Archives for November 2011

Synopsis: A patient in a mental ward opens a door and glimpses a woman being raped. SVU’s detectives find the woman matching the victim’s description: Gia is another patient on the mental ward, and she claims nothing happened. But our SVU detectives persist. They learn that Gia’s father had schizophrenia and was institutionalized when Gia was a girl. Mental illness runs in her family. Gia’s aunt and uncle supported Gia and her mother after Dad was gone; Gia’s mom basically became their servant.

Gia agrees to a sex kit, and semen is found inside her. But she still won’t say whose it is. The sex kit also reveals that Gia has vaginal scarring, which prompts Olivia to guess that Gia’s been raped for years. “Even if she was raped,” Amanda says, “who will believe her?”

“Which makes her the perfect target,” Olivia says.

Evidence points to a hospital guard who unwisely talks to the detectives while his union rep is there, but before his lawyer has arrived. (I don’t know any union rep who’d let that happen in real life.) The guard says, “I know the law – anyone at a mental institution isn’t capable of consent.” But then he goes on to admit that Gia asked him to get her a gun, and performed oral sex on him in return. “It wasn’t sex!”  The guard protests. “It was just a BJ!”

Turns out, Gia wanted the gun to protect herself from her uncle. He’s been molesting her for years, since her father went away. The fact that she was locked in a mental institution didn’t stop the uncle – he stole an employee ID badge, disguised himself in hospital scrubs to look like a doctor, and snuck into the building so he could rape her there.

Nick confronts the uncle, who claims that he and Gia have a longstanding consensual romantic relationship. Gia swears he’s lying. The detectives get a search warrant for the uncle’s home and find a box full of pictures of Gia as a naked, fourteen-year-old girl. They haul the uncle off to jail.  (They only mention assault charges, but I’m thinking they’ve got strong child porn charges, too.)

Verdict: B

What they got right:

Cases involving patients with severe mental illnesses are common, and, as this show portrayed, difficult to try. A mentally-ill victim might not be able to think in a linear way, tell a chronological story, or focus long enough to tell you everything that happened to them. Sexual predators know this, and prey upon the mentally ill.

The guard in this episode was right: patients in mental institutions aren’t legally capable of consent. Most jurisdictions (including NY and DC) have laws making it illegal for prison guards to have sex with prisoners, teachers to have sex with students, and mental-hospital employees to have sex with patients. There’s too much of a power differential. If you’re a prison guard, get a Match.com account, go to your local bar, or pretend you need help in the cookbook section of Barnes & Noble. But don’t mix it up with your clientele.

I had a case involving a prisoner in a jail, who claimed that a prison doctor performed oral sex on him during an exam. The prisoner had oozing penile sores, and it seemed unlikely that a doctor would want to put that in his mouth. But the detective diligently swabbed the prisoner’s penis, and DNA testing showed the doctor’s saliva there. I still remember what the victim said when asked why the doctor would do that to him: “It’s some fucked up people in this world.”

What they got wrong:

For a guy who was so smart about consent, tonight’s guard was really dumb about what constitutes a sex act. The fact that Gia performed oral sex on him, rather than the “traditional” kind, doesn’t change his criminal liability at all. He’s still going to jail.

Every victim on SVU has vaginal scarring.  In real life, it’s very rare; this is anatomy that can stretch to fit a baby.  I know I’ve said this before, but it continues to drive me nuts. This is a real problem that shows like SVU create for real sex-crimes prosecutors. In trials, I often had to put an anatomical expert on the witness stand just to explain the absence of intimate injuries. Jurors have been badly conditioned by TV crime dramas to expect them.

Uncle Scumbag isn’t going to break into a hospital to molest his niece. Sadly, I had uncle cases all the time. They usually involved a potbellied 45 year-old-uncle and a scared 13-year-old niece.  All of these assaults happened inside the home (his or hers). It’s a crime of opportunity.  An intra-family rapist usually won’t walk two blocks to perpetrate his assault, much less disguise himself, steal an ID badge, and break into a hospital to do it. In real life, this uncle would’ve stayed in his own living room and moved on to molesting his next niece or granddaughter.

Recap: Wow. I think SVU’s excellent writers stepped out for a coffee break, and while they were gone, the guys who wrote Saw IV snuck in and wrote the manuscript for tonight’s show.

