drops the charges. She doesn’t want to end up like Renee, another college girl who Travis raped, and who ended up in a psych ward.

Olivia visits Renee in the mental hospital. The girl is undergoing electric-shock treatments for major depression. When her shock session is over, Renee describes how Travis raped her at the frat house, and, adding insult to injury, how Campus Security didn’t believe her, the school counselor discouraged her from coming forward, and the college had her admitted to the mental hospital after she became suicidal.

The detectives do outreach at the school, and find ten more victims of Travis and his “Rape Factory” frat house. Lindsey, however, doesn’t want to come forward. She wants to pretend it never happened.

ADA Barba launches an investigation, putting many of the college officials in the grand jury hotseat. A third rape victim testifies that when she reported Travis’s rape of her, the head of Campus Security told her, “Sex is like a football game, sometimes when you watch your game tape, you can see your mistakes and do better next time.”

Meanwhile, the frat boys are getting worse. They post online some cell-phone videos where they laugh about how they raped the girl. ADA Barba describes how they chanted, “No means yes. Yes means anal.”

The authorities finally charge Travis and his buddies with rape, and the Dean as an accessory to rape. But it’s too late for Lindsey, who kills herself.

Verdict: A

What they got right:

This was an important episode. Shocking as they were, many of the story’s details came directly from allegations made in real-life college rape cases.

In one case, a woman alleged that when she reported her rape in 2007, she was told by an administrator: “Rape is like a football game. If you look back on the game, and you’re the quarterback and you’re in charge, is there anything that you would have done differently in that situation?”

Another college student claimed that she faced expulsion for “creating an intimidating environment” for her ex-boyfriend if she reported her alleged rape to the police.

In a complaint filed with the US Department of Education, one college’s former Dean of Students claimed that the school pressured her to under-report sexual assault cases and harassed her when she wouldn’t.

Another college rape victim claimed her report to campus police was ignored.  She was admitted to a psych ward after she became suicidal.

Horrific as the chant Barba mentioned was, it’s a real thing. In 2010, a group of male college students stood chanting: “No means yes, yes means anal.” You can see the video here.

And you’ve probably seen by now the dismaying video that Steubenville football players posted online after two of their friends sexually assaulted a passed-out drunk girl:

As parents, we must teach our sons to respect girls. As a society, we should demand that colleges treat victims of these most intimate crimes with the dignity and support they deserve — and that perpetrators are held accountable.

What they got wrong:

The Dean of Students wasn’t an accessory to rape. Yes, she could be guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice, for her testimony in the grand jury. But to give her a rape charge for failing to stop a rape culture on her campus, while satisfying on a dramatic level, was not legally supportable.

What do you think, SVU fans? What do colleges need to do to ensure that rape victims are treated with dignity and support? What should parents and teachers do to teach boys to respect women? How can we change the culture of rape on college campuses? Leave your comments.

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One of the more interesting visuals in any criminal trial is how the defendant presents himself.  As a prosecutor, I saw countless defense makeovers: brutish thugs who walked into the courtroom almost unrecognizable in pressed khakis, a neat haircut, and fake glasses plucked from a bin in their lawyer’s office.  But the most striking makeovers often occur when a beautiful young woman is on trial.  Then, the switcheroo is usually a makeunder.  Jodi Arias is the most recent case in point, going from hottie to ho-hum faster than you can say, “Arizona has the death penalty.”  But I think her deliberate frump is a bad strategy.

Now in her 39^th day of trial, Arias is charged with brutally killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, on June 4, 2008.   According to the prosecution, Arias went to Alexander’s house, had sex with him, took naked photos of them together, then shot him in the face, slit his throat, and stabbed him 27 times.  Arias has offered many stories  – first, she wasn’t there; second, she was there but masked intruders murdered him – and now admits she killed Alexander, but claims it was self-defense.

Arias currently appears to be a different woman than the who walked out of Alexander’s home that June day.  Back then, she was a buxom blonde with long platinum hair, kohl-lined eyes, and lips glossed to the outer limits of poutiness.  She wore t-shirts a few sizes too small, emphasizing her Barbie-like figure.  She easily could have played the femme fatale in any noir novel.

Today, Arias’s hair is dull brown, with wispy bangs covering her forehead.  A little-girl side ponytail occasionally clamps a section back.  Sitting at the defense table, she wears modest button-up blouses in sweet blues and innocent whites.  Brown plastic glasses dominate her makeupless face.  She looks like a shy, frumpy librarian.

Arias and her defense team clearly think the church-mouse look will help her chances with the jury.  Are they right?  Depends which statistics you read.

A Cornell study found that “unattractive” defendants were 22% more likely to be convicted at trial than those deemed “attractive.”  Moreover, unattractive criminals served harsher sentences – roughly 20 months longer than their cute counterparts.  Bring out the lipgloss, ladies.

