sign up

Sign up now and get the first 2 chapters of The Last Good Girl

Allison Leotta, novelist, former sex-crimes prosecutor, tv critic

Author of A Good Killing, Speak of the Devil, and others.

SVU Episode #13-17: Justice Denied

by 20 Comments

Recap: First, let me say how much happier my Wednesday nights are now that SVU is back on the air.  It was a long, grey March.  Welcome home, SVU fans.  Second, I thought this was a great way to start the new string of episodes: a strong, smart story about the important real-life subject of wrongful convictions.

We open with Olivia whispering sweet nothings into Harry Connick Jr.’s voice mail.  She’s just left his warm bed to go to a crime scene.  And, yowzers, is it a vicious one.  A young woman has been tied up, tortured, and raped by a man wearing a sailor’s uniform.  He poured ammonia in her eyes to try to blind her.
.
Olivia is stunned.  She recognizes the assailant’s MO.  She knows this guy – it’s Omar Pena.  She put him in jail for life, 8 years ago.
.
 (I liked the flashbacks to an old SVU episode, where this was the case in question.  Cool use of old footage.)
.
In the old case, an identical crime happened to another girl.  Olivia caught Omar with the victim’s credit cards.  After questioning him for ten hours – without food or water – he confessed to the crime.  He pled guilty, and was sentenced – and then started recanting his confession.  (He says he took back his confession “as soon as he could,” but in real life, months would have passed between the confession, getting a lawyer, entering his plea, and then being sentenced.)  No one believed Omar then.
.
And Olivia doesn’t believe him now.  She thinks he sent a copycat rapist to bolster his motions for re-trial.  An ex-cellmate of Omar’s owed him a favor.  Olivia drags the cellmate in for questioning, and nearly bullies a confession out of him, before Nick pulls her out of the room and explains that the cellmate’s DNA is not a match – they ran DNA from the scene through CODIS, and there were no hits — as an ex-con, the cellmate’s profile is in the CODIS database  –  therefore the cellmate isn’t whodunnit.
.
Defense attorney Ellis then takes up Omar’s case and demands re-testing.  Olivia’s boyfriend, Harry, is the ADA in charge of this post-conviction challenge.  (Not an authentic detail – Harry’s a trial lawyer, and trial guys are usually in a different unit than post-conviction lawyers).  When Olivia tells Harry it was a good confession, he summarily opposes Ellis’s motion to re-test the DNA evidence.  Uh oh, I smell trouble.
.
A piece of advice, young lawyers.  If your secret girlfriend suddenly has a major role on your most important case, but some little voice inside you says it’d be uncomfortable if the two of you were seen together publicly – talk to your ethics counselor.
.
Olivia, meanwhile, takes some long, romantic walks with Ellis, which will turn out well for neither her personal nor professional lives.  She and the defense attorney spend so much time together,  Ellis soon can tell that Harry is getting information from Olivia … at night.  Ooh. Busted!  (Actually, not so busted, because cops and lawyers often work crazy hours, and only occasionally does that involve sleeping with each other.  But I’ll go with it for the sake of the story.)
.
Ellis threatens to reveal their secret.  It will ruin both Olivia and Harry’s careers, but he must vigorously fight for his client.  Or is he just jealous?  In any event, Olivia begs for more time, and promises to catch the real rapist. Ellis agrees. An amazing investigation ensues, including use of a rope expert, Interpol, and learning the schedules of a dozen countries’ naval ships.  (Don’t know how NYPD immediately got all the battleship info – I’m sure the Defense Department would be happy to take a peek at some of that.)
.
But the devil, as it so often is, was in the details.  Olivia had been convinced Omar was the rapist because he knew the first victim was tied up with a green scarf.  But, upon opening old evidence boxes, we see the scarf was actually … red.  Oh shit.  Turns out, a color-blind police tech mislabeled it.  Olivia must have communicated it to Omar 8 years ago, and he regurgitated it to her.  Olivia realizes that she extracted a confession from an innocent man.  She is destroyed.
.
Ultimately, they find that the real rapist is a Brazilian sailor who passed himself off as a witness to the old case, and framed Omar.  He’s arrested using some strip-club related trickery and a good old fashioned fistfight.
.
But wait.  The personal drama is not over yet.  Because Harry has been assigned to be chief of a new Conviction Integrity Unit – where he will inevitably have to evaluate some of Olivia’s old cases.  But he can’t tell people he’s dating her now – he would get in trouble for not disclosing that before, when he refused to reopen Omar’s case.  Olivia can’t ask him to give up his job for her.  The star-crossed lovers bid each other goodbye.
.
Verdict: A-
.
What they got right:  DNA testing has proven the innocence of a number defendants who were wrongfully convicted, many of whom spent decades in jail.  The Innocence Project, the leader in this area, has helped exonerate 289 people since 1992.
.
According to the Innocence Project, twenty-eight percent of exonerations nationally have involved defendants who pleaded guilty, falsely confessed or made incriminating statements to police.

