SVU Episode #18: Bully

24 February, 2011 By 5 Comments

Summary: A rich businesswoman is found dead in her apartment above an art gallery. Her neck has been slit by a glass shard, she has a blood alcohol level of 1.6, her panties are around her ankles, and she has anal trauma. Elliott and Olivia soon focus on the luxury wine company where the victim worked as a bookkeeper. The company marketed itself as a happy wine-making family, but the CEO was actually a terrible boss who berated and slapped her employees. The employees put up with the abuse because the company was about to be sold, and if they hung in there, they’d get rich. But the victim took videos of the CEO slapping her, and the other employees feared she’d leak them and ruin their deal. Elliott and Olivia ultimately discover that a handsome wine salesman went to the victim’s house and tried to seduce her into handing over the videos. When she declined his advances, he pushed her into the coffee table, where the broken glass lodged in her neck. Hoping to make it look like an accident, the salesman inserted a bottle of champagne into her anus to intoxicate her and make it look like she stumbled into the table while drunk.

Verdict: B

What they got right and wrong:  A person can get drunk by “ingesting” alcohol through their vagina or anus. This has been a trend in recent years: college girls soaking tampons with vodka and inserting them in their nether regions. The girls say they like getting drunk without the calories or beer breath (that last part is wrong, since the body gives off alcohol fumes through the lungs regardless of where it’s ingested). Medical experts say doing this can cause terrible damage to the vagina:

Back to the crime. The key to intoxication through the anus or vagina is the bloodstream. The alcohol makes its way across the thin epithelial barrier and is carried directly into the blood, which then travels around the body intoxicating the person. So – this method of intoxication wouldn’t work for a person who’s already dead. If you insert a champagne bottle into a corpse’s anus, you won’t intoxicate the corpse – there’s no bloodstream to carry the alcohol around the body.

Maybe the killer inserted the champagne bottle while the woman was in the process of dying, but not yet dead? It’s hard to imagine there’d be enough time, with the carotid artery cut and the woman bleeding out, to get her blood-alcohol level all the way to 1.6. Even if there was, can you imagine the mess that would make? As she’s spurting blood from her neck, the killer lifts her off the broken glass table, turns her over, undresses her bottom half, manages to get the bottle in the right place and hold it there … He would be soaked in blood and champagne and likely leaving bloody fingerprints and footprints all over the place. The Medical Examiner said that there was no DNA or fingerprints, and speculated that the killer wore gloves, suggesting a meticulously executed murder. But it turned out this crime was an accident covered with improvisation, which would be much messier than that.

Sorry to stray from my usual legal analysis, but there wasn’t much law on tonight’s show, and as a mystery writer, I now spend a lot of time thinking about how to kill people in unique ways. I appreciated SVU’s creativity tonight but (as usual) had to do some nitpicking.  After blogging about this, I really need a beer . . . via the traditional route, thankyouverymuch.

If you’re interested in seeing how they filmed some of these scenes, click here.

All the views expressed on this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Filed Under: SVU Episodes Tagged With: , , , ,

SVU Episode #9: Gray

18 November, 2010 By 9 Comments

Summary: This was a compelling and fairly realistic episode about sexual assault on college campuses. Elliott goes to his daughter’s college Take Back the Night rally. A plain jane student runs in, screaming that a handsome player male student raped her (several months ago– I’m not sure why she was screaming just then). Later, Plain Jane explains that she got drunk, went back to Player’s room, lay on his couch, and next thing she knew, they were having sex. Player said Plain Jane made the first move and wanted to have sex. The detectives wanted to bring a case, but that ADA wouldn’t bring charges, saying that consent was unclear – this was a “gray” rape. But the Player was much more evil than that. His girlfriend was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby. Player put an abortion-inducing drug on his penis and had sex with her, causing a miscarriage. The girlfriend then died of complications from the impromptu abortion. The detectives arrested the Player for homicide.