In the opening scene, we find the tattooed corpse of a lithe young woman behind a dumpster. She’s been raped in every possible way. Her face has been sanded down to the bone by a power sander, her teeth have all been extracted, and her fingers amputated to conceal her identity. (Ugh. I had to put aside my popcorn.)  Our detectives soon find that she was Lena, a beautiful Russian mail-order bride. Her distraught American fiancee paid supposed kidnappers an $80,000 ransom to save her life. The fiancee is devastated that she was killed although he coughed up his life savings.

But Lena is actually alive! With the help of facial recognition technology, the detectives find recent pictures of her online. They discover that a Russian crime boss called The Butcher works this scam: he gets a rich man to fall in love with Lena, convinces the sucker that she’s been kidnapped, then demands all his money. After the money is collected, The Butcher then murders and tattoos a different prostitute in order to convince the sucker that Lena is really dead. Similarly mutilated corpses have appeared in dumpsters around the world.

Captain Cragen goes undercover and has a “date” with Lena. In the process of talking with her, Cragen gets teary-eyed as he describes his late wife, their attempts to have children, and his drive to help save needy children. Cragen falls in love with Lena, at least a little bit.   I thought this was the best part of the show.  The acting in these scenes was great, and I liked backstory for our devoted Captain.

Cragen soon arrests Lena, and she spends the next few scenes toying with the Captain’s heart like a kitten with a ball of yarn. But when Detective Amanda kills The Butcher (nice shot!), Lena snatches a gun off of a uniformed policeman, shoots him dead, and tries to run away. Although Cragen’s eyes are haunted, he catches her and hauls her off to prison.

Verdict: C-

What they got wrong: The prostitute killings made absolutely no sense. Sure, there could be a scam where you get someone to fall in love with you, pretend to be kidnapped, and then take their ransom money. Unlikely but possible. But then why kill and tattoo another woman to make it look like you actually died? At that point, you have the guy’s money. You’re not getting any more money by supplying a mutilated corpse. All you’re doing is upping your crime from fraud – where you might serve probation – to first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances, where you’re going to jail for the rest of your life. And why rape the corpses of these dead prostitutes? Just to make the guy who was scammed even more upset and likely to help the police? I’ve never heard of this scam happening in real life. This was more Texas Chainsaw Massacre than a real sex crimes investigation.

What they got right: The Russian mail-order bride business is so rife with fraud that the State Department has a name for it: “Boris-and-Natasha scams.” A lonely bachelor in Scranton meets doe-eyed Natasha online, falls in love, and sends her money for airline tickets to visit him. In fact, Natasha is a bearded guy named Boris, who’s no longer available for online chats after he pockets the cash. The typical haul is between $2,000 and $5,000. (No mutilated corpses are necessary.)

Facial recognition technology is being used more and more by law-enforcement authorities. A friend of mine (actually my high-school prom date), Steve Russell, created a private facial-recognition company called 3VR, which is being used in many airports and hotels to provide security.

Other companies have found more recreational uses for the technology.  Facebook can recognize your friends’ faces and tag photos of them automatically. There’s a company offering facial-detection programs for the patrons of local bars, so you can remotely check out the male-to-female ratio before deciding whether to head over there.  And one matchmaking company even claims it can find your soulmate by pairing you with someone who has facial features similar to your own.

Recap: This was a realistic and subtle exploration of many real issues that come up in sexual assault trials. On a sunny afternoon, a young white woman comes home to her apartment building and politely holds the elevator door for a young black man. They chit chat, then she brings her groceries into her apartment. He follows her into her apartment, points a gun at her, and rapes her.  But she doesn’t report the rape right away. Instead, she showers, takes a college exam, and goes to sleep. The next day, she reports the rape to the police. While her sex kit is being performed, Olivia and a rape-crisis advocate argue about who has the girl’s best interests at heart: Olivia thinks the girl should press charges, while the advocate thinks it will be too difficult for her.

While the girl is out at a bar the next night, she sees her rapist again. Police pick her up and drive her around until she spots the guy, who’s now walking down the street. Nick and Olivia chase the rapist, who runs into his apartment, where his mother, girlfriend, and a baby are screaming. Nick tackles the rapist, and the guy’s gun skids under the couch. Nick cuffs the guy, then grabs the gun from under the couch. While the guy is held by police officers on the sidewalk, another detective drives by with the victim. The girl identifies him as her rapist.

