The Ledger

14.18 Evil Breeds

In this episode (14.18), an elderly Holocaust survivor is found dead in her apartment, and it looks like one of her Nazi guards is to blame. Briscoe and Green investigate while McCoy and Southerlyn figure out how to prosecute a crime whose roots go back 60 years.

The episode begins with a Chinese food delivery man discovering the body of the dead woman. Police determine her name is Leah Glaser and that the door was pushed in, she was hit in the head, and smothered. A younger friend of Glaser tells cops Glaser had a lot of money around the apartment, which the police didn't find. Briscoe and Green check the files for similar cases and talk to victims of similar crimes. They learn that all the victims shared the same hospital and at-home care giver, Joe Vasquez. They track down Vasquez (making a higher than usual number of jokes) and find Vasquez's boss who tells them that Joe was trying to "turn over a new lease on life." They talk to the victim's daughter, who tells them that the Glaser was a holocaust survivor and had recently told her story for the Shoah Project, which attempts to document first-hand accounts of the Holocaust. She also says that Glaser was planning to testify against Stefan Anders, an American resident accused of being a Nazi. They search Anders apartment and find a locket belonging to Glaser. They bring him in for interrogation and arrest him. As they prepeare for trial, his lawyer makes a motion to suppress evidence of his client's involvement with the Nazis. At trial, the defense wants to take the unusual approach of declaring that there was no Holocaust or "Final Solution." The judge prohibits this (while he's taking medicine, for some reason.)

As the investigation continues, we learn that Anders' DNA matches some found at the victim's apartment, but there is additional DNA there, too. They learn that Anders has been publicly supported by Kyle Mellers, a twenty-something man who runs a white-power oriented music label. The detectives visit him, and Green gets Mellers to sign a record, which he promptly uses to get Mellers' fingerprints. It's a match, and they prepare to arrest him.

As the DAs prepare their case, Southerlyn meets with an anti-hate-crimes lawyer, though it's not exactly clear why. In any case, their exchange is one of the most poorly acted scenes in the history of the show. I mean it is really bad. Southerlyn talks like a robot and the other guy seems to have no idea how to respond to her.

Despite all this bad acting, Mellers is arrested (44 mins) and the case makes it to trial (46 mins), and McCoy reads aloud some lyrics from Mellers' bands, and uses the N-word while doing do. McCoy "calls to the stand" the victim herself (who is dead) and manages to get her Shoah testimony played for the jury. This seems preposterous, but whatever. The judge allows it, and her videotaped testimony is shown in court. I have to admit, the testimony itself was pretty moving.

McCoy's ploy works, and both Mellers and Anders are found guilty. Southerlyn asks McCoy whether Anders was really guilty of the crime, and McCoy responds, "the jury knew a guilty man when they saw one," meaning that Anders may not have been guilty of this particular crime, but he was a Nazi, so they may as well throw him in jail anyway.

Posted by adm at May 13, 2004 10:08 PM

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