The Ledger

9.10 Hate

In this episode (9.10), the brutal death of a 16-year-old girl in Central Park is traced to a group of young skinheads and Nazi sympathizers who were encouraged by a charismatic advocate of White Power. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, while McCoy and Carmichael figure out how to prosecute hate speech in the context of a murder charge.

The episode begins with a young Latino couple walking in the park. The man picks up a ring case from the ground, and uses the ring inside to propose to his girlfriend. She says yes, and as they embrace, she looks over his shoulder and sees the body of a young girl hanging from a tree. The detectives show up and learn she died on the way to the hospital. She has no ID on her, but she's carrying a keychain with a flashlight on it. The flashlight is inscibed with the name of a printing company. They also learn she was beaten and stoned to death.

The detectives question the owner of the shop featured on the flashlight, but the owner of the shop realizes that it's his daughter who has been killed. He identifies her as Christina, and says she went to Brandeis High. We also learn she was strangled with a choke chain, which they hope to trace.

As the prepare to go on with the investigation, Van Buren pulls Briscoe aside and hands him a sheet of paper. Briscoe reads the paper and reacts somewhat emotionally, drawing Curtis' attention. Briscoe tells Curtis that the sheet says tht the guy who shot his daughter (see the episode Damaged) was found dead of a heroin overdose. Briscoe says it's one less thing he has to worry about now.

Christina was missing her student bus pass, and it turns up on a homeless guy who they bring in for questioning. After much rambling, they determine that he found it in a Dumpster by a travel agent's office. The detectives check the dumpster and find Christina's backpack. It contains a travel kit, which leads them to believe she was planning a trip. They check her phone records and discover was talking to a friend in Philadelphia just before her murder. They head down to Philly to question her friend Lori. Lori says Christina wanted to attend a Hitler Youth rally on a farm in Pennsylvania, and had invited. Lori says Christina was clueless about the true nature of these kids, and Lori, being Jewish, declined the invitation. She gives them a flyer advertising the rally.

They show the flyer to Christina's dad, who doesn't know anything about his daughter hanging out with any Nazis, but he recognizes the paper stock, and theorizes that one of his young employeees, Jessica, may have printed the flyers in his shop when he wasn't around.

This is where the detectives begin to break the case wide open: they talk to Jessica, who is defensive, and tells them about her boyfriend Derek. Derek seems to be involved in the movement. They talk to Derek at his home, and he's not helpful. His mom, very rattled and shaky, talks to Briscoe, and its clear she doesn't have any control over her violent son.

A pretzel vendor who works near the travel agent says he saw some kids by the Dumpster on the day of the murder getting into a van that matches Derek's. Forensics goes over the van but doesn't find much evidence, besides a certain kind of moth that is only found in Pennsylvania. Derek says he hasn't been to the farm in PA, so this is suspicious. They pick him up for questioning. He gets into a heated confrontation with Curtis who shoves him down. His mom also talks to Van Buren, and says that Derek sometimes hits her. His mom rolls on him and admits he was in PA.

That sends the detectives down to Nuremberg(!), PA where they execute an arrest warrant at the farm where the remaining suspects in the assault are holed up. The kids are brought into custody at the PA State Police station. The detectives purposely miss the next train back to NYC so they can have more time to question the kids.

They interrogate each of the kids, but only one of them, Peter, seems weak enough to break. They break him. He says the kids killed Christina because she "told her Jew friend" about the rally and was going to rat them out. She was considered a traitor. He also admits that they "stomp" Jews, gay people, and black people, although he uses epithets to describe them.

At arraignment, the whole bunch of kids are brought up on charges. Peter's lawyer makes a motion to separate him from the others and put him into the family court system. It turns out that he's 15 years old, not 18 like it said on the fake ID he gave the detectives. Whoops. His lawyer makes a motion to suppress his statement. The judge allows the statement, until he hears that the kids were also held in PA because of the missed train. For some reason, this is in violation of procedure, and the judge throws out the statement. As McCoy says, that puts the case "in the crapper."

They make another attempt to roll Jessica, Derek's girlfriend. It foes a little better, and she mentions a man named Tom Willis, a white power advocate who heads a loosely knit organization and publishes a newsletter advocating violent solutions. Jessica says Tom told the kids that traitors like Christina had to be dealt with.

They want to go inside Willis's organization to get him to make an incriminating statement. Through an intelligence detective, they get a snitch to accompany a detective to a Willis meeting. Briscoe and Curtis can't go in, and Van Buren can't either, so they get good ole Morris Lamott, aka Mo, to go in. He does, but they fail to to get Willis to make any incriminating statements about the murder. Mo does, however, get a videotape of Willis making some pro-white-people speeches. McCoy wants to seize other videotapes, and he charges Willis with distributing alcohol to minors, just so he can get him into custody. Curtis asks, "Can we just skip the formalities and shoot Willis?"

With Willis in custody, they review the tapes and see him talking to Derek, but Carmichael says that's not enough evidence to really prove anything. They try to roll Peter again. They have a meeting in the family conference room. At first, Peter starts in with the white power crap again, but then his dad slaps him upside the head and tells him that Peter's grandfather took a bullet fighting the Nazis and he'll be damned if his own son is not going to respect that. Peter rolls, and mentions another figure in the organization, Jimmy Parnell. Parnell, Peter says, participated in an unsolved gay bashing incident in the city.

McCoy argues that Willis can be charged with murder because he indirectly encouraged the kids to kill Christina. Both Schiff and Carmichael feel this isn't going to work and are concerned about the free speech implications, but they just roll their eyes at him and McCoy proceeds.

Things move along, and all the kids and Parnell plead out on various charges, though Derek refuses to deal. So they put Derek and Willis on trial for Murder 2.

At trial (48 mins), not a lot of time is spent on camera proving Derek's involvement: it all goes to showing that Willis's speeches constituted "conduct" that he can be held legally accountable for. Arguments go both ways, and continue for a long time, but eventually -- probably swayed by McCoy quoting Willis as stating that the Holocause was necessary -- the jury finds both Derek and Willis guilty of Murder 2.

After the verdict, Carmichael and Schiff again question the value of the case, but McCoy realizes his victory is not absolute. "If I thought I could stop hate with one prosecution, I'd be a fool," he says. Schiff replies, "Yep. But you'd be my kind of fool."

Posted by adm at May 27, 2004 10:45 PM

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