States are taking different approaches to handling post-conviction appeals.  Many have set up their own commissions.  The backlog is stunning, but the work is being done.
.
According to USA Today:
.
•Johnny Pinchback became the 22nd person exonerated through DNA testing in Dallas County, Texas, when a judge released him on May 12, 2011. He spent 27 years in prison for the rape of two teenage girls before being cleared. The prosecutor didn’t contest the finding.
.
•A judge in Arkansas recently ordered DNA testing for a man convicted of killing two people in 1987. The 60-year-old man has maintained his innocence during his entire time in prison.
.
•Four men in Chicago convicted of a 1994 rape and murder are asking to be released from prison after a DNA test points to another suspect. DNA tests at the time had excluded the men.
.
I thought this SVU episode did a great job of exploring the guilt and devastation a good cop would feel when confronted with evidence that she convicted an innocent man.  It’s something every cop and prosecutor worries about, on a daily basis.  You want to get it right.  You hope to hell you’re getting it right.
.
What they got wrong:
.
CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System, a national database of the DNA profiles of convicted criminals.  It’s one of the most powerful real-life law-enforcement tools we have. Authorities use it to match DNA from a crime scene to a convicted criminal or to DNA from other crime scenes. What the episode got wrong was the speed at which this happens.   Not overnight.  It made me wonder who Nick’s sleeping with. (Volunteers, raise your hand.)   The scientific process of determining the DNA profile would take several weeks, and then there’d be even more paperwork and waiting for the search to be run through CODIS. In reality, the whole process would take many months — I’ve waited for such results for over a year — not the 2-minute turnaround we saw tonight.
.
In my opinion, Harry and Olivia didn’t have to break up.  Harry could just recuse himself from supervising future cases that involved her.  I know, she’s been on the show for the last 13 years, it seems like she’s in the middle of every important case in New York.  But in reality, a single cop would represent a tiny fraction of closed cases.  Harry could just have a deputy chief handle those cases if and when they came up.   The greater ethical violation, I believe, comes from him now evaluating her cases while having *never* revealed that they dated. Dammit, SVU writers, call me before making Olivia break up with her dreamy new boyfriend!
.
On the bright side, I think an Oliva/Ellis relationship may be in the works, and could be quite intriguing…  What do you think?  Should Harry have broken up with Olivia?  Should Olivia have been more willing to consider Omar’s innocence early on?  Or does a police officer need to believe in her case 100% in order to get through the wrenching process of investigating it?  Leave your comments below.
.
I tried live-tweeting the show tonight, which was fun.  If you’re on Twitter, follow me there for real-time critiques of SVU!

Comments

  1. I have three questions regarding this episode. First, why no mention of a defense attorney anywhere? (I know, incorrect verdicts can be reached even if the defendant is well-represented by competent and zealous defense counsel, but the rate is reduced… that’s why we have them. But there’s no sign Omar even HAD a defense attorney at any point up to the point after his post-conviction motion fails.)

    Second, how did he get a sentence of 315 years off one rape? Even with the mayhem attached, I don’t see the math.

    Third, why does New York allow these foreign ships in port to disgorge sailors on the city if they can avoid prosecution for crimes just by retreating to their ship(s)? Surely somewhere along the way, a “by the way, if one of your sailors commits a crime in the U.S., we expect him to be delivered up for prosecution, and the consulate can ensure that he gets a fair trial. If you don’t agree, no shore leave.”-type message would have gone out?