Verdict: A

What They Got Right:

Rape on College Campuses. Sexual assaults on college campuses are shockingly widespread and under-reported. Studies show that one of every four girls in college will be sexually assaulted by the time they graduate. Despite this, 77% of college campuses report zero rapes per year. Why? Parents don’t want to send their kids to Rape U. Colleges have a business incentive to under-report the rapes on their campuses. Many colleges try to deal with sexual assault by using campus disciplinary committees instead of reporting them to the police. A case that recently went to the Supreme Court was a lot like this episode. In U.S. v. Morrison, a woman was sexually assaulted on Virginia Tech’s campus by two football players. She went to the campus police – and the college promptly lined up behind the football players, sending the matter to a disciplinary committee and giving the athletes a slap on the wrist. The woman then brought suit under the federal Violence Against Women Act, which the Supreme Court invalidated on commerce clause grounds (holding that violence against women doesn’t have an impact on the economic activities between states, so the feds can’t outlaw it).

“Gray Rape.” Ladies, you need to be more vigilant about the hot guy you cheerfully go home with at closing time than the scary guy you fear lurking in the bushes. The most common type of sexual assault on college campuses is acquaintance rape. Many sexual assault cases from campuses involve two people who get drunk, go home together and have sex. Afterwards, the woman believes she was assaulted; the man believes she was saying yes. The problem with these cases, from a law enforcement persepctive, is that consent is often hard to discern. The legal test is whether a reasonable man knew or should have known that the victim was too drunk to be able to consent. There are some obvious cases: say, the victim urinates on herself before having sex – a reasonable man should know she was in no shape to consent. But there are lots of gray areas, where reasonable people could disagree as to whether the man should have known to stop. These are the hard cases – like the one portrayed on tonight’s SVU episode.

You really can cause an abortion with an ulcer drug.  The drug this guy used to make his girlfriend miscarry is a real drug. Misoprostol is a prescription pharmaceutical used for both ulcers and erectile dysfunction. It has a side-effect of inducing abortions. There is a growing black market for the drug for this purpose, especially in South America, but the practice is becoming popular with poor communities in the U.S. (I wouldn’t suggest it – there is also a side effect of death when the drug is used this way.) I personally haven’t seen a case where a man put the drug on his penis to get his girlfriend to miscarry, but it wasn’t totally implausible. As a writer, I thought it was a clever twist.

Don’t let your daughter steal for you. Yes, it’s true that the police can use evidence that someone else stole – as long as the police didn’t direct the thief to steal it. But, here, Elliott’s daughter stole disciplinary records from the university. Good luck proving to a judge that you didn’t put your daughter up to that. That’s exactly what SVU’s ADA said.

What They Got Wrong:

Judges don’t recuse themselves just because they were once a crime victim. The defense attorney found out the judge had been gang-raped on a college campus 40 years ago, and got the judge to recuse herself. I’m skeptical that any defense attorney would do that. You ask a judge to recuse herself at your peril. Everyone brings their own personal baggage to the table – and everyone thinks they can be fair, whatever their background. Ask a judge to recuse herself in this situation, and she probably won’t – and you’ll be stuck with a judge who’s pissed that you questioned her judgment and went digging into her most humiliating personal moment. Not a good legal strategy.

Nice digs! That ADA’s office was way too pretty. Did you see those intricately carved mahogany cabinets and that great big grandfather clock? A real prosecutor’s office is more likely to have scuffed white walls, rusty mismatched filing cabinets, and a battered desk that’s been around since the Johnson administration.

