FindLaw | Legal News & Information

The only thing more depressing than the story presented in this week's Law and Order is that, as we learn from a disclaimer-type message at the outset, it was based on true events. People actually did this to each other. The somber opening is complemented by a similarly grim ending: Abbie Carmichael asks Jack McCoy how he washes off the inhumanity they have seen; he says he wishes he knew. We are left to ponder these two ideas: evil is out there, and at the end of the day you can't always get away from it.

Two women are found dead in an abandoned building, with evidence of sexual assault. One died when she choked on her own vomit, and the other was strangled. The Special Victims Unit detectives are called (as if it were not enough that L&O's writers and actors are better than SVU's, now L&O is stealing all the good SVU cases, too), and the identity hunt begins.

Victim One is Jane Kendrick; Victim Two is Jane's Swedish friend Anika Ohlman. (Please to forgive phonetic spelling.) Evidence in similar, unsolved cases points to Peter Williams. When visited by the police, Williams won't let them in without a warrant. This proves to us viewers that he's guilty, but Briscoe and Jordan still need to get evidence for court.

Lt. Van Buren has the unenviable task of informing Jane's parents that their daughter has been killed. In doing so, she finds out that Jane had a sister, Laura--who is now missing. Laura may still be alive, so Lt. Van Buren orders all available detectives to track her down.

Under the pressure to find Laura, Briscoe takes illegal entry to new heights (or new lows). He calls the gas company (using a pay phone so the call can't be traced to him) and reports a leak in Peter Williams's building. The detectives show up with the gas company, and Briscoe pretends to smell the leak coming from behind Williams's door. The super lets the detectives in, where they find books on sex killers and duct tape for tying women up. No one even pretends this search is legal, as the police had no probable cause, no warrant, no exigent circumstances, no nothing. As Jordan puts it, "We can hardly have the CSU (crime scene unit) go over it, given our means of entry." While the search confirms Williams' guilt, it eliminates from the case any evidence from Williams' apartment. The ramifications are severe because of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine: an illegal search taints not only the items found, but also any evidence found later based on what was learned from the search.

The cops get a break, however, when Jane's sister Laura Kendrick turns up in a hospital, bruised and battered. She admits that she and Williams had a "lovers' quarrel," providing the police with grounds to arrest Williams for assault. Laura won't say rape and (oddly, for an assault victim) gets a lawyer.

McCoy is under a deadline to charge or release Williams. Because of the illegal entry, the police have no (admissible) physical evidence. The pressure is on, so McCoy lets Laura have a session with the house shrink in order to hear her story. She claims that Williams abused her, she had to do what he said, blah, blah, blah. Dr. Skoda calls it a classic case of a predatory man and a vulnerable woman. Having little choice, McCoy makes a deal. In exchange for Laura's truthful testimony against Williams, McCoy will agree to a guilty plea to manslaughter, with Laura to spend only three to six years in a minimum security prison.

Laura describes Jane's death: Laura brought Jane (who was a virgin) and Anika to Peter. They all had sex. Jane choked to death because she had been drugged. Peter killed Anika so she couldn't go to the police.

Skoda missed the boat on this one. Laura is a sociopath.

This is revealed slowly, but we get a big hint when, after describing her sister's death, Laura asks whether the police found her garnet earrings in the search of Peter's apartment. Talk about cold- blooded: her sister was raped and killed, and all Laura cares about is that she misplaced the earrings that match her bracelet. A second big hint is a cache of photographs of the sordid foursome, in which bruise-free Laura is smiling happily. So much for the vulnerable woman theory. McCoy can't prove Laura is lying, though, so her deal stands and they go to trial against Peter. For added drama, by the way, two other women are missing. Laura says Peter was the last to see them.

Not surprisingly, the trial is a "he said/she said" battle. Laura testifies that it was all Peter's idea, and she had to go along; he says it was the other way around. The writing and acting here are excellent, because it's impossible to know who's telling the truth. They both seem crazy. Indeed, it looks like Laura pulled the wool over McCoy's eyes, and Peter is all too pleased to point this out to him on cross-examination: "Whatever that woman wants, that woman gets. She got a deal out of you, didn't she?"

McCoy is not so quick to be outdone. Peter is convicted of rape and first-degree murder (murder during the commission of the rape), and McCoy walks out of the courtroom saying "One down, one to go." His only problem is the plea agreement, which he can't rescind because he still can't prove Laura lied about anything. Not to worry: Laura still has to admit what she did when the judge takes her plea (the technical term for this is "allocution"), and McCoy makes sure the judge gets a glimpse of Laura's true personality. Through a series of dramatic questions, he gets Laura to admit that she was excited by the rape and murder of her sister.

This is all the judge needs to reject the plea to manslaughter. Laura's lawyer protests briefly, but he knows he's beat. Laura caves and accepts 25 to life. (It's a little bothersome that Laura and her lawyer don't consult much on this rather important decision. There are a few whispers back and forth, and then they take the plea. I understand the constraints of dramatic television, so I won't complain too much; moreover, there lingers the possibility that Laura and her lawyer had this worked out beforehand(?). Most defendants, however, get at least a little more than a minute of whispered conference before deciding to go up river for 25 years.)

Can the judge reject the plea? Yes. It is well settled that a defendant has no constitutional right to plead guilty to a crime less serious than the one charged, and judges (in New York at least, and in federal courts, with very limited exceptions), retain total discretion to accept or reject a guilty plea. If ever there was an instance to exercise discretion, this was it, and McCoy knows it.

What about McCoy? Can he do this? Yes again. While he certainly baited the judge, technically (and the law is all about details) McCoy never violated his agreement. McCoy gets the judge to do what the D.A.'s office agreed not to do, and the worst that can be said is that Laura gets whipsawed between the two.

In case finding out that Laura enjoyed her sister's death wasn't bad enough, the L&O writers decide to depress us a little bit more. The two other missing women turn up dead, victims of Peter's and Laura's sick games. Furthermore, the script adeptly includes the Kendrick parents at a few key points: in the police station, finding out that Jane is dead; watching Laura testify at trial; and, at the plea allocution, learning that she is a monster. They poignantly remind us that Laura was once a loving sister and daughter, and they act as the on-screen audience to the revelation of Laura as manipulative rapist and murderer.

Legal maneuvering aside, Laura's sentence is clearly the right result. (After all, Laura's just getting a taste of her own medicine, as she tried to play McCoy for a sucker.) Whether you call her ill or evil, few would dispute that Laura should be out of circulation for a good long while.

Past Reviews

Message Boards

Disclaimer