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If you watched the Yankees/Red Sox game instead of this week's Law & Order, have no regrets. You missed nothing. It was an odd, confusing and ultimately preposterous story.

The episode begins with the murder of fifteen-year-old Christy Garrison in the middle of the night outside the house where she lives with her parents and older sister, Mercedes. Her head appears to have been hit against a wall. The Garrison's next door neighbors are the Vances and the families share more than just a common driveway. The Vances have two sons. Ethan is Christy's contemporary, and Nick is Mercedes' fiancé. Both families are well-to-do. The Vances have old money that is getting a "bit arthritic." The Garrisons have lots of new money to invest, and are just a little too anxious to be part of the Vances' social circle. Sound like a soap opera? Just wait.

The investigation is the more interesting part of the episode in that it showcases some helpful tools -- phone records, drugstore video cameras and DNA analysis. But the chase for a suspect is rather frenetic and confusing as the police cycle through no less than five different suspects.

The first suspect is Sammy, the Vances' limousine driver, who is missing, along with the limo, on the morning after the murder. The police quickly find him with the limo in New Jersey. Detective Green searches the limo without a warrant or Sammy's consent and recovers Christy's purse from the back seat. Had the limo belonged to Sammy, or had he taken it with the owner's permission, the search without a warrant or consent would have resulted in the inadmissibility at trial of any evidence recovered. However, since Sammy did not own the car or have permission to take it, the police search of the car was proper.

The police confiscate the limo and find semen on the back seat next to Christy's purse. Sammy volunteers to take a blood test and is eliminated as a suspect. The police learn Christy went out to a club the night of the murder and that she stopped at a drugstore as well. From the tape of a store video camera, they learn she was with Ethan Vance.

Ethan admits to going out with Christy. He tells the police he saw her home, then went to bed. Unlike Sammy, Ethan is up to his eyeballs in fancy lawyers and refuses to take a blood test to determine whether he is the source of the semen stain in the car. The prosecutors ask a judge to order the test, but the judge denies their motion on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence of Ethan's connection to the murder. I disagree. Because Ethan was with Christy just prior to the murder and lied about it, and because semen was found on the back seat of the limo, I think there was probable cause to order Ethan to take a blood test.

Ultimately, the problem of obtaining blood from Ethan is neatly resolved. The police learn he has recently given blood in a school drive. Ethan's ever-robust defense team obtains a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting the hospital that received it from turning Ethan's blood over to the prosecutors. (As I've observed before, a TRO is properly sought in civil court, not criminal court as was done here.) In any event, the court properly lifts the TRO when the prosecutor points out that Ethan gave up any expectation of privacy in the blood when he donated it for use by anyone.

After testing the blood, the police learn the semen on the limo seat is not Ethan's. But the Medical Examiner tells them a mitochondrial DNA test on both the semen stain and Ethan's sample reveal that Ethan is related to the donor of the semen on the seat. In actual fact the test would prove something narrower. Mitochondrial DNA testing reveals a factor that is inherited maternally, so it can establish that the donors of two separate samples share the same mother. The show doesn't mention that a separate DNA test would need to be performed on the two samples (Ethan's and the car stain) to determine whether they are from the same or different people.

The police eliminate Ethan's father as the source of the stain in the car because he is undergoing chemotherapy. Again, given the realities of the mitochondrial test, even if he were healthy, Mr. Vance could not have been the donor of the semen on the seat since he and Ethan could not share the same mother. The police thus correctly conclude the semen stain on the seat came from Nick, Ethan's brother, but further DNA testing reveals that Ethan is the source of the sperm found inside Christy's body. When the police ask why the rape kit -- a series of medical samples routinely taken from rape victims -- did not reveal this semen, the Medical Examiner inexplicably says a rape kit won't pick up semen if sex is performed within a half hour of death. To my knowledge, this comment is inaccurate and makes no sense.

The prosecutors charge both Ethan and Nick with statutory rape, in light of Christy's age (15). Two things bear mentioning. First, a semen stain on the back seat of a limo next to the victim's purse is not sufficient evidence to support a statutory rape charge against Nick. Absent further evidence, the prosecution could never establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Nick deposited the semen while Christy was in the car; whether she was indeed ever in the car; or that there was any physical contact between Nick and Christy. Second, prosecutors in Manhattan rarely bring statutory rape charges, although bringing them to facilitate a homicide investigation -- as the prosecutors did here -- would not be so unusual.

Through their investigative work, the prosecutors learn Nick regularly cheats on Mercedes with her full knowledge; that Mercedes has a psychiatric problem and is on every conceivable kind of medication; and that on the day of the murder, she and Christy had a fight. As the episode reels onward, the family lawyers and Mercedes' mother bring Mercedes to the prosecutors so she can confess. The new theory is that Mercedes saw Nick and Christy having sex and killed her in a jealous rage. Her lawyer's proposal is that she plead guilty to manslaughter in the second degree (reckless, as opposed to intentional, homicide), claim diminished capacity, and do a few years in a posh psychiatric clinic in lieu of jail time. The prosecutors wisely decide -- with Mrs. Garrison's all-too willing consent -- to have their psychiatrist interview Mercedes. In that interview Mercedes remembers a fight with Christy, but not what it was about. She is so spaced out from medication that she doesn't remember killing Christy. The prosecutors correctly decide not to accept her plea.

They continue to dig. They interview Mercedes' former nanny who was conveniently sent by Mrs. Garrison to Mexico right after the murder. They learn the nanny was with Mercedes throughout the night of the murder as she was sick from taking too many pills. Through phone records, the prosecutors confirm that the nanny indeed called Poison Control from the girl's room that night.

Sickened by the fact that the Garrisons had set up their daughter Mercedes to take a fall for a murder she didn't commit, the prosecutors bring the family and their lawyers together. When confronted with the call to Poison Control, Mr. Garrison blurts out to his wife "you said you saw her do it." This triggers a lucid moment for Mercedes. She turns to her mother and says "you did it - you killed . . . my daughter." (I told you. Soap opera).

Turns out, Christy was indeed Mercedes' daughter, the result of a teenage pregnancy that's been hidden all these years. When Mercedes told Christy she was her mother, they fought. And when Christy threatened to expose the truth publicly, Mrs. Garrison -- ever the social climber -- killed her.

Case closed, you'd think. But the prosecutors have no case against Mrs. Garrison. The problem is an evidentiary one. Mrs. Garrison won't confess. Mr. and Mrs. Vance step forward and -- at this late juncture -- admit they saw Mrs. Garrison kill Christy. But they claim they saw Christy attack Mrs. Garrison first, setting up a "rock-solid" self-defense argument. Assistant District Attorney McCoy correctly points out that the Vances' testimony is impeachable because they failed to come forward with their story when their own sons were suspects. We then learn the Vances and Garrisons have merged in a business venture, creating a motive for the Vances to lie. Nevertheless, without the Vances, the prosecutors have no witness to the homicide and thus no case.

In the closing scene, Assistant District Attorney Carmichael concludes that the laws for the rich are different. The problem here is not the law, but the decision of two families to put money and status above the truth.

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