SVU’s “Lay List” Episode – featuring Guest Blogger Eric Gallun

I’m out of the country on vacation this week, but am excited to have former federal prosecutor Eric Gallun guest-blogging about tonight’s SVU episode.  Eric is one of my best friends from the U.S. Attorney’s Office — he started working there two weeks before I did (in 2003) and has been been lording it over me ever since.  He’s also one of the finest trial lawyers I’ve ever seen.  Before working as an AUSA, he served as a public defender and an Assistant Attorney General, and he currently works at the Department of Homeland Security, doing fascinating and important work he’ll never be able to talk about.  Additionally, he has the longest wingspan of any attorney in the District of Columbia.

Eric, thanks for staying up all night to blog about this, freeing me up to do some very important lounging on the beach!

Summary: Our SVU detectives solved the first murder in record time (10:13 pm according to the DVR counter), if only to set up an unlikely rape-of-a-dying girl scenario. The show opens with the standard twenty-something party scene, techno music and beer bongs, and transitions to a group of guys and girls writing with black marker on the forehead of a passed-out girl. The party’s hostess, seemingly concerned for the victim, tries to awaken her, only to discover an obscene amount of blood on the back of her head.

Before any of the party-goers can flee to their SOHO apartments, Detectives Stabler and Tutuola are on the scene. They discover a broken and bloodied mirror in the bedroom where the victim was found – strong evidence of a head-bashing (i.e. subdural hematoma). It turns out the victim, Caitlyn, was not well-liked after publishing a blog (hope that is not this author’s fate) rating all of her many sexual partners over the past three years. Caitlyn dies after being rushed to the ER; this being SVU, there is also some evidence of a sexual assault (the standard vaginal tearing and the not-so-standard blue substance in the vagina. Quick, interview all of the Smurfs in town!)

Again, in record time, the hostess, Jill, finds herself in an interrogation room with Stabler and Tutuola (who only knows one approach to interviewing a suspect – AGGRESSIVE AND IN YOUR FACE) and she confesses that she hated Caitlyn for sleeping with her boyfriend, only invited her to the party to humiliate her in front of others, and ultimately shoved her into the mirror. Jill, of course, did not want to kill Caitlyn, but also did not want to call an ambulance and break up the party.

All of this was a head-fake for the larger story, which was that the blue substance found in Caitlyn’s vagina could only have come from a latex medical glove, and thus A PARAMEDIC ASSAULTED CAITLYN as he transported her to the hospital.

Continuing at break-neck speed, Stabler and Tutuola (Benson was called away during the show’s first thirty minutes to deal with Calvin, a boy for whom she serves as legal guardian thanks to a strung-out mother who is on the run from a murder) discover that the paramedics who transported Caitlyn are co-conspirators in a series of heinous crimes. The older one robs the homes they enter, the younger one sexually assaults injured and defenseless women. The older one is brought in, confesses, and agrees to secretly tape his partner making admissions in a coffee shop. Stabler and Tutuola move in to effect the arrest, the suspect smashes a window, locks himself inside the back of the ambulance and commits suicide with a needle-to-the-neck air embolism. (Ali, how do you do this every week?! The episode was not only ripped-from-the-headlines, it was ripped-from-the-headlines in all 50 states! And the District of Columbia! Better give a shout-out or risk being considered insensitive to the unrepresented half-a-million.)

Now at 10:28 pm, we have the first murder solved, the sexual assault solved, the string of robberies solved, and one dead suspect. And not a trial in sight. (Good news for the prosecutors.) Then, the show really kicks into high gear. Honestly, I have had years of my life where less action has taken place than during this 54 minutes of melodrama.

The second half of the show had Jayne Mansfield’s daughter (Detective Benson) breaking all the rules to find her putative son’s junkie mother, which she did, of course, in direct contravention of her captain’s orders. (On TV crime dramas, every good detective “breaks the rules” and suffers no consequences. It is better, after all, to seek forgiveness as long as you lock up the villains.) The junkie mother is played beautifully by Maria Bello, always under-appreciated (See The Cooler, with William H. Macy.) In the span of twelve minutes, we witness two more confessions to murder, one real, one fabricated to save a lesbian partner. Oh, and Benson confessed to CAPT Cragen that she, and she alone, went after Maria Bello, whom they suspected killed her own abusive father. Good god, man, would the writers have us believe that everyone is so overcome with guilt that NYC was having a mass confessional?! Despite the temporal closeness to Easter, even this was a bit much to swallow.

Just when I thought I had a handle on the plot, the lesbian junkie who killed Maria Bello’s rapist father was herself gunned down after making bail on the charge of 2^nd Degree Murder. Honestly, at this point, you are just going to have to watch the episode– after three dead bodies, and countless other crimes, and too many suspects to count, the whole thing is a hot mess. Fifty-seven persons earned writing credits for this episode, including the key grip who wandered through an early party scene and muttered, “You got a marker?”

 Verdict:  On the Ali Leotta bell curve: B- 

                       On the Eric P. Gallun “Am I getting paid for this?!” Scale: D

What they got wrong:  Cab drivers do not remember every fare! They do not remember what their passengers looked like, what they said (verbatim!) and where exactly they dropped their charge. They also do not remember how much they tipped. This is known as the hot dog cart vendor syndrome, where every criminal case can be solved with a spot-on description from the hot dog cart guy. “Oh, yes, two weeks ago Thursday? He was light-complected with reddish hair, a strange laugh and he bought one with mustard and relish.” “Thank you sir, I knew the killer was a clown.”

Police detectives who ignore direct commands find themselves in hot water. Whether it’s a reassignment or a terrible shift, there are consequences.

Detectives cannot work on cases where there is a conflict of interest, even a perceived one.

The SVU solved more crimes in an hour than most detectives do in a year. (Ali has blogged in the past about the amazing technology. Let’s just say that most of the detectives I worked with did their best work with a notepad and some people skills.) Just once, I would like to see them NOT solve a crime. No leads, no suspects, no arrest. Just a random street crime with no resolution. Not good TV, but real.

No one gets bail on 2nd Degree Murder charges, especially not transient junkies. Excuse me, displaced formerly-healthful persons.

What they got right:  Crime scenes can be chaotic upon arrival. A greedy police officer or EMT could easily steal money and other valuables and go undetected.

Police officers’ private lives often interfere with police work. When these dedicated civil servants work 20-hour days, six days a week, something’s gotta give. I’ve had more than my fair share of officer or detective leave court to go take care of urgent family matters. When they did it without communicating with me, we had a problem. As long as they informed me, gave me good contact information and stayed in touch, we were cool. Family first. Sadly, many officers’ marriages end in divorce.

DNA can be a great and valuable investigative tool, and in this episode it freed one man who was falsely arrested for the murder of the avenging lesbian junkie. However, DNA test results can take weeks, even months, and are never returned in the span of a commercial break.

The Wrap-Up

Finally, a huge thank you to Ali who asked me to do this while she took some much-needed time off. This is way harder than it looks! The plot summary alone for this blog requires too many mental gymnastics and too much caffeine to truly appreciate. Not being a regular SVU-watcher, I must say the actors are generally excellent; the writers, however, should lay off the Red Bull for a spell. Oh, and if I got any of the details wrong, I may have been watching CSI, hard to know for sure.

All views expressed on this website are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or any other government agency.