Are you missing SVU as much as I am? Then you’ll probably enjoy this spoof, where one woman plays all the roles on Law & Order: SVU.
Why We Love TV Crime Dramas — And Hate Them
It’s possible that I became a prosecutor because I love crime dramas. Or maybe I just love crime dramas because I was a prosecutor. One thing is clear: lawyers can’t stop talking about their work. We tell war stories at the drop of a hat. And prosecutors have some of the best material, because crime naturally has the elements that make a compelling narrative. The stakes are the highest imaginable: life, death, freedom, and justice.
Now that I write about crimes instead of prosecuting them, I’ve been wondering: why are TV crime dramas so addictive? Why are we fascinated with them? And why is it that, despite my compulsion, some of these shows drive me crazy?
Here’s what I concluded…
WHY WE LOVE TV CRIME DRAMA
We love TV crime dramas because they play on (and relieve) our FEAR.
I’ve heard a theory that the horror of 9/11 created a sense of vulnerability in our national consciousness, and that watching the good guys win makes us feel better. But I’m not sure about that. Shows like Law & Order, Perry Mason, Dragnet, and LA Law far preceded 9/11. So it’s something deeper than 9/11. I think there’s a primal fear we all have, rooted deep in our lizard brains.
We’ve all have had moments of feeling vulnerable, or looking over our shoulder while walking down the street. We hear about crimes happening every day (and the news only reports the most vicious attacks). We wonder: could that happen to me. How can I prevent it?
Ten Rules for a Call Girl
I’m excited to tell you that Simon & Schuster published my e-short story, TEN RULES FOR A CALL GIRL, yesterday.
The story is about the initiation of a modern courtesan, and is equal parts SVU and Fifty Shades of Gray. Best of all it’s FREE (for now)! I’m very happy to offer it to my friends and fans at no cost.
Download your free copy today:
Kindle: http://amzn.to/M8a2VX
Nook: http://bit.ly/LalnXB
iTunes: http://bit.ly/KOLp3W
Sony: http://bit.ly/JWEciX
And then tell me what you think! I hope you like it.
Five mistakes writers make about the civil side of law — by Leslie Budewitz
I’m excited to introduce today’s guest blogger, Leslie Budewitz! Leslie won the prestigious 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction for “Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure” (Quill Driver Books). A practicing lawyer, she blogs about ways writers can use the law in their fiction at www.LawandFiction.com. Welcome, Leslie!
— Allison
Thrilled to be here on today-thanks, Allison!
So many novels, movies, and TV shows touch on the law. But legal plots don’t require a crime. In a good storyteller’s hands, civil law can be equally gripping. Think of the possibilities in adoption (A Theory of Relativity, by Jacquelyn Mitchard, or Run, by Ann Patchett), inheritance (Dickens’ Bleak House), even insurance (Double Indemnity, a great book and even greater movie). My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult’s novel and a movie, turned on a minor’s right to make her own health care decisions.
In reviewing SVU, Allison identifies what the writers get right and wrong about criminal law. While some mistakes crop up in both criminal and civil cases, as a civil lawyer, I’ve got my own list of common mistakes that get under my skin.
1. Using the wrong terms.
Are the fictional lawyers in District Court, Circuit Court, or Superior Court? In New York, the main trial court is called the Supreme Court. It’s easy to check. A writer unsure of terminology can call the court, check its website, or consult the National Center for State Courts website-its excellent directory shows the structure and names of all state courts. Another trick: call a law professor in the story state.
I always recommend writers read news accounts of recent trials. They often reveal local quirks that give a story a sense of place and realism.
2. Allowing lawyers-or their clients-to argue with the judge, especially after she’s ruled.
This drives me nuts-on the page, on the screen, or in real life. There is no better way to piss off a judge.
Years ago, I went to court with another lawyer in my firm to babysit our client while he argued a motion to the judge. The practice was for the lawyers to stand, side by side, in front of the bench to present their arguments. Our client was incensed by statements opposing counsel made and by our guy’s failure to interrupt and correct him. At one point, she leapt out of her seat, in her red power suit, to dash forward-intending what, I don’t know. I had to physically grab her, and force her to sit. Not recommended.