On the other hand, a University of Granada study found that beautiful women were more likely to be found guilty of murdering their husbands than plainer ones.  According to the Daily Mail, “in the case of a woman claiming self-defense in the killing of an abusive husband, police officers were more likely to regard as innocent defendants who were described as unattractive.

The findings also showed that women perceived as more independent and in charge of their lives were also more likely to be seen as guilty of murder.”  Hm, ladies, maybe you should put away that compact and meekly gaze at your hands.

So what’s a pretty defendant to do?

I think it depends on how strong the case is. If the prosecution is weak, a bombshell might benefit from playing down her looks and reducing the risk of resentment from female jurors.  In Jodi Arias’s case, however, the government’s evidence is strong.  She’s lied so many times, people are highly skeptical of her story now.  In my opinion, she simply cannot be acquitted at trial.  However, she could avoid the electric chair if she got just one juror to take her side.  Since verdicts need to be unanimous, a single holdout could hang the whole case – and save her from hanging.  For that reason, Arias’s better strategy might have been to come to court in full vixen mode, and hope to make one of the jurors fall in love with her.

Of course, we all wish Justice was blind.  But since jurors don’t wear blindfolds, female defendants are wise to consider not only the best lawyer, but just the right shade of lipgloss.

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Most nights, SVU explores the nightmare of someone terrible hurting your family. But what if the terrible someone was part of your family? What if he was your son?

Recap: A rich, beautiful Upper West Side couple is living the perfect Manhattan life, until their adorable four-year-old daughter, Ruby, goes to the school nurse with bruises on her abdomen. At first, the buxom blond nanny is suspected.

But the detectives soon learn that the real culprit is Ruby’s ten-year-old brother, Henry, who pushed his sister down the stairs because he was curious about how she would fall. Henry’s mental issues are bad enough that B.D. Wong flies in for special guest appearance and determines that, although Henry is smart, he feels and understands no emotions. Wong ruminates, “I hate to label a ten-year-old a psychopath. But…”

Henry’s parents resist the horrifying diagnosis. Their son won’t be able to get into a good middle school with that label. But Henry gets worse. He pulls a knife on his mom and slices her hand. He asks to hold Amanda’s gun while nibbling strawberries in what was possibly the most menacing organic-fruit scene in TV history. And when his parents tell him they’re sending him to a treatment facility, he locks mom in the laundry room, ties Ruby to a bed, and sets the apartment on fire.

Henry then proceeds to his friend’s apartment, where he ties up his friend and locks him in a closet, drowns his friend’s dog in a tub, and steals a gun, which he uses to take another kid hostage in the building’s playroom. Nick saves the hostage, but then Henry turns the gun on him! “If I shoot you,” Henry says in his cold voice, “will there be a lot of blood? Will your brains come out of your forehead?” Nick reaches for the gun, and Henry shoots him in the chest!

Luckily, Nick is wearing a bulletproof vest, as he conveniently mentioned in the first scene, when he spoke at Career Day at his son’s school (posing as the boy’s uncle, of course, since the son doesn’t know Nick is his dad). It all turns out okay because: (a) we get our first glimpse of the good detective’s truly impressive abs, and (b) Nick’s babymama realizes life is precious and uncertain, and allows Nick to reveal his paternity to the boy. (Purists might squirm at this soapy detour from our crime plot, but I have to admit: I’m loving this storyline.)

Anyway, now that Henry has attempted to kill a cop, there’ll be no more organic strawberries or nannies with lilting Latvian accents. He’ll be processed in the juvenile justice system, and sent to a treatment facility til he’s eighteen. Mom and Dad sobbingly bid him goodbye. For the first time in his life, Henry says that he loves them – but with such a hard look in his eyes, we know the declaration is just one more manipulation.

Verdict: B+

What they got right:

The question of whether children can be considered psychopaths is being hotly debated in the medical and legal communities. Last year, the New York Times magazine ran an excellent article about the phenomenon of “callous-unemotional” children. CU kids exhibit a lack of affect, remorse, or empathy and are considered at risk of becoming psychopaths as adults. According to the magazine, “a growing number of psychologists believe that psychopathy, like autism, is a distinct neurological condition — one that can be identified in children as young as 5.”

One real-life CU boy amputated his cat’s tail bit by bit over a series of weeks, with scientific detachment, before his parents noticed. Another pushed a toddler into a motel swimming pool, pulled up a chair, and watched the child sink to the bottom, because he was curious about the act of drowning.

The good news is that scientists believe that early diagnosis, intervention, and treatment might modify the child’s behavior, although it can’t “cure” the underlying lack of empathy. Such behavioral modification could have a huge impact on crime rates. Psychopaths are estimated to constitute 1 percent of the population but make up 15 to 25 percent of convicts responsible for brutal crimes.