In court the next day, the rapist ditches his bumbling public defender when a hot-shot private defense attorney agrees to take his case pro bono. The defender argues that too many young black men are locked up and harassed by NYPD. Quaking with fear at the prospect of the high-powered defense attorney, the DA’s office puts their Unit Chief, Cutter, in charge of the prosecution. The victim tells Cutter that the last time she had sex was two weeks ago, with her professor boyfriend. But, it turns out, she actually had a one-night-stand the night before the rape. “There goes the Rape Shield,” says Cutter.

At trial, the defender confronts the girl about her one-night stand, while her mortified parents watch. The defender tries to suppress the ID procedure and Nick’s seizure of the gun. The rapist himself takes the stand and denies everything. The girl ends up looking like a liar and a slut.

The jury finds the rapist not guilty of everything, and the girl is left sobbing and disillusioned. She yells at Olivia that bringing the case wasn’t worth it. “No,” Olivia insists. “Healing begins when someone bears witness.” The parents bundle the girl off. Olivia sits despondently on the courthouse steps afterwards, and the defense attorney approaches her. They are both true believers, they agree, which somehow leads him to invite her to his daughter’s softball game.

Verdict: A-

What they got right.

Watch out when you’re going into your building. Rapes committed by strangers are rare, but when they do happen, this is often the scenario: a girl lets a stranger follow her into the building, or he “helps” her bring groceries in. Once he’s in the apartment, she’s at his mercy. Ladies, watch your back when you’re unlocking your front door.

Sex-offense detectives and rape-crisis advocates often quibble with each other. You’d think they’re on the same team, but, often, they have  different agendas. Detectives and prosecutors usually argue that testifying is the most cathartic way to heal. Rape-crisis advocates often urge staying silent. As a former sex-crimes prosecutor myself, I believe that speaking up and fighting for justice is the best way to regain the power and dignity that is lost in a sexual assault.

Delayed reports are very common. Sex offense victims sometimes need time to come to terms with what happened to them. They are ashamed, afraid, or dreading the process. I’ve had countless cases where the victim delayed reporting for days, weeks, even years. If you’ve been a victim, an immediate report will be the strongest – but any report is better than none. Good cases can be made with delayed reports.

The legal issues that the defense attorney raised were ones that come up often in violent-crime trials. But, in this episode, I thought the prosecution clearly won them. The ID was perfectly good: the girl saw the rapist herself the next day (in DC, we call that a “second sighting”) and led the police right to him. That wasn’t suggestive by the police. And Nick was completely in his rights to reach under the couch when he arrested the guy on the floor next to the couch. Cops are entitled to search the “wingspan” of a person they’re arresting in order to secure the scene and the officer’s safety. The arrest in this episode was dangerous, unpredictable, and volatile, with a drug-dealer/rapist and his screaming family surrounding the detectives. Nick was well within his constitutional limits (and may have saved his and Olivia’s lives) when he secured the gun.

Finally, the issue of the Rape Shield law was spot-on. In the old days, trials might revolve around the victim’s sex life, reputation, or virtue. Not anymore. Rape Shield rules mean that this information is kept out of the trial. But once the girl lied about when she’d last had sex, she opened this door. The defense has the right to any information indicating the victim has lied, and to question her about it in open court. It’s crucial for a victim to tell the truth from the beginning. I’ve seen juries convict when the victim was a prostitute, or a drug addict, or both. But juries are very reluctant to convict when the victim is a proven liar.

What they got wrong.

This episode played into the stereotype of the bumbling public defender, like the guy in this episode who didn’t know his client’s name and kept dropping his files.  But the Public Defender’s Service in D.C. provides some of the best legal defense in the country. PDS lawyers come from Ivy-league schools, they lead the national charge on cutting-edge legal issues, and theyare fierce advocates for their clients. I’d sometimes see a poor defendant and his family scrape up every last dime to hire a private attorney, on the assumption that a private lawyer must provide better representation than a public defender. Not true. In D.C., some of the best legal defense is done by PDS.

On a related note, I found it hard to believe that the DA’s office in this episode put their unit chief in charge of a case just because a big name was on the other side. Prosecutors face big cases and formidable opponents every day. There aren’t enough supervisors to go around.

Finally, the defendant almost never testifies in a sex assault case. A defense attorney worth his salt will persuade his client to stay off the stand. The defendant’s got too much to lose, is likely guilty, and might trip over his own lies. In this case, we knew the guy was guilty. It was a terrible legal strategy for this supposedly savvy defense attorney to put his client on the stand.

Still, he may have excellent taste in woman. Was he hitting on Olivia in that final scene?