3. Confusing direct and circumstantial evidence.
Direct evidence is testimony or physical or documentary evidence of a fact. Circumstantial evidence is evidence of one fact that leads to an inference or presumption. In both civil and criminal law, circumstantial evidence may be enough to make the case. If the other side objects to circumstantial evidence, the judge must rule on whether to allow (“admit”) it or not. Is it relevant-that is, does it make facts that matter to the case more or less probable? But circumstantial evidence isn’t necessarily weak, and it won’t necessarily be excluded.
4. Referring to guilt in a civil suit.
Another personal bugaboo. In a criminal case, the defendant will be found guilty or not guilty. But in a civil case, the question is liability, not guilt.
Unlike criminal guilt, civil liability is not all or nothing. Multiple defendants may share liability. The plaintiff-the injured party-may also be “contributorily negligent,” meaning her actions contributed to causing her injuries. At a certain point-typically more than 50%-the plaintiff’s negligence will bar her recovery. Think of a shop owner who failed to shovel her sidewalk and allowed ice to form-but the woman who fell and broke her arm walked there daily, knew the danger, and was too busy texting to watch where she was going.
5. Introducing new evidence on appeal.
Appeals are decided on the record below-meaning the evidence and arguments at trial. An appellate court might order the lower court to reopen the case to consider evidence or arguments it previously excluded. But it won’t allow the parties to present any evidence or argue legal issues not presented below: no new testimony, no new witnesses, no new physical evidence.
(In a criminal case, new evidence may surface weeks, months, even years after conviction. There are procedures to get it in front of the court, to decide whether the case needs to be reopened. But that won’t happen on appeal.)
So, if you’re a writer, now you know better! And if you’re a reader or a viewer, now you can sit on your couch and smirk when a lawyer hands an affidavit with new testimony to an appellate court, or says a driver is guilty and owes his client a million bucks.
(And of course, as Allison says of all posts here, this is just for fun-and is not intended to provide legal advice in real-life cases.)
Leslie’s cozy series, The Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in Jewel Bay, Montana, a small lakeside resort community on the way to Glacier Park that calls itself “a Food Lover’s Village,” will debut from Berkley Prime Crime in 2013. She lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a doctor of natural medicine, and their Burmese cat Ruff, an avid birdwatcher. http://www.lawandfiction.com
Speaking of Police Deception…
Here’s a funny example, from The Wire, of the lesson that the police can lie to you during interrogation.
Thanks to TokoBali for sharing this!
10 Lessons From SVU That May Save Your Life
The finale of Law & Order: SVU Season 13 aired last Wednesday. As a former sex-crimes prosecutor, I’ve mocked silly episodes about amputation fetishes and sperm donor impersonators. But this season also brought great new characters, blisteringly real story lines, and impeccable timing on controversial issues. What’s most striking about this season, however, is how many lessons from the show could literally save your life. In case you missed some episodes, here are my top ten real-life lessons to take from this season of SVU.
1. You may already be in love with your rapist.
When we think of rape, we tend to picture a stranger lurking in the bushes. But most sexual assaults I saw as a prosecutor were committed by a man the victim knew intimately: an ex-boyfriend or stepfather; a doctor or minister; a teacher or coach; a professional colleague or the guy brought home from a bar. SVU honed in on this theme in Season 13. Personal Fouls featured a youth basketball coach who molested his players. Theatre Tricks included a tech-savvy stalker who was the victim’s neighbor and friend. The victim in Blood Brothers wouldn’t name her wealthy assailant because she hoped he would marry her. Many of us worry about someone breaking into our homes – but what you most need to worry about is who you invite in.
2. Look out for your sons as much as your daughters.
Personal Fouls was a remarkable episode paralleling the Jerry Sandusky / Joe Paterno case. (And it aired before the real scandal broke – I’m still wondering how the writers managed that one.) The episode highlighted sex crimes against boys.
While sexual assaults are the most under-reported crimes in America, assaults against male victims are the most under-reported of all. It’s estimated that 1 in 4 American women and 1 in 6 American men will be the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime. But hardly any of the male survivors come forward, principally because of the perceived stigma attached to being a victim. SVU’s Detective Amanda Rollins got it right when she said, “Male victims today are where female victims were 40 years ago. It’s the dark ages.” Kudos to SVU for getting people to talk about this subject, and helping male survivors realize they’re not alone.
3. If you are sexually assaulted, tell the police the truth. Immediately.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
SVU opened its season with Scorched Earth, a riff on the real Dominique-Strauss Kahn case. The episode featured a fictional hotel maid who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a powerful European politician. When inconsistencies surfaced in her story, the case tanked. In real life, it’s nearly impossible to prosecute a he-said/she-said sex assault when the victim has made seriously conflicting statements. If you’re worried about telling the police something, it’s better to get it out up front.
Delays in reporting rapes are also a common challenge, as highlighted in the episode True Believers, where a college student didn’t come forward immediately, because she was in shock and had her final exams the next day. Victims often have understandable reasons for not making an immediate report of rape, but the sooner a truthful report is made, the stronger the case.
4. Lock your door.
Michael Moore might disagree, but the simple act of locking your door could save your life, and it’s surprisingly often
Aaron Thomas, the alleged East Coast Rapist
overlooked. Double Strand featured a serial rapist similar to the real-life East Coast Rapist – a man charged with sexually assaulting multiple women by walking into their homes when a door or window was left open. True Believers featured a rapist who got into a home by slipping in while a woman was bringing in her groceries. When stranger rapes do occur, these two scenarios are often how they start.
5. There is no florist-client privilege.
Frequent TV mentions of the attorney-client and doctor-patient privileges have made viewers believe in other privileges that don’t actually exist. A florist in Blood Brothers argued (unsuccessfully) that his delivery of roses was confidential. I’ve had people argue that information they told their hotel concierge, postman, or yoga instructor was privileged. Not true. You may have a privilege for confidences you tell your doctor, spouse, or religious leader, but in the right circumstances, even those can be circumvented. Keep your secrets between yourself and your lawyer.
6. Never shake a baby.
In Missing Pieces, the detectives considered Shaken-Baby Syndrome to explain the mysterious death of an infant. As a prosecutor, I saw too many cases of babies who were killed or brain-damaged from being shaken by a frustrated parent. If you feel like you can’t take your baby’s crying one moment longer, set him down in a crib, go to another room, and give yourself some time to recoup. Crying can’t kill a baby – but shaking can.
7. The police can lie to you to extract a confession.
In Home Invasion and Strange Beauty, the SVU detectives extracted confessions by lying to the suspects. The Supreme Court has approved of police deception to get a confession. If you’re ever interrogated by the police, you have to tell the truth – but they don’t.
8. Use caution when mixing work with romance.
One of the more interesting continuing plot lines this season involved Detective Olivia Benson’s romance with a dashing ADA played by Harry Connick, Jr. Interoffice romances can always be dicey, and it was heartbreaking – and realistic – to see Olivia lose her first good relationship in a long time after she and Harry crossed some ethical lines in Justice Denied. But the worst thing about it was that Harry was in the show all season, and he didn’t sing even once.
9. Don’t have sex with people under your supervision.
Educated Guess featured a mental-hospital guard who had sex with a patient in his ward. Many jurisdictions have laws making it illegal for prison guards to have sex with prisoners, teachers to have sex with their students, and mental hospital employees to have sex with patients. Even if the prisoner, student, or patient is saying “yes,” there’s too much of a power differential. Don’t mix it up with your clientele.
10. One more reason not to become a prostitute.
Prostitutes are eighteen times more likely to be killed than other women. They often don’t call the police if someone robs, assaults, or rapes them, and many have no family to look for them if they go missing. Predators know this, and serial killers have often preyed on prostitutes. Hunting Ground highlighted this dynamic with a harrowing mash-up of the real-life Long Island Serial Killer and the Craig’s List Killer. My second novel, “Discretion,” is about the case of a high-end escort killed at the U.S. Capitol.
I can’t guarantee you’ll live longer if you watch SVU. But you may just learn something. And if next season is at all like this one, we’ll all have a lot of fun.
Like the blog? Check out my legal thrillers LAW OF ATTRACTION and DISCRETION.
Twitter: @AllisonLeotta
SVU Finale! Episode #13-23: Rhodium Nights
Recap: The SVU finale “Rhodium Nights” ended Season 13 with a bang. This was a fast-paced, fun episode (to the extent anything involving two murdered escorts can be “fun”), based on a couple of interesting real-life cases.
We open with the world’s most extravagant, debauched bachelor party. Dozens of gorgeous semi-naked women lap-dance on NY Yankees, Secret Services agents, and the bachelor – who’s the son of the police commissioner. The guy who’s hosting the party goes to his bedroom to get busy with a giggly blond. Instead, they find the cold, dead body of a 16-year-old girl in her panties.
All the VIPs deny knowing the dead girl. But the ME determines she died from a lethal dose of scopolamine. Our good detectives figure out her identity by tracking down the serial numbers of her breast implants.
The trail soon leads to an elite underworld of high-priced sex for sale. In the midst of this world is Olivia’s gravelly-voiced ex-boyfriend, Cassidy, who greets Nick by punching him in the face. See, Cassidy is undercover, and needs to preserve his undercover status. (Um, ok. Seems his undercover persona might have taken over his psyche a bit too much.)
We soon learn that all the girls at the party were escorts. And there’s a vicious war going on between two rival escort agencies. Cassidy’s boss, Genzel, supplied the escorts to the bachelor party. But a female madam, Delia, has been the leading supplier of expensive sex in NY for a long time. She doesn’t like the up-and-coming challenger to her throne. So, maybe, she arranged to have the 16-year-old killed to frame Genzel.
Dispute resolution in the escort world can be vicious. They can’t really call the cops, so they have to get creative.
Our detectives go to talk to Delia. She lives on a farm, wears a flannel shirt, and looks like a frizzy Everymom, feeding a baby goat a bottle of milk. (Goats again! This has been the Season Of The Goat on SVU. There was even an @SVUgoat who appeared on Twitter tonight, tweeting – or bleating – some of most hilarious SVU tweets ever.) Delia claims she’s just a simple goat-cheese maker / soccer mom who dabbles in matchmaking.
And the case might have ended right there. But then someone slips under the door pictures of Captain Cragen canoodling with a Russian mail-order bride/escort from last season. Although that was a totally legit undercover operation, Cragen says he’s recusing himself and the SVU from the case. Olivia’s puzzled scowl doesn’t last long, because she’s then called to investigate an ex-governor who died in the middle of a massage. He was also poisoned with scopolamine. That is not a happy ending.
Questioning the woman who booked the governor’s massage, our detectives soon gather enough evidence to arrest Delia. The judge orders her held on $2 million bail – but her attorney puts up his house to bail her out. The defense attorney sneers at our heroes, “She has the goods on everyone you work for or ever will.”
The next morning, Cragen wakes up with blood all over his hands. An escort with her throat slit is lying in bed next to him.
Fade to “Dick Wolf” and our final dun dun of the season. What?? That’s the end? Even the Godfather gave us the closure of knowing who killed that horse. I can’t believe we have to wait until Season 14 to find out what happens with Cragen.
Verdict: A-
What they got right:
At first, I thought this was going to be about the Secret Service / Colombian prostitutes scandal. But those Secret Service agents at the party were just a tip of the hat to that case.
This episode was primarily about the real-life case of Anna Gristina, also known as the “Millionaire Madam” or the “Soccer Mom Madam.” She’s charged with running NY’s most elite escort agency. Some think her little black book holds the dirty little secrets of some of the most powerful men in America. And some wonder if corrupt police officers helped her run her business.
