Law and Order: "Benefit of the Doubt" (Wolf Entertainment, Universal Television, NBC-TV, aired October 13, 2022)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night I watched my usual Thursday night run of three shows in various incarnations of Dick Wolf’s Law and Order franchise: Law and Order, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Laqw and Order: Organized Crime. The Law and Order episode was called “Benefit of the Doubt” and dealt with the torture and murder of a young woman who had just published Cinnamon Girl, a memoir of her days as a waitress at the Yellow Ticket restaurant, a month before she was killed. The cops at first suspect the restaurant’s former chef, Victor Bernini (Jeremy Crutchley), because he was fired after the late author’s book revealed he’d been a serial sexual harasser of the varioius waitresses and other women working there. The cops initially suspect Victor because the victim’s earring was cut off and so was a lock of her hair, and the knife used was of a sort used by chefs. But they eventually clear him and just then the lead detectives on this show, Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan) and Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks, who’s O.K. but I really miss Anthony Anderson), are approached by a retired New York City detective named Jerry Ryan (John Bedford Lloyd) who has become obsessed that a serial killer is targeting women in various locations all over the world and the current case is just one of these. Among the others were one in Los Angeles, one in London and another in New York’s Chinatown. Ryan becomes convinced the culprit is actor Niles Harper (Corey Cott), a second-tier performer who does TV shows and commercials as well as an occasional part in a feature film but isn’t enough of a major star that there are people protesting outside the courthouse either demanding his exoneration or damning him the way they were on both sides in last week’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode. Ryan has researched Harper’s work schedule and found he was in each of the cities when and where the murders occurred, and they learn that Niles drives a black Tesla (given the overall creepiness of Tesla owner Elon Musk, what else would a serial killer who was also at least a semi-major star drive?)/

The three of them stalk Niles and stake out the car, and against the advice of Cosgrove and Shaw, Ryan demands that they search the car immediately without waiting for a warrant because that’s the way they used to do it old-school. Alas, the judge in the case, Kenneth Maldonado (Leon Addison Brown), throws out the search as a violation of Harper’s Fourth Amendment rights and disallows any evidence found in it, including the bloody earring Harper sliced off the victim’s ear. Executive assistant district attorney Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) gives the cops just two days to find evidence from a non-illegal search that they can use to convict Harper, and acting on a clue Harper’s attorney dropped – that he’s been donating money to the South Bronx to rehabilitate old buildings, Ryan, Cosgrove and Shaw stake out a warehouse and ultimately find a necklace the victim, Christine Watkins, had been given by her mother Patti (Barbra Wengerd). Only the necklace turned up in a part of the warehouse that Cosgrove had previously searched and not found it; Shaw actually recovered it, but only once Ryan pointed him to it. Later Cosgrove and Shaw learn that Ryan had been to see Patti Watkins just an hour before the search, leading to the implication that Ryan got the necklace from Patti that afternoon and planted it on the scene. Price gets his conviction but has to live with the possibility that it was based on planted evidence. Where I thought writer Peter Blauner was going with this was that Harper would be acquitted, or the case against him thrown out, but the authorities would re-investigate the Chinatown murder and nail him for that one. But I actually like the ending Blauner supplied more than I’d have liked that one.