The show tonight achingly portrayed parents’ dilemma when faced with the possibility that their own child was a psychopath. For another heartbreaking real-life take on this, read this remarkable article called “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” written by a woman with a mentally-ill son, about how she struggles to love him and control his violent outbursts, even as she knows that he will soon be able to overpower her.

What they got wrong:

At the Children’s Advocacy Center, Henry pointed to a concealed camera, and asked Nick and Olivia, “Are you recording this?” Interviewers at real-life CACs usually inform the kids right off the bat that they’re being recorded. (In my view, that’s only fair.) And it would be unusual to have two detectives questioning the boy – the whole point of that cheery, child-friendly room is to put the child at ease.

A nit about Henry’s arson. This family lived in a palatial Upper West Side with two-story windows, a floating staircase, and billion-dollar views. And yet, when the house was filled with smoke, the only reason anyone knew was because Henry called Olivia’s personal cell? Didn’t that posh apartment come with a smoke detector?

Finally, while there are cases where a CU kid does one or two horrible things, I’ve never heard of a case where a kid goes on such an incredibly productive and creative crime spree. I think the writers took every CU incident in the world and gave it to this one incredibly deranged kid. Chalk it up to dramatic license.

What do you think, SVU fans? What would you do if you thought your child was a psychopath? Should such diagnoses be given to kids so young? And how will Nick’s son react to learning that Uncle Nick is really “Dad”? Leave your comments!

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I was thrilled to be invited to MSNBC’s “The Cycle” today, to talk about Jodi Arias: her chances at trial, and the reasons behind her stunning makeunder.  You can check out the footage here:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Folks — Today’s recap is brought to you by my friend and renowned legal guru Leslie Budewitz. I’ll will be back next week.  Many thanks to Leslie for her awesome recap!  This is a real treat — Leslie is one of the country’s foremost experts on legal accuracy in fiction.

Allison’s under the weather this week, so I’m your brave–or foolhardy–substitute, Leslie Budewitz. I’m a Montana lawyer with experience on both sides of the law– civil and criminal, that is. The closest I’ve come to prosecuting SVU cases–and the closest I’ve come to wearing stilettos in the courtroom–is to drive an SUV with studded snow tires. I’m the author of Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure, winner of the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction. Death al Dente, first in The Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, will debut in August 2013. I blog about the law for writers at the Law and Fiction blog.

RECAP: We first meet Avery Jordan, a 30-something TV sports reporter, in a locker room, where she politely but firmly fends off flashing and pawing. We next meet her at a coffee shop where she tells Olivia she was attacked a month ago, at home. She told no one, and can’t bring herself to say “rape.” But that changes when she finds an envelope at her door. After a road trip, her cameraman, Rick Purcell, offered to carry up her bags, then raped her. He’s been calling ever since, and now he’s leaving photographs.

Cragen orders investigations of Avery and Rick, a law school grad who never took the bar. And boy, is Rick slick. “An unspoken attraction,” he says. “He must have found out”–referring to Avery’s affair with Jason Hollis, a married network anchor. Rick had been spying on Avery and Jason for a year, installing cameras in her hotel rooms. Tests find semen from two men on her sheets.

Avery worries about the affair coming out. “In theory, rape shield will protect you,” Olivia tells her. Rick is charged with first degree rape and aggravated stalking.

But Avery is pregnant. She’s incredulous–her infertility led to a divorce. DNA establishes Rick is the biological father.

At trial, Olivia testifies with competence and compassion that rape survivors can take years to come forward. Rick was her co-worker–reporting the assault could damage her reputation, harm others, and cost her her job. But ultimately, she could not let him get away with it. Nick notes the stalking is strong evidence of nonconsensual sex, and Fin found copies of the videos on Rick’s hard drive. Jason, the weenie, balks at testifying, then agrees. Rick had gone after him, too–the reason he broke off the affair.

A first-class egomaniac, Rick interrupts the trial repeatedly and demands to represent himself. We’re spared the legal process–and mid-trial, the judge would have kept it short–but the witnesses aren’t spared one bit when Rick starts his cross. No, sirree. Ever seen a rape victim keep the baby, he asks Olivia, who replies with equanimity: “It happens.”

Avery–played by Lauren Cohan, who’s looking like the Walking Dead about now–explains how she’s come to bond with the child she thought she could never have.

Rick calls his expert, a congressman and retired obstetrician playing the part of Todd Akin, the former Missouri congressman and 2012 Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who torched his campaign with the idiotic remarks that give this episode its title. Over token objection, he testifies that it is “nearly impossible for a victim of legitimate rape to become pregnant,” that a woman’s body has “a mechanism for shutting down ovulation.” (No one points out that sex doesn’t trigger ovulation, and that Avery’s egg was likely in transit long before Rick’s semen entered her body. If she’d ovulated after sex, not before, she’d likely have conceived a girl.) But Fin and Amanda have done their job. The prosecutor establishes that the doctor’s research is 40 years old and he hasn’t practiced in 12 years following disciplinary action. (Translation: bad acts, probably sexual, that the victim is barred from discussing.)