    Reply

    • James, good point about the defense attorney; you can see that other viewers had the same thought. And I had the same thought about 315 years for the rape/mayhem — don’t see how the math works. As for ships in port, that’s an interesting question for the law makers of New York. Many official visitors to NYC have some kind of immunity — remember that one of the first things Dominique Strauss-Kahn did, when questioned about his sexual activity with the hotel maid, was to claim that he had diplomatic immunity.

      Reply

  3. A very interesting episode and educational too – I now know to ALWAYS ask for a lawyer if I’m ever in an “interrogation” situation with the police. Did they ever tell Omar he had a right to a lawyer when they first questioned him as a suspect 8 years ago? It seems like at some point during a 9+ hour interrogation he would ask for one. I guess the story is realistic though, since there have been quite a few real cases of false confessions.

    Rollins mentioned that the ex-con Martinez matched up with a “Navy database” of personnel of some sort. Sorry, but I seriously doubt that the Navy would give out lists of their personnel to the NYPD, especially on a moment’s notice. Amaro said something about the rapist not being in the US Navy, because “they’d have his DNA on file”. The military may have their personnel’s DNA in medical files, but they don’t put it into criminal databases (at least I hope not! Geez). And the same group of Navy sailor-witnesses to the first crime happen to be in town at the same time 8 years later? Quite a lucky coincidence.

    The two semi-blinded women identified the Brazilian guy awfully quickly. I’m not sure I’d remember someone from 8 years ago if I could barely see. Especially since people’s faces do change over the years (almost a decade). Or was the photo from 8 years ago? Does the Brazilian Navy hand out photos of their personnel to the NYPD? Just curious where they would have gotten those photos from. Do they take mugshots of witnesses? The second woman recovered from her injuries very quickly (less than a week) and I don’t understand how she could have known about the 8-year-old case (to rant at Olivia about it). Seems like the writers like to torment her for effect. I also didn’t understand the reasoning behind the Olivia and Harry break-up.

    I guess Omar is going to be a millionaire now – after he finishes suing the City. Isn’t that what happens in these cases? Just curious.

    Reply

    • “Did they ever tell Omar he had a right to a lawyer when they first questioned him as a suspect 8 years ago?”
      People who are innocent often assume (incorrectly) that they will not need a lawyer.

      “I guess Omar is going to be a millionaire now – after he finishes suing the City. Isn’t that what happens in these cases? Just curious.”
      Sues them for what? There’s no allegation of wrongdoing here, and thus, nothing to sue over. Even when there IS wrongdoing by the state’s prosecutors, there may still be immunity (See the brouhaha in New Orleans, where a systematic pattern of Brady violations was discovered but still found be be covered by state sovereign immunity.) I believe that the state (not the city) will kick in some money for the time served when he wasn’t actually guilty… but it probably won’t be millions.

      Reply

      • There is a vaguely similar case that recently arose in Washington. A man has just been released after a decade in state prison after his daughter recanted her accusation that he raped her when she was 13. This puts the prosecutors in the position of saying, basically, “hey, the evidence we had said the guy was guilty, and we went with the evidence. We didn’t know then what we know now, and if we had, things would have been different. It kinda stinks when things like this happen.”

        Reply

        • It seems like an innocent person should get some kind of remuneration after losing 8 years of their life to the justice system. Otherwise that person may go on a revenge trip against those that put him/her in there in the first place. Where does he pick up the pieces? I guess Olivia had better watch her back – for the rest of her life. I can already see a “revenge” episode in her future.

          Actually, this episode was a combination of the “Wrath” and “Redemption” episodes from season 3.

          Reply

        • Great questions and conversation on this string! Alenna, good point about the Navy DNA database versus CODIS. They are separate databases, and searches that go through CODIS would not include military DNA profiles. In this case, I thought that Martinez’s DNA was in CODIS because he was convicted of child sex abuse, so he was just in the general felon category.

          As to civil suits, check out this Chicago jury verdict awarding a man wrongfully convicted of murder $25 million: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/25/10233263-wrongfully-convicted-man-awarded-25-million.

          Reply

          • Was he WRONGFULLY convicted, or just WRONGLY convicted? (that is, was he convicted because of misconduct on somebody’s part, or just because he was in the wrong place, wrong time, and seemed guilty.)