Like the madam on tonight’s show, Gristina has a gaggle of kids and summered on a farm in upstate New York. (She has a fondness for potbellied pigs rather than goats.) She was also ordered held on $2 million bail, for which her defense attorney made the extraordinary offer of his townhouse as collateral (in real life, that fell through, and she’s still in Rikers). And Gristina had a famous rivalry with the self-proclaimed “King of All Pimps,” Jason Itzler.
According to the New York Daily News, Itzler described Gristina as “the most vindictive b***h ever in the escorting game,” and said she is: “Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.”
Another thing the episode got right was that the police have tracked breast implants to find the identity of murder victims before. The most famous case involved the murder of Playboy bunny Jasmine Fiore, who was strangled and stuffed in a suitcase. Her body was so badly mutilated, she was unidentifiable. But tracking the serial numbers of her breast implants, the police could learn her name, address, phone number, and Social Security number, as well as the contact information for her surgeon and primary-care doctor.
Ryan Jenkins was charged with murdering Jasmine Fiore.
What they got wrong:
These guys threw the most elaborate bachelor party of all time … and video-taped all eight hours of it? In my experience, the type of guests who flee on an elevator after a body is found are also the type who do not record hours of illegal sex among their VIP friends.
Poor Nick got a bad rap tonight. First he was clocked by Mayhem itself. But then he was mocked for talking to the blond escort. Just because she was flirting with him didn’t mean he had to stop listening to her. To the contrary, some of the best information police get is from women who are flirting with them.
Cragen didn’t have to recuse himself because there were photos of him doing an undercover prostitution sting. That was either the flimsiest excuse ever … or Cragen is corrupt. And I can’t believe that of our sweet, earnest captain. Even if he does have blood all over his hands.
Rivals madams may beef with each other, but not to this extent. They threaten. They rat each other out. They may even hurt each other. But they don’t kill escorts and plant them in each other’s beds. Or – especially – the police chief’s bed. I’m not saying they’re above that. It would simply be bad for business.
Well, SVU fans, that’s all the episodes for the season – but there’s still lots of fun ahead this summer.
If you like my blog – or, hell, even if you don’t like it – please buy my novel, DISCRETION. Coincidentally, it is about the investigation of a high-priced escort who’s killed at the U.S. Capitol, and was inspired by my work as a sex-crimes prosecutor and some real cases. It’s been getting great advance reviews. I would especially appreciate if you would pre-order it today. Pre-orders mean a lot to authors. And I would love to hear your comments on what I got right and wrong!
Meanwhile, stop by the blog over the summer. I love hearing from you. And I have some great pieces lined up:
– Top 10 Lessons from SVU That May Save Your Life
– Best and Worst Moments of SVU Season 13
– Why We Love and Hate Crime Dramas
– An original e-short story, TEN RULES FOR A CALL GIRL, that I’m really excited to share with you
– Great guest bloggers
– Interviews of bestselling crime writers and TV show writers
– Reality-checks of the summer blockbuster movies
I’ll be posting every Monday. Keep stopping by!
SVU Episode #13-22: Strange Beauty
Recap:
I would give an arm and a leg not to have watched tonight’s episode about ritual amputation. I had to put away the popcorn, and I’m still feeling a little woozy. What a freakshow: Men with rubber wings implanted in their shoulder blades! Women with surgically altered elf ears! Severed limbs floating in canals!
Gah.
Shake it off, Leotta. You’ve got a blog to write.
Okay. We open with a pretty girl being abducted by a rogue taxi driver. Soon, her leg is found floating in the Gowanus Canal. Anyone who’s seen the Gowanus shouldn’t be surprised by the next revelation: several mystery legs have been dredged from its murky depths. All were cleanly sliced off at the knee. And forensic examination reveals that their owners were still alive when the limbs were severed.
Is this the work of some sick guy, or just a new women’s razor gone terribly wrong?
