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Smut galore as the Law and Order team investigates the murder of a madam who exploits young immigrant women.

Provocatively dressed Lorraine Shelby is found strangled in a pile of garbage bags. The killer wore gloves and left distinctive wool fibers on Shelby's clothes and neck. Detectives Briscoe and Green learn that Shelby was running a "massage parlor" that provided more than just back rubs. Her workforce, moreover, was comprised of scores of Chinese women kept essentially in indentured servitude. The parlor had been busted by the local precinct not too long before the murder, but the bust went nowhere because Shelby had been tipped off by a pair of officers who also happened to be regular customers. This suggests a classic police corruption explanation for the murder, but the lead fizzles in favor of a more modern motivating force: the Internet.

Since every business these days needs a dot com side, Shelby was running a pornographic web site out of her brothel, allowing patrons to bill live video and erotic chat to their credit cards. Into her sordid virtual lair, Shelby lured 16-year-old Kevin Malone, who used the screen name "Hotrod" and described himself as a "well endowed," rich 38-year-old with a Porsche. Malone became obsessed with the electronic madam and ran up $50,000 in on-line credit card bills. As the bills became more pressing, Kevin began to threaten Shelby. A modern case of murder to avoid a debt, or so it appears.

Assistant District Attorneys McCoy and Carmichael have Kevin arrested and charged, but his lawyer manages to get a court ruling that transcripts of the chat sessions won't be admissible. The judge calls them "too prejudicial." Of course they're prejudicial -- they expose Kevin's state of mind and motive to kill Shelby-- but the judge thinks that it is too hard to tell whether the threats are real or fantasy role playing. Abbie Carmichael argues that whether the threats are real should be a jury question. I think she's right: while there are genuinely new issues created by electronic mail, evaluating the seriousness of a "mailed" threat is not one of them. Whether on paper or on a computer screen, words are always subject to interpretation, and that interpretation is best left to jurors who are charged with deciding guilt or innocence. Judges do have wide discretion in this area, however, and excluding the evidence works as a plot device. The judge's ruling forces further investigation that leads to a twist: McCoy and Carmichael learn from one of Kevin's friends that Kevin's parents knew about their son's late-night forays into the Internet's red-light district. They knew about the bills Kevin had racked up, too, as it's hard to hide $50K in debt when you've been using one of Daddy's credit cards. Maybe Kevin didn't commit the murder . . . and maybe his dad did.

The ADAs bring Mrs. Malone in for an interview. Suggesting that they're just trying to confirm Kevin's alibi, they get the Mrs. to disclose that Mr. Malone was not at home when Shelby was murdered. Further investigation reveals he was not at work, either. A search of the Malone household, pursuant to a warrant for Mr. Malone's clothes, turns up wool gloves with fibers that match those found on the victim.

Conviction should be a lock: Mr. Malone has motive and opportunity, and McCoy has the gloves as physical evidence tying Mr. Malone to the crime. The only problem, as Carmichael points out, is that the victim is far sleazier than the defendant, who was only trying to get rid of a scourge in his son's life. Mr. Malone's lawyer does an excellent job of making this clear to the jury. In painstaking detail, he demonstrates Shelby's exploitation of the girls who work for her, creating sympathy for his client while simultaneously showing that Shelby had plenty of enemies.

The strategy works, and during deliberations the jury of Mr. Malone's twelve peers (who certainly do not consider themselves to be Shelby's peers) ask the judge whether instead of murder they can return a verdict of second-degree manslaughter: recklessly causing the death of another person. McCoy objects that a strangulation can't be reckless. The judge agrees, but only so far: she allows the jury to consider first- degree manslaughter, apparently on the theory that the murder was committed "under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance." The jury convicts Mr. Malone of this, leaving the prosecutors to ponder how a crime that started in China could ruin a family in New York. (Is this some reference to the physics question of whether a butterfly flapping its wings in Mongolia can cause a tidal wave in Los Angeles?)

Now for a brief tirade on the episode's portrayal of a dilemma of legal ethics. In the course of their investigation, Briscoe and Green discover that Shelby's massage business is incorporated, and they visit with the lawyer who did the incorporation. Initially he won't provide any information, but after the cops show him pictures of a freight container that was used as living quarters for Shelby's slave labor, the lawyer cracks and discloses the name of his client. The client's identity is confidential, and in this case is undoubtedly something the client - Shelby's business partner - was hoping his lawyer would keep secret. It was an ethical no-no to give it up, no matter how sordid the prostitutes' living conditions and no matter how much he wanted to help the cops. (Under New York's ethical rules, a lawyer may reveal a client confidence or secret if the lawyer is aware that the client intends to commit a crime and the information is necessary to prevent the crime, but neither of those circumstances was present here.) While a lawyer might struggle with the morality of keeping information from the police, the professional obligation to the client is clear. Secrets are secrets.

This episode also contained the usual Law and Order technology paranoia: if you use your credit card once on line, someone may steal it for surfing sex chat rooms; "Internet addiction" is as devastating as alcoholism or drug abuse. And, inevitably, police psychologist Dr. Skoda compared Kevin's putative Internet addiction defense to the "twinkie defense," pointing out, as he seems to do every episode, that no one took the twinkie defense seriously until it worked. (Maybe McCoy secretly bet Skoda that Skoda can't say this line in every episode. Skoda is winning.)

In all, however, this was a good show. The investigation moved quickly and highlighted some interesting police work. The jury's dilemma over how to punish a man who killed a detestable prostitute who ruined his family was credible, and the jury's verdict holds up under scrutiny. Given the physical evidence, the jurors had no doubt that Mr. Malone committed the murder, but they did feel that it was, in part, justified.

Even more than usual, however, the script included enough lewd references and tawdry double entendres to keep a locker room full of 13-year-old boys happy for weeks. Most of these came out of Briscoe's mouth: during interrogation of a police officer he suspected was getting "favors" to protect Shelby's illicit business, Briscoe managed to work in the phrase "lube job" and to comment that the officer's choice of the word "clam" was an interesting one. When Briscoe arrested Kevin Malone, he noted that "Hotrod's" description of himself as 38, rich, and having a Porsche was wholly inaccurate, and suggested that, if Malone were stripped down, the "well endowed" claim would turn out to be puffery as well. In addition to weaving a surplus of pubescent humor into Briscoe's lines, the writers gave Abbie Carmichael the task of reading aloud some of the correspondence between "Hotrod" and Madam Shelby. Given Angie Harmon's inability to inflect any of her lines, the chat came across as deadpan instead of suggestive. I can't help thinking, though, that it was no coincidence that the writers had the former Baywatch actress speak the sordid stuff.

Was all this really required to solve the case, or were the writers taking advantage of a prurient plot line to titillate with bathroom humor and suggestive fantasies? Since the episode was pretty well put together, I'll give the benefit of the doubt and opine that allowing the show's regulars to slip into the victim's vernacular showed how seductive the seamier side of language can be--and illustrated how easily Kevin's Internet chat pastime turned into an expensive and destructive obsession.

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