December 26, 2003
12.24 Patriot: Nora Lewin's Last Episode. Thank God.
Scare-mongering post-9/11 season finale of season 12, notable only for three things: the big explosion in the prologue, a shot of where the WTC used to be and explicit dialogue reminding us of that fact, and a discussion of the issue of who is entitled to kill enemy combatants, and where. In this episode (12.24), a Yemeni man suspected of being a terrorist by a Gulf War soldier is killed. If he's acquitted of the crime, McCoy fears it would be open season on all people of Middle Eastern origin. He's right, but what the show also fails to mention is that it is itself guilty of the same stereotyping that leads to the thought that it's ok to kill or suspect people because of their background.The episode begins with some cops walking down the street discussing a bachelor party. Behind them, an apartment explodes. The victim is Mr Hayden, found in a 3rd floor apartment. Briscoe and Green investigate, McCoy and Southerlyn prosecute. The detectives talk to the forensics guy (Beck, I think), who shows them how the apartment blew up when it filled with natural gas from the stove and the gas reached the level of a litl candle. They talk to the landlord, but it doesn't seem like he had a motive to blow up his building, since the tenants are on a rent strike and he doesn't have insurance.
They talk to people in the neighborhood and learn that Hayden was Arabic or Indian. The medical examiner pages them and tells them that Hayden died before the fire, and he was beaten and tied up.
They visit his laundramat, which leads to an oil change place where he worked. For some reason, his checkbook is in his locker there. This leads to an e-bank, where they learn he had "elite status" and had $89,000 in his account.
Back at the precinct, they look into his financial records with OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control. They have to wait for the results.
They talk to a forger at Rikers, who says he made a driver's license for Hayden, and he wants protection. At this point the tone of the episode gets more serious as it begins to appear that Hayden's real name was Yusef Haddad and that he was a terrorist. The state department confirms his identity. He applied through them for political asylum but was turned down. Briscoe and Green discuss deportation procedures and the politics of them, and as they do so, they walk by Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center used to be. Briscoe uses this to underscore his point.
They visit a mosque where the Imam tells them that Haddad was targeted on an anti-Muslim website. They talk to a man named Mr Teague who runs the website. They learn that the FBI received a tip on Haddad/Hayden from a man calling himself Frank Miller, a veteran of the Gulf War. They get a warrant for Teague and find a box of material related to Haddad, including tapes of his phone conversations, including tapes of calls he made on his cell phone. Who knows how they got those, but whatever.
They still can't find Miller himself, however. For some reason, the ADAs get involved in trying to track Miller down, which makes no sense. They learn that he's visited a pharmacy to keep up his prescriptions. Well, that's fortunate. They visit Miller's friend, who is wheelchair-bound and who apparently has been helping Miller with his life on the lam. In the meantime, they arrest Teague for conspiracy (32').
Teague tells McCoy that Haddad spoke in suspicious code, and then he rolls on Miller. Miller is arrested in a raid (35'). At his arraignment, Miller denies the jurisdiction of the court and says it's war. The judge allows him to claim that he killed Haddad because he was a soldier in fear.
The FBI gets back to them about Haddad's financials, and it looks like he was paid for by a Sudanese charity tied to terrorist organizations. Lewin tells the ADAs to offer Miller Manslaughter I. Way to go you idiot. Somebody shoots a Middle Eastern guy in cold blood and you want to let him off with a comparative slap on the wrist. Whatever happened to all your liberal ideas, Nora? Thank God this is your last episode. Thankfully, McCoy once again resists Lewin's idiot impulses and decides he has to make an example of Miller.
Miller is found guilty of Murder 2 after 5 days of deliberation.
Lewin closes the episode by asking McCoy if he thinks "the American dream is still safe." Well, not as long as DAs like you are ready to condone killing immigrants for no reason, Nora. You jerk.
I wished the L&O folks had done something more interesting with the topic than this. The episode is not particularly well-structured or engagingly written, and although it appears on the L&O: Crime Scenes DVD, it is not as good as the other episodes in that set.
Posted by adm at December 26, 2003 09:33 PM