When the rest of the girl’s corpse turns up, our good detectives must delve into the seamy underworld of “body modification,” where women pay to have their ears shaped like elves, and men have horns surgically implanted into their foreheads. Ice-T and Amanda go to a carnival tent – literally a freakshow, filled with tattooed, body-bending extras who were clearly the reason for this entire episode – and pretend to be a couple looking to spice up their sex lives by reshaping their cartilage.
The trail soon leads to a pretty one-legged dental receptionist, who makes a side business out of stealing her employer’s nitrous oxide and surgically altering people into the fantasy creatures of their choosing. At first, the detectives think the receptionist amputated her own leg as a sort of avant-garde extension of ear piercing. But she swears it was from bone cancer.
Is she a victim or a perp?
Our detectives discover a one-legged prostitute – the former owner of one of the Gowanus gams – who tells them she sold her leg to a man for $25,000 to pay for her drug habit.
Is it the receptionist’s creepy dentist boss or his psychiatrist brother? Turns out, the brothers’ mom lost her leg in a car accident when they were kids. The psychiatrist became obsessed with one-legged women. After counseling the brave receptionist through her bone-cancer amputation, he decided women simply look better with one leg. Thus began his mission to de-leg the women of New York.
After a heart-to-heart with Olivia and Amanda, he cheerfully leads the detectives to the world’s least-monitored storage facility (didn’t anyone notice women going in with two legs and leaving with one?). In his penthouse storage unit, the sick psychiatrist has a little shop of horrors, complete with surgical saws, operating tables, and before-and-after photos of his victims. His eyes get all dreamy as he contemplates how Olivia and Amanda would look as amputees. They scowl, cuff him, and lead him away.
Verdict: C
What they got right:
The detectives tonight used some very standard and respectable techniques that real police really use. Their methods included many we’ve discussed on this blog before: pulling security video, tracking cell phone numbers, looking up tattoos in the tattoo database, interviewing witnesses, police lying to witnesses to get a confession, and DNA testing to find the legs’ owners. All methods were quite realistic and authentic. It was just the subject matter that was bizarre and over-the-top.
As Nick said, “This just got weird.”
But – they had some basis in fact. There really is a whole freaky subculture of self-mutilation (also known as body modification). As someone with pierced ears, I may be waxing hypocritical here. But I spent way too much time going down a most disturbing Google rabbit hole tonight. If you have a strong stomach and the desire to see images you may never be able to get out of your head, click here to explore 3D body art, Satanic scarification, suspension (this one actually made me shriek), and even body modification for pets.
The show is certainly not falling into the trap of being predictable or cliched. You won’t find any crazed psychiatrists with sexualized amputation fetishes on Everybody Loves Raymond. Our SVU writers have proven themselves willing and able to go far afield to keep the show fresh and unique for us.
Um… thanks?
What they got wrong:
I’ve never heard of somebody getting their left leg cut off in some sort of bizarre ritualized mutilation fantasy. The right leg, perhaps.
No, seriously, I don’t need to tell you how crazy the plot was. We all know the entire storyline was just an excuse for that crazy body-mod circus tent. Which was some seriously entertaining television, but not remotely like any real case in the history of real cases.
On a more specific level, I’ve seen some terrible money-making schemes, but a prostitute selling her leg for $25,000 just doesn’t ring true. People have been known to sell their extra organs for money (kidneys are popular). Funeral parlors have been charged with cutting off corpses’ limbs and selling them for medical research. The worst thing I saw as a prosecutor were mothers who sold their own children into prostitution in order to fund a drug habit. But I’ve never heard of a single person selling their limbs for any amount of money. Maybe I’ve just been hanging out in the wrong circus tents.
Well, what do you think, SVU fans? Is amputation the new black? Would you be willing to sell any part of your body for cash? And what are the chances that a crazed psychiatrist who has a leg-amputation fetish would fall for a one-legged girl who just happens to be into surgical body-modification? Leave your comments!