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

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

SVU Episode #17: Pursuit

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Summary: Debra Messing guest-starred as a TV journalist hosting an intense version of Dateline’s To Catch a Predator. (How intense? Debra tased one of the predators. Holy civil liability, Batman!) In her spare time, Debra is obsessed with hunting down the man who killed her sister 25 years ago. She is very public about her hunt, which gets the killer upset. The killer starts stalking Debra. The police discover he’s killed forty-three women. Along the way, he slices the throat of the salty, alcoholic DA. (Whoa! I kind of jumped off my couch when that happened. I wasn’t expecting any of our recurring characters to get killed.) In the end, they catch him and he confesses to all of his crimes.

Verdict: B-

What they got wrong: I laughed at the subplot where the bearded guy caught on Debra’s show was actually just a concerned citizen at the house to help the girl. Come on. Half of the men caught on To Catch a Predator (carrying condoms, lube, and teddy bears) claim they’re there to help the girl rather than have sex with her. It’s never true. It took me approximately 30 seconds to find such a clip on YouTube:

Maybe I’m just super-skeptical as a sex-crime prosecutor, but I think the idea of a computer-hacking concerned citizen who goes to the Predator house to stop a statutory rape, rather than perpetrate it, is totally unbelievable. Men who have sex with kids have a variety of lame excuses, but this one was particularly silly.

And I’ve never heard of a serial rapist who stalks one of his past victim’s family members – no matter how vocal she is about trying to catch him. Attackers like that tend to pick their victims based on things like proximity (someone they see every day), studied vulnerability (choosing the one woman in an apartment complex who keeps her sliding doors open at night), or the random bad luck of wrong place/wrong time.

What they got right: Debra’s assistant, who was dating the serial killer, couldn’t believe he was a bad guy. Even though there were all kinds of weird things in their relationship (he couldn’t be reached on a phone, he asked about Debra all the time), the assistant thought everything was hunky-dory. This interaction is really common. Women in love are reluctant to believe their boyfriend is a bad guy, even if the evidence is loud and clear. A girlfriend might delude herself just so she can keep thinking that her serial-rapist-boyfriend is actually just a nice guy who loves her dearly. These guys often employ charm to do their bad deeds: both to lure victims, and to get unwitting accomplices. The fact that the stalker used Debra’s assistant to get access to Debra didn’t seem far-fetched to me.

As a side note, did anyone else notice that this was yet another episode where Elliot and Olivia were apart most of the time (with Elliot video-conferencing from Quantico)?  Some commenters have speculated that the actors haven’t been getting along.  I wonder.  Post a comment if you’ve heard anything about that!

All the views on this website are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

SVU Episode #16: Spectacle

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Summary: Horrified college students watch as a girl is raped by a tattooed man on the campus’s live streaming video. The girl is then abducted and held hostage. Her kidnapper continues to stream videos of violent things he’s doing to her. Using a tattoo database and cell phone records, Elliott finds the rapist: a weepy college boy whose little brother was kidnapped eight years ago. But Weepy’s friend is still holding the girl. Weepy says he’ll kill her unless Elliott solves his brother’s case. Elliott miraculously finds the little brother. Then Weepy leads them to the girl, who is fine. Turns out, Weepy didn’t rape or kidnap anyone.  He and a couple of friends staged the whole thing to get NYPD to reopen the cold case (kids, don’t try this at home).

Verdict: B

What they got right: There really is a tattoo database! This is one of the few things in real life that is almost as cool as what you see on TV. NYPD’s Real-Time Crime Center is a Jetsons-looking nerve center that collects data on tattoos, birthmarks and scars. It also tracks embarrassing identifiers like blotchy skin, limps, and missing or gold teeth. They get this information from arrest reports, 911 calls, complaints filed by victims, and traffic tickets.  You can run a key-word search for the tattoo or mark you’re looking for and – presto! – the system tells you who matches.  If a guy with psoriasis and an “I love Mom” tattoo robs a 7-11, the police might be able to find him using that information alone. Technology, I love you.

As a side note, I chuckled when the Chinese tattoo that was supposed to say “Try or Die” actually said “Pie or Die.” There are many reasons I wish I could read Chinese, but the most compelling would be to see how often tattoo artists mess with their clients.

What they got wrong: The DA charged a man with Possession With Intent to Distribute an illicit substance (“PWID”) after the cops found some Adderall on him. Adderall is a drug abused by some students today the way I abused Mountain Dew in the 90’s: to pull all-nighters in college. Unlike Mountain Dew, you need a prescription for Adderall – but this character had one. The DA’s legal theory seemed to be that, because the pills were packaged in a few different ziploc bags, she could prove that the guy intended to sell them to other kids, which would be illegal. Good luck with that. It’s hard enough to get a felony PWID conviction when you have a police officer actually watch a kid sell crack on a street corner. Even if that kid has 20 more zips of crack on him, he’ll claim they were for his personal use (making him guilty only of Possession, a misdemeanor). Juries can be sympathetic to this claim. If SVU’s DA convinces a jury that there was intent to distribute the Adderall based solely on a few extra ziplocs, I’ll eat that Adderall. And then I’ll stay up all night blogging about it.

All views expressed on this blog are mine alone and may not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.