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Home of the Brave

I used to like the character of Richard Bay in The Practice. You knew where he stood. Bay detested the lawyers at Donnell, Young, Dole & Frutt, and his loathing was pure. To the firm, Bay was an annoying pest. The little kid you straight-arm that swings wildly at you, yet misses every time. Now, Bay seems to be warming up to the firm, and it just doesn't feel right.

This week, Bay visits Lindsay Dole to warn her that her client, Manny, should accept a plea bargain. Manny was arrested for possession of an illegal substance, following a police search of his car. Manny claims that the drugs were planted in his car by the police, and it looks like they really had no reason to search his car except to find the drugs. Lindsay, however, thinks she has a decent shot at having the search declared unconstitutional. She cannot understand why Bay would press her to accept the plea bargain. At the suppression hearing, the Judge does, in fact, find the search to be illegal and throws the case out. Manny is then promptly arrested - in the courtroom - as an illegal alien.

Bay reveals that Manny witnessed the killing of a DEA agent. The deportation proceeding, and presumably the earlier prosecution, is meant to pressure him into revealing the identity of the killer. It turns out that the killer is Manny's rather harmless looking brother who, in reality, is a vicious drug dealer that threatened to kill his own mother (she is Manny's adopted mother) if Manny ever reveals the truth.

Observing the show from a purely legal perspective, this storyline did not have too many errors. Yet common sense made the plot hard to believe. For instance, why would Bay think that Manny would be better off accepting a plea bargain and spending time in jail for a crime he did not commit rather than going forward with a trial. The drug authorities wouldn't have gone away, and neither would have the threat to deport him. And why didn't Manny tell Lindsay that he was a witness to a murder?

If the police knew Manny was in the room at the time of the DEA agent's murder, they must have interviewed him. It must have occurred to Manny the reason police tried to frame him for drug possession is because they believes he knows the killer. How reasonable is it for the drug authorities to have no clue that Manny's half-brother is a dealer? And how believable is it that his half-brother would actually threaten to kill his own mother? I could go on and on and on, but you get the drift.

The most displeasing aspect of this episode is the apparent change in Bay. He's becoming a nice guy. The old Bay never would have thought of assisting the lawyers at Donnell, Young, Dole & Frutt, even though he himself would never have engaged in any unscrupulous or unprincipled acts. The old Bay was a great nemesis. I'll miss him.

A second storyline revolved around Lucy's testimony in the date rape trial of one of her patients from the Rape Crisis Center. The victim, Meredith, testified that the defendant walked her home from a party and forced himself on her, even after she told him to stop. She says he ripped her clothes and bruised her. However, Meredith did not report the assault for three days. On cross-examination, Meredith seems to be saying that she only became convinced she was raped, after speaking with Lucy at the Rape Crisis Center. The defense attorney then calls Lucy as a witness (even though the prosecution was still in the middle of its case), on the apparent grounds that she induced Meredith to falsely claim that she had been raped.

I am not aware of an instance in which a rape crisis counselor has been called as a defense witness in the state of Massachusetts. Lucy's conversation with Meredith is privileged under the Rape Crisis Counseling Privilege, G.L. c. 233, sec. 20J. There are exacting procedures that must be followed to overcome the privilege, none of which were followed or even referred in this episode. Most importantly, none of Lucy's testimony provides exculpatory evidence.

If Meredith had told Lucy that she voluntarily had sex with the defendant but was mad at him and wanted to accuse him of rape, that would have been exculpatory. However, Lucy says that all she did was to Meredith about the legal definition of rape and that she, rather than Meredith, called the police. Since some women are confused as to the legal definition of rape, and conceivably might not know that it can apply in date rape situations, Lucy's conversation with Meredith is not exculpatory - or even legally relevant. And the fact that Lucy may have pressured a third person to file rape charges, even if true, legally has no bearing in this trial.

A Massachusetts court would not have permitted Lucy to testify, and it never, never, never would have allowed a third party to testify regarding his or her conversations with Lucy. The writers at The Practice must have been aware of these legal inaccuracies, as they more than likely contacted the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center months ago and were provided with lots of information as to what rape crisis counselors do and don't do. They were probably also given legal memos, statutes, and case citations. Yet in the end, the storyline prevailed.

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The third storyline involved the pitiable Harland Bassett, the lawyer who is forever losing cases. Somehow, he finds himself representing Ann Mullen, a child who has been horribly injured by a drug that her doctor gave her. The doctor had settled the claim against him, yet now Bassett is facing the huge company that manufactured the drug. The company is represented by one of the three top attorneys in Boston. As always, Bassett turns to Eugene Young to help him out. After meeting the very sick but very gutsy Mullen, Young agrees to this quixotic undertaking. Yet can there really be any doubt as to the outcome?

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