The jury convicts Rick of stalking but acquits him of rape. A female juror bought the “legitimate rape” argument. Avery goes into labor and has a healthy boy.

But it was only 47 minutes after the hour. What next? Does Avery kill Rick? No. Rick sues her for custody, claiming she’s such a mess–unemployed, depressed, on meds–that she’s not a fit mother. We’re told 31 states allow such suits, generally used to pressure the complainant to drop charges, but that New York has no law. The family court judge tells Rick that despite the verdict, his actions were “reprehensible.” She awards Avery sole custody but “with great reluctance” gives Rick as biological father 2 hours of weekly supervised visitation.

The first Saturday, Rick waits at the precinct, a chilly place. Olivia is with Avery, who’s packing to leave. Not a good idea, Olivia says; wait for him to make a mistake and take him to court. But Avery’s had enough of courts.

Olivia returns to the station alone. The detectives all keep up the pretense that they don’t know what’s going on, that Avery and the baby are still at the pediatrician’s. “Somewhere beyond extradition,” Olivia tells Nick. And then the kicker: “Remember when you asked me about my father and I told you it was a long story? It’s not that long.” And that, friends, is why we love this series.

MY FAVORITE LINES: The prosecutor’s objection: “Argumentative and ridiculous.” I may borrow that one. And Avery’s custody lawyer’s comeback when Rick testifies he called and sent photos to show Avery how much he loved her: “You never heard of flowers?”

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT:
1) The judge rightly says Rick has the right to represent himself–called pro se or pro per, although often, questions arise about the defendant’s mental competence to make that choice and whether he has sufficient intelligence, understanding, and language skills. No such questions here.

Judges hold pro se defendants to the same legal standards as lawyers, but give them some leeway on procedure. I thought both the criminal judge and the family court judge a touch lax with Rick, tolerating too many badgering questions and loaded comments–especially in questioning Avery–but it all served the drama.

2) I don’t know enough about custody laws to call that one, but the judge did apply the right standard, the best interests of the child. The hearing took place awfully soon–barely a month–but an emergency hearing for a temporary arrangement could be fast-tracked.

KINDA SORTA NOT REALLY: Rape shield laws prevent a victim from being questioned about her sexual history, unless it’s past sexual conduct with the accused, or it’s relevant to show the origin of semen, pregnancy or disease at issue in the case. (State laws vary; I’m quoting Montana’s.) Avery’s relationship with Jason was relevant to show the presence of semen from two men–but that wasn’t relevant to the rape charge. She admitted sex with Jason, and there was no doubt that she’d had sex with Rick–only a question of consent. But the writers didn’t make her sexual history a big issue, so I’ll give them a pass.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG:
1) Good criminal defense lawyers are tough. They’ve got strong personalities and brook no nonsense. This one let Rick make faces and objections. Client control ain’t easy–I say, having once practically tackled a client to keep her from charging the bench and interrupting opposing counsel–but this guy was a wuss.

2) Oh, where to start on this so-called expert? Experts can testify only if their specialized knowledge will help the jury understand the evidence, or is necessary to determine a fact at issue. Okay, so far. But the expert must be qualified. Dr. Congressman testified based on his experience, but made no showing that he had particular experience in dealing with rape victims. Many O.B.s don’t (says the doctor who watched the show with me). And we’re told that admissibility has been decided pre-trial–as most such challenges would be–under Frye, a 1923 Supreme Court case. My late-night five-minute legal research says Frye still applies in New York–it’s been superseded in the federal rules and in many states. (We’ll ignore the “pure opinion” wrinkle because I doubt it applies.) Generally, Frye requires that expert testimony be “generally accepted” in the scientific or medical community. And the medical experts who filled the airwaves after Akin’s remarks made clear that the “mechanism” argument flunks that test.

But of course, if they’d gotten that right, we’d have had to watch American Idol and please, please, not that.

Crime, slime, and a satisfying ending, sharply written. What more could you ask for?

What do you think, SVU fans? Fry Rick–or anyone else–in the comments, but be gentle with your humble substitute!

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A few weeks ago, I participated in a conversation on HuffPost Live about a  mother suing a man for conducting a sadomasochistic relationship with her daughter, who was mentally ill.  You can see the segment here.

This week, the mother’s attorney, Chris Burdett emailed me with additional information and a different perspective on the discussion.  I offered to post his views on this website.  He allowed me  post a letter he addressed to the host Mike Sachs.

Here is Mr. Burdett’s letter:

I thank Mr. Burdett for reaching out to set forth his point of view and to engage in a thoughtful discussion of this important case.