Law and Order: "Truth and Consequences" (Dick Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired November 14, 2024)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Thursday, November 14) my husband Charles and I watched the Law and Order and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit franchise shows on NBC and then I switched to CBS for Elsbeth, a series I’ve become quite taken with lately. The Law and Order episode was one that attempted to dramatize the ongoing controversies on college campuses over Israel’s genocidal attack on Palestinians in Gaza in response to the truly horrific but much less deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Called “Truth and Consequences,” it deals with the sudden and brutal murder of Charles Bennett (Timothy Hull), husband of Judge Madeline Bennett (Michaela Watkins) just a week after someone involved in the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus broke into the Bennetts’ home and stole the Israeli flag they had displayed inside. Ultimately the killer turns out to be law student Thomas Norton (Leon Aiken), who after his third year of law school at Hudson University was offered a clerkship by Judge Bennett – only Judge Bennett withdrew the offer after Norton got involved in the pro-Palestinian protests and the strongly pro-Israel Bennett didn’t approve of his politics. Norton went off the deep end and burst into the Bennett home; unfortunately the judge was out so he accosted her husband, grabbed a golf club, and clubbed him to death with it.

The prosecutors, Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) and Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), need to get Norton’s girlfriend, Daniela Rojas (Linedy Genao), to testify against him even though that gets her into trouble with the authorities, since her participation in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations violated school policy and her testimony not only gets her expelled but deported to her native Venezuela. Then, after having wrecked Daniela’s life, the prosecutors and their boss, district attorney Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn), go easy on Judge Bennett when they find that for the last six years, since she had a skiing accident, she’s been addicted to opiate painkillers. The city’s mayor, Robert Payne (Bruce Altman) – who you’ll recall pushed for Baxter’s appointment as D.A. in the first place following the eventual resignation of Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) about a year and a half ago – tells Baxter not to call Judge Bennett as a witness because her opiate addiction could lead to the convictions in hundreds of cases she heard being reversed on appeal and lots of criminals going free. (That seems to be a little far-fetched to me.) So the defenseless, unprivileged Venezuelan immigrant gets screwed over by the system and the white judge goes free and gets to continue her career just fine. The prosecutors ultimately cut a deal with Thomas Norton by which he pleads to manslaughter and gets a 10-year sentence – to the understandable disgust of Charles Bennett’s brother Sam (Stephen Kunken), who’d been attending the trial throughout. Though this Law and Order tried to squeeze in too many themes, it was still one of the better ones and proof that there’s still life left in this hoary old show!