The Ledger

12.10 Prejudice

In this episode (12.10), a black publishing executive is murdered, apparently because of a fight over a cab with a guy who turns out to be a sort of white-collar white supremacist. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with an incompatible couple on a first date talking about how incompatible they are. She likes tofu, he doesn't, etc. They find a dead body down some stairs by an apartment. He's ID'd as Thomas Reddick, the CEO of a prominent publishing company that specializes in publications for African-Americans. When he learns this, Green says, "He's on the other side of the camera now." Briscoe retorts, "He's on the other side, period."

The dets talks to a security guard at Reddick's office, who tells him he saw Reddick standing next to a cab talking to a white guy. Talking to forensics, they learn Reddick was killed by a Glock. They check to see if any stockholders in the company might be angry with him over some impending business deals. They talk to one guy, an antiques dealer, who was upset that Reddick was bringing the company into the soft-core porn industry, but he wasn't so angry he'd kill him. They also learn that a model was suing Reddick's company because they were going to publicly print some pictures they had assured her would be distributed to a small private audience. Her boyfriend is a suspect for a while because he was so angry at the way his girlfriend was treated, but he turns out to be innocent. The bf's friend, though, says he went to the building with the bf and saw two white guys talking to Reddick next to a cab -- a minivan cab.

Briscoe and Green run down all the minivan cabs in the city, and find the one. He says that he was told by the two white guys to follow the other cab. The cabbie says the guys in the cab were discussing a red-headed barmaid who one of the guys was interested in. They track down this girl, since the bar was right there, and she happens to have a business car belonging to one of the guys. The dets talk to him, and he says that his friend got in a fight with Reddick over a cab. Van Buren's response to hearing this: "A black man finally gets a cab in this city and he gets killed for it."

The friend points the detectives to the murderer, Ray Burrows. Burrows is an arrogant prick, and quickly reveals himself to be a racist with his comments to Green. They find matching bullets and the Glock at his apartment.

It turns out that Burrows has a rather extensive history of racist behavior, and they track down some of his former co-workers to learn more. McCoy wants to file an indictment for a hate crime. The dfesne attorney, recurring character Al Archer, says he's going to use an insansity defense: he says his client suffered from paranoid delusions due to his extreme racism. In other words, he's arguing that racism is a mental defect. In responding, McCoy references another case involving so-called "black rage," in which the defense argued that the defendant, a black man, committed a crime because of all the pressures of being black. (It sounds like he is referring to the case in an episode called Bounty, which was a take on the Jayson Blair case, but that episode came much later. I'll check later to see what he's talking about.)

Anyway, the rest of the episode is about whether racism is really a mental illness. DA Nora Lewin says maybe it is, while Skoda talks to Burrows to see just how messed up he is. Burrows tells all kinds of racist stories and seems like a complete sociopath. Skoda, sporting a mustache, tells McCoy, "He's one scary dude" but he's not insane. Meanwhile, Lewin says we need treatment options for racism! McCoy argues that when hatred becomes an insanity defense, no one will ever be guilty of anything again.

At trial, an expert from Yale testifies that racism is a mental disorder. McCoy in his closing says that the central issue in the case is accountability for one's actions. Verdict comes back guilty.

L&O usually does a great job dealing with race and racism, but this episode is far less subtle than most, and so is a bit disappointing. The show is much better when it deals with the nuances of racism, but this one is so direct and explicit that the defendant becomes almost like a cartoon instead of a human. It weakens the quality of the episode.

Posted by adm at April 9, 2004 07:16 PM

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