Law & Order "Duty to Protect" 2/13/2025 (spoilers)

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This episode seemed very familiar. It seemed like a script repurposed
from an episode of SVU that I must have seen. Even Elizabeth Marvel
pokes her nose in.

Abigail Spencer is this week's guest defendant, mother of the victim,
wasted in a dreadfully written script.

A product model is taping a commercial for a cleaning product/personal
protection/skin care product (It does it all!) Gosh, she looks 16.
That's 'cuz she is.

Of course she's tonight's murder victim. Riley and Shaw have a stilted
discussion, being required to forgo the gallows humor due to the age of
the victim. Hey! Briscoe and Green never stopped cracking wise.

Shaw doesn't get to browbeat anybody with P.C.

It's the usual one thing leads to another plot. Various witnesses give
excellent description of other people. There's a blond, perfectly clean
homeless boy. Hey! They interviewed him with a lawyer, following the
law!

In a canvass, one woman recalls the victim AND the man she had an
argument with and where he was standing, smoking! We're all predicting
that Riley will find the cigarette butt which he does. This leads them
to an armed limo driver whom Lt. Brady has no trouble intimidating. He
didn't kill her but confronted her over a video recommending that kids
perform dangerous stunts; his own son had a heart attack from consuming
significant amounts of caffeine per her instructions.

Huh. The little darling was kind of a terrible person.

They find a credit card receipt from the stepfather, breaking his
alibi. But they can't find motive till a video the victim shot in which
she accuses her stepfather of raping her repeated at age 14.

The video hadn't been made public yet.

Now, here's where the episode goes from relentlessly mediocre and
derivative to STOOPID. First of all, it's a surprise that the man is the
stepfather. A real cop gathering the most basic background information
about a murdered missing person unidentified for days would ask about
parentage and first and second marriages.

The mother is off putting, some sort of prominent feminist film director
who, unbelievably, comes up with the massive cash bail to bond out her
husband.

Huh? There's no paying audience for such movies.

Also, she provides her husband with an obviously phony alibi.

Based on the victim's video accusation, Price repeatedly calls the
defendant a paedophile without objection from the defense. He's
willfully misusing the term to make the rape sound worse than it was. Of
course the defendant wasn't charged with rape. I don't understand trial
rules on the prosecution making accusations of other crimes it doesn't
have to prove or can't prove but having the luxury to misrepresent them.

Upon playing the victim's video in court, a complete surprise to the
defendant as there's seemingly no discovery, he freaks out, grabs a
bailiff's gun, threatens others with it and then commits suicide.

Baxter, Price, and Mauroon confer about next steps. Mauroon is especially
pissed that there's no one to prosecute, so Price decides to pick the
mother, given the phony alibi. They get Brady to interview her at which
point she admits to both knowing about the abuse, the video, and telling
her husband about the video.

Upon seeing Marvel, Mauroon gets uber-sympathetic to the defendant.
She's now claiming a history of abuse from being raped by an uncle at
age 9 to being battered throughout her second marriage.

The defense wants to put a psychiatrist on the stand to argue the
defendant's state of mind which Price objects to as state of mind is
irrelevant to the crimes she's charged with.

Now Price and Baxter emphasize that the mother, the adult, had the duty
to protect her daughter, yet her actions in revealkng the video to her
husband was proximate to the killing,

The mother is put on the stand to tell as much of her pathetic story as
she can get away with even though Price won the motion blocking that
defense. In cross, Price asks the obvious question (shocking the
audience at the unintentional good lawyering): If you were so afraid of
your husband, why did you post bail?

Her answer was contradictory. But that's ok. This is SVU-lite. Abuse
handwaives away all criminal, contradictory, self-destructive, and
failure to protect children action.

Mauroon gets really pissed at Price and almost threatens to resign.
Price relents and offers a plea deal with one year of prison.