Archives for November 2010
SVU Episode #9: Gray
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.
SVU Episode #8: Penetration
Summary: This was an interesting exploration of what would happen if an undercover FBI agent became a rape victim. Marcia Gay Harden was convincing as the FBI agent who came home from work to find a strange man in her apartment. The man choked her, injected her with a paralytic drug, and raped her. But Marcia didn’t want to report the crime. She was wrapping up an undercover operation into tax protesters and feared she’d be pulled off her own case. So she performed a rape kit on herself and brought it to her friend, Det. Olivia Benson, to process confidentially. Olivia told her partner Elliot (of course), and they began investigating. In the dark, the SVU detectives interfered with the FBI tax protester investigation, causing the whole thing to blow up (literally). Marcia was furious and wanted to abandon the rape case – until the rapist attacked and killed another woman, using the same MO. Olivia persuaded Marcia to cooperate and press charges. They soon discovered this wasn’t a random attack. Years ago, Marcia sent a white supremacist to jail and killed his son in a shootout. The white supremacist paid the assailant to rape Marcia to exact vengeance.
Verdict: A-
What they got right: This was about how women react to being raped. Here, the woman who was raped was law enforcement. But like many women who are sexually assaulted, whatever their profession, she felt powerless. In fact, she was literally powerless, injected with a paralytic drug. We watched how she overcame that feeling of powerlessness. First, she performed her own rape kit, taking control of the investigation. Then, she went vigilante and tried to kill the guy herself. Then she refused to testify against her rapist – an act which was another way of asserting her power – the power to choose. Finally, she found the courage to testify against him, although she understood very well how hard the experience would be. And when she ultimately faced the man set the whole thing up, she told him, “I’m gonna get past this. You’ll be stuck here in prison. But I will go home to my loving husband and watch my children grow up. I will live my life.” She restored her sense of well-being, purpose, and power in the world. She will take back her own life and live it. It was a powerful and redemptive message.
What they got wrong. I had some nits, of course. At the beginning, Marcia said that the rapist only penetrated her vaginally, but at trial, she said she was orally assaulted. In real life, this major discrepancy in the victim’s statement would be considered Brady material, and the prosecution would have to turn it over to the defense as potentially exculpatory. The defense would likely make it a big part of their defense. Here, no one even seemed to notice it. As a prosecutor, I started mentally drafting the Brady letter as soon as Marcia starting changing up her story. Maybe the ADA did it off-screen.
*All the views expressed her are my own personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.
SVU Episode #7: Trophy
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.