  4. Great to have SVU back and a strong episode to come back with. That the old case was from an actual episode was really cool. Too bad the footage used didn’t have Elliot. And, of course, we all knew Olivia’s shot at happiness wouldn’t last. Too bad, but I can see some great conflict on the horizon.
    Olivia’s been having such a hard time of it this season, my fear is the season will end with Olivia putting in her papers and retiring, like Stabler.
    How many years did Mariska sign on for?

    Reply

    • Hey David, I read that Mariska only signed to be part-time this season, and didn’t agree to do any further seasons after this one. I hope they can tempt her to do a few more!

      Reply

  5. Factual issue: I may be wrong, but isn’t it true that military DNA databases are separated from the criminal databases, and that the government would need to get a court order in order to use those DNA records for anything other than identification of remains?

    Other than that, I thought this episode did a good job at portraying one of the most troubling aspects of our justice system: if they did anything wrong, it was in suggesting that this was such a rare occurrence. But many parts of it rang true: a police culture that encourages pushing interrogations right up to the legal limit (and often beyond it); a DA’s office so concerned with “appearances” that it wouldn’t allow DNA testing likely to clear an innocent man; a legal system that makes it insanely difficult to prove innocence in the post-conviction stage; and a police culture that puts significant weight on protecting the sensibilities of fellow officers. Oddly, perhaps, given all that, I thought Benson’s character was one of the more morally upright ones in this episode.

    One more note on the DNA issue: there might be some justification for not letting every inmate get the evidence in their case retested at the state’s expense. But there’s absolutely no justification for not letting the inmate *pay* to get it tested, as prosecutors and states have tried to do — although admittedly it’s been getting better, if slowly. (And, of course, the courts have dropped the ball on this issue as well.)

    Reply

  6. Hi Andrew, CODIS and the military DNA databases are separate. I don’t know if prosecutors can ever get access to the military info, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some circumstances in which they can get something like a warrant. I never had cause to do that. As to the retesting of DNA – I think jurisdictions are getting a *lot* better about allowing it and funding it, in part because of the examples brought to light by the Innocence Project.

    Reply

    • And yet, there are still warehouses full of DNA evidence that have never been tested even once. Some states have backlogs estimated to be over a decade.

      Reply

  7. Great analysis.
    Isn’t there some study showing that people who aren’t sure about ID can become positive about there identification after the police (or other people) tell them “You identified the guy?”
    It feels like the victim might not be able to identify the real person, because they told her it was Pena.

    Am I remembering correctly?

    Second question – in British shows, they record all steps of interrogation to avoid the policeman feeding info to the suspect. Does something like this happen in real life in the US?

    Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hi JustAGuy, Thanks for stopping by. I’ve heard the same thing about identification procedures. That’s why police officers are not supposed to tell the eyewitness whether or not she got it “right.” I also agree that it’d be very difficult for the victim to identify her real attacker from 8 years ago, given that she’d lived the last 8 years thinking it’s the other guy. About recording interrogations, most police stations in the U.S. will record interrogations. But a lot of questioning is done on the street or in people’s homes, and that is not amenable to recording. And the FBI has a policy of *never* recording interrogations — the FBI agent just takes notes and writes it up.

      Reply

  8. You’d think someone as bad at their job as Benson would get fired after the first time her tactic of “browbeat a man and deny him food water and sleep until he confesses” doesn’t work and puts an innocent man into prison. But I guess the Police Union in the show is as strong as they are in real life when it comes to protecting corrupt and incompetent pigs.

    Reply

  9. I just want the whole world to know about this spell caster I met two weeks ago,I cannot say everything he has done for me and my family I was going through online when I meant this wonderful man’s testimony online how he won a lottery through the help of dr Ose I decided to just give it a try and my life is back to me now after i lost my job due to covid  he gave me a winning numbers to play lottery and i won 5000usd for my first play since then i have been working with him and he has been giving me numbers to play my lottery i can not write everything he has done for me if you need a lottery spell today contact him on oseremenspelltemple@gmail.com       www.facebook.com/Dr-odion-spell-temple-110513923938220
    whatsapp +2348136482342

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *