SVU Episode #13-14: Home Invasion
SVU Episode #21: Reparations
Summary:
This was an interesting exploration of what can grow from seeds of hate sown decades ago. A young white woman is raped in her bedroom. At first she says it was her black neighbor – but her ID is shaky, and the evidence quickly proves the neighbor innocent. Then she remembers that another black man, who delivers vegetables to the school where she’s a teacher, cursed at her a few weeks earlier. Liquid on male shoeprints left in her room is from a cleaning solution used only in NY’s public schools. Armed with this information, Elliot and Ice-T arrest the veggie guy, in one of the flimsiest arrests in the history of TV crime drama.
DA Casey Novak is back, after having her law license revoked for three years. She’s now in a probationary period at work and desperate to win this case. Representing the defendant is hunky Terrence Howard, taking a break from being a DA on Law & Order: LA to defend his cousin the veggie guy.
At trial, Terrence eviscerates this victim, calling her a racist and arguing she’d accuse any black guy who crossed her path. The trial breaks down when the victim’s grandfather yells at veggie guy’s mother. Turns out, Grampa was a Klan member who raped Mom 45 years ago, to impede her work as a civil-rights activist. She told the police but no one believed her. Novak subpoenas Mom to testify, to prove veggie guy’s motive for raping the girl. To save Mom from this indignity, veggie guy admits he broke into the girl’s house and pulled her clothes off, as revenge for what her grandfather did to his mother. But he couldn’t go through with the rape. The girl made that last part up at Grampa’s urging. Veggie guy goes away for 15 years, the girl is arrested for perjury, and the two lawyers give each other a respectful nod.
Verdict: B-
What they got wrong:
The detectives had more probable cause to arrest the cilantro in veggie’s guy’s basket than veggie guy himself. What was their evidence? (1) Veggie guy once cursed at the victim, and (2) a liquid from the public schools (where thousands of people go every day) was in the shoeprint in her bedroom. Basically, it came down to him dropping the F bomb – which would make most D.C. residents eligible for immediate arrest. Not only do I think his case wouldn’t make it past a preliminary hearing, I think veggie guy would have a decent lawsuit against NYPD for wrongful arrest. (Until he confessed.)
The DA’s decision to force veggie guy’s mom to testify about her long-ago rape was wrong – not only because it was heartless, but because it was legally insupportable. Criminal trials are about the crime charged. Evidence of a 40-year-old rape would be irrelevant, and therefore inadmissible, unless the DA could prove that the defendant knew about it. Then she might arguably have evidence of motive. But she didn’t have that here.
And, crime shows love to depict how worried prosecutors are about their win-loss record. “Want to know how good I am? Look at my conviction record,” Terrence huffed. “If I lose this case, I’m done,” Novak sobbed. That’s not how it works in real life. No one in my office ever asks about win-loss stats. It’s not important. Doing the right thing is. Being a prosecutor gives you the duty (and the luxury) of always trying to do justice. That’s what I love about the job. If you think a guy is innocent, you don’t keep hammering away to get another “W” in your column — you dismiss the charges. A prosecutor’s job is to search for the truth and then do the right thing based on what she finds. Statistic-crazy TV prosecutors give me the willies.
What they got right:
Ladies, lock your windows! In this case, the assailant climbed in through the girl’s unlocked fire escape window. In reality, predators do look for weak links like this. The real-life East Coast Rapist would scope out apartment buildings, checking every unit until he found one with an unlocked window or open door. That’s the woman he’d rape.
Yes, a prosecutor from L.A. can act as a defense attorney for his cousin in New York. I’ve had to look this one up myself, when friends have asked if I could write a will for them or help them fight a traffic ticket. Generally, I can’t. I work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the United States can be my only client. There’s an exception, however, for immediate family members involved in a case where the U.S. isn’t a party. I could theoretically get approval to defend my sisters if they were prosecuted by the city of New York. My sisters are pretty good citizens, though, and I hope I won’t have to take advantage of this rule.
Neither right nor wrong, but interesting:
These days, the majority of sexual assaults are intra-racial, that is, the victim and the perpetrator have the same racial background.
For a provocative exploration of some of the themes in tonight’s show, check out my friend Chris Kuzneski’s novel, “The Plantation,” about “an army of militant black men who kidnap the white descendants of slave owners and transport them to a secret island compound. There, the women are raped and the men tortured before being shipped to Africa to serve as slaves to black families.” This novel won Chris a devoted following and catapulted him into international bestsellerdom.
All views on this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the view of the U.S. Department of Justice.
SVU Episode #20: Totem
Summary: Jeremy Irons returned to guest star in his role a sex-addiction psychiatrist – who’s no longer under investigation by SVU but is now helping them investigate their cases. He’s called in to help profile a killer when a seven-year-old girl is found dead and sexually assaulted, her body stuffed in a suitcase. At first, the detectives think the killer is the girl’s mother’s new boyfriend, who’s been accused of sexually assaulting a girl before. But Dr. Irons thinks the killer must be a woman, because the little corpse was wrapped in sheets with a doll tucked in the suitcase with her. These are hallmarks, he says, of a feminine killer. The detectives soon close in on the girl’s pretty piano teacher. While they’re in her house, they find some evidence of the crime, but the house has been scrubbed with bleach. Dr. Irons goes on a charm offensive, and soon the piano teacher confesses to killing the girl and placing her body in the suitcase. The teacher says she herself was a victim of sexual abuse as child, at the hands of her own mother. But then Elliott and Olivia suspect the piano teacher didn’t do it. They go to question her mother, and discover mom’s living with another younger daughter, who she’s still sexually abusing (there’s only one bed in their posh apartment). The younger sister is seriously messed up from the mother’s abuse. The younger sister ultimately confesses that she killed and sexually assaulted the little girl. The piano teacher confessed to the murder in order to protect her younger sister.
Verdict: B+
What they got right: As horrific and outlandish as it sounds, this was based on the real case of Sandra Cantu, an eight-year-old girl whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase and dumped in an irrigation ditch in California. Medical examination revealed that she had been sexually assaulted with a rolling pin before she was killed. The assailant turned out to be a female Sunday-school teacher named Melissa Huckaby.
Female sexual predators are uncommon, but real. Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; but studies show that women commit 14% to 40% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls. Some experts speculate that there is much more female-on-female abuse, but it goes unreported because of the stigma. If you’re interested in reading more, here’s a good article called “Female Sexual Abuse: the untold story of society’s last taboo.”
What they got wrong: In the vast majority of cases with this fact pattern, the assailant would have been the girl’s mother’s new boyfriend. That’s so often the case. From my perspective, the most dangerous person in any kid’s life is the new boyfriend that mom brings into the home. Uncles, stepfathers, fathers, and male cousins are also responsible for a lot of sexual violence against children. But an unrelated male, who has no biological or emotional connection to the child but who lives in the same house with them, is the perpetrator in the bulk of child sex cases. In this case, where mom’s boyfriend had been previously convicted of molesting children – forget it. It would’ve been him.
Was anyone else bothered by the fact that Elliott and Olivia were all buddy-buddy with the piano teacher by the end of the episode? The woman was still guilty of serious crimes: obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a homicide. She didn’t kill the girl, but when she discovered that her sister had, she stuffed the body in a suitcase and dumped it on the sidewalk. She used bleach to sanitize the crime scene. She threw out evidence of the crime, then lied to the police. You can’t do that. If you find a corpse in your house, call the police. Tell them everything you know. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. This piano teacher should be facing a long stint in Rikers.
And I have to raise an eyebrow at their choice of Jeremy Irons as a police psychiatrist. Don’t get me wrong; I love him as an actor. Everything he says in that British accent sounds smart and sexy. He could tell me, “I’d like some ketchup with my fries,” and I’d probably faint. But I wouldn’t suggest using a guy you were once investigating for sexual assault as your police psychiatrist for new cases. Hey Doc, good news: you’re not under arrest, so … uh … can you help us with this new case? It’s not illegal, but it doesn’t exactly have the foundations of a great team.
Rerun of “Possessed”
Tonight, SVU ran reruns of “Possessed” and “Penetration” — you can see my blog on those episodes by clicking on the titles.
Meanwhile, here’s some fun stuff to sate your SVU appetite:
(1) An article announcing that John Stamos will guest star on SVU this spring, instead of replacing Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, as some TV execs had suggested. Stamos might not have Tiger Blood, but I think he’ll be Winning on SVU.
(2) A meticulous and goofy analysis of Law & Order’s conviction rate. As a law geek myself, I liked this. Thanks to a hip reader named John for emailing me about this one.
Enjoy and have a good week!
All view expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.
SVU Episode #18: Bully
Summary: A rich businesswoman is found dead in her apartment above an art gallery. Her neck has been slit by a glass shard, she has a blood alcohol level of 1.6, her panties are around her ankles, and she has anal trauma. Elliott and Olivia soon focus on the luxury wine company where the victim worked as a bookkeeper. The company marketed itself as a happy wine-making family, but the CEO was actually a terrible boss who berated and slapped her employees. The employees put up with the abuse because the company was about to be sold, and if they hung in there, they’d get rich. But the victim took videos of the CEO slapping her, and the other employees feared she’d leak them and ruin their deal. Elliott and Olivia ultimately discover that a handsome wine salesman went to the victim’s house and tried to seduce her into handing over the videos. When she declined his advances, he pushed her into the coffee table, where the broken glass lodged in her neck. Hoping to make it look like an accident, the salesman inserted a bottle of champagne into her anus to intoxicate her and make it look like she stumbled into the table while drunk.
Verdict: B
What they got right and wrong: A person can get drunk by “ingesting” alcohol through their vagina or anus. This has been a trend in recent years: college girls soaking tampons with vodka and inserting them in their nether regions. The girls say they like getting drunk without the calories or beer breath (that last part is wrong, since the body gives off alcohol fumes through the lungs regardless of where it’s ingested). Medical experts say doing this can cause terrible damage to the vagina:
Back to the crime. The key to intoxication through the anus or vagina is the bloodstream. The alcohol makes its way across the thin epithelial barrier and is carried directly into the blood, which then travels around the body intoxicating the person. So – this method of intoxication wouldn’t work for a person who’s already dead. If you insert a champagne bottle into a corpse’s anus, you won’t intoxicate the corpse – there’s no bloodstream to carry the alcohol around the body.
Maybe the killer inserted the champagne bottle while the woman was in the process of dying, but not yet dead? It’s hard to imagine there’d be enough time, with the carotid artery cut and the woman bleeding out, to get her blood-alcohol level all the way to 1.6. Even if there was, can you imagine the mess that would make? As she’s spurting blood from her neck, the killer lifts her off the broken glass table, turns her over, undresses her bottom half, manages to get the bottle in the right place and hold it there … He would be soaked in blood and champagne and likely leaving bloody fingerprints and footprints all over the place. The Medical Examiner said that there was no DNA or fingerprints, and speculated that the killer wore gloves, suggesting a meticulously executed murder. But it turned out this crime was an accident covered with improvisation, which would be much messier than that.
Sorry to stray from my usual legal analysis, but there wasn’t much law on tonight’s show, and as a mystery writer, I now spend a lot of time thinking about how to kill people in unique ways. I appreciated SVU’s creativity tonight but (as usual) had to do some nitpicking. After blogging about this, I really need a beer . . . via the traditional route, thankyouverymuch.
If you’re interested in seeing how they filmed some of these scenes, click here.
All the views expressed on this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.
SVU Episode #17: Pursuit
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
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.