*All the views expressed on this website are my personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Filed Under: SVU Episodes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

SVU Episode #7: Trophy

4 November, 2010 By 12 Comments

Summary: A beautiful woman is raped and her body dumped in an industrial laundry plant. After accusing a few laundry employees of the crime, the cops see video of a car dumping the body at the laundry. They trace the car to a recent parolee, who’s pale and twitchy as a rabbit. When they visit his house, Twitchy shoots at them from inside. The cops bust in, arrest him, and find a box stuffed with trophies from other rapes. They search his house and discover a basement torture cellar. Oddly, the trophies are from rapes that happened 40 years ago. Turns out, the killer is actually Twitchy’s silver-haired prison cellmate, recently released from prison. Det. Benson finds a forty-year-old blond woman who is the product of one of the long-ago rapes. In the end, Blondie bludgeons Silver to death with a frying pan, then abandons her eleven-year-old son to Benson.

Verdict: C

What they got wrong: How much time do you have?

Vaginal Injuries. The victim had “serious” vaginal injuries. So many SVU victims do. But in reality, most victims of sexual assaults don’t have any vaginal injuries at all. We’re talking about anatomy that can stretch to fit a whole baby. But juries expect to see it. In many sexual assault trials, the prosecution needs to call an expert witness to tell the jury that lack of vaginal injuries doesn’t mean the victim consented.

Jumping to Conclusions. Do you remember in the movie “Office Space,” the deluded co-worker worker who thought he’d make millions on a board game called “Jump To Conclusions”?  This SVU episode reminded me of that. Every time the police went to interview anyone, they started by accusing the person of being a rapist. To the guy who drove the laundry truck, their first sentence was: “You raped and killed that girl!” To his nurse/girlfriend: “You helped him!”  To the twitchy guy who said he’d just gone to the corner store: “Is that when you raped and killed that girl?” Haven’t the detectives learned that it’s never the guy they talk to in the first two minutes of the show? Plus, this isn’t a fabulous way to build trust with  witnesses.

Shouting Facts at the Suspect. And their interrogation technique of the suspect was bizarre. Every time the cops learned a new fact, they rushed to the cellblock and shouted it at Twitchy. “We cut through your padlock!” “There’s blood in your basement drain!” “We found all your trophies!” Detectives Stabler and Benson: I love you guys, truly, I do, but can I offer you a little advice? Stop updating the suspect about your case. He’s not in charge of your end-of-the-year evaluation. Just ask him a question. At one point, Twitchy sobbed, “I never go in the basement!” If the detectives had just asked him, “Who does?” we could’ve wrapped up this episode in half the time. The best police interrogators are friendly and patient. They get the subject to talk for hours and hours, about a lot of unimportant stuff. And then they ask, “So, tell me about your basement.” And when he gives his false exculpatory story (“Um, I run a dentist office out of it…”), you’ve got him.

You Too Can Become a Notary for $12. After Blondie kills her father (who was also her mother’s rapist), she drops her son off at the police station. Benson is shocked when the boy hands her a note which contains – gasp! – a notarized transfer of parental rights from Blondie to Benson! Oh my god! Benson is now the legal guardian of the kid! Actually – no.  Know how you get to be a notary? You send a copy of your drivers license and a check for like $12 to your local secretary of state. You get a little stamp and the ability to help your colleagues when they need to send an official document to their kids’ daycare (basically, the notary just confirms that the document’s signer is there in person, signing the document). I was a notary in Michigan when I was, I think, 16 years old. I couldn’t transfer anyone’s parental rights. If I could have, I might have tried to transfer myself to Bill Gates’ custody. Dad, can I borrow the Lear tonight?

Despite the funny paperwork, I thought this was an interesting plot twist, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Benson handles having a kid!  I think she’d make a great mother.

What They Got Right: When Twitchy shot at the detectives from his house, Stabler busted down his door, grabbed the guy, and handcuffed him. Benson then opened the box at his feet and found the rape trophies. The cops had the authority to do this. Police don’t have to get a warrant when a suspect is shooting at them from inside a house. Benson and Stabler personally observed Twitchy commit a felony, and they were in hot pursuit, so they were good to go into his house and arrest him without a warrant. Once they arrested him, they had the authority to search his “wingspan,” including the box at his feet.  Good work, guys.

*All the views on this site are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Filed Under: SVU Episodes Tagged With: , , , , , ,