Part 33 Recap – Law & Order: SVU

With the detectives struggling over their testimony in a spousal murder case, “Part 33” (2/7/2019, S20 E14), we had a thought-provoking episode that made me think it might be a good idea to look at the issue that is being portrayed, rather than poking holes in it as a continuing saga where prior stories contradict the way they are acting now. So let’s look at the issue and poke holes later.

Annabeth Pearl and defense attorney, Stella Russell

Annabeth Pearl is on trial for the murder of her police officer husband, Thomas (Tommy). Peter Stone tells the jury that the Pearls had guests for a strip steak dinner and after the guests left, she loaded up the dishwasher, put on a nightie, picked up her husband’s service revolver and put 3 bullets in him. He tells the jury the defense will claim that Annabeth is an abused woman but there is no evidence that Tommy ever laid a finger on her. In her opening statement, defense attorney Stella Russell tells the jury that Annabeth has endured “six years of continued psychological abuse” at her husband’s hands. At dinner, Tommy took one bite of the steak, spit it out and said he was going to feed it to the neighbor’s beagle. That was the pivotal moment that caused Annabeth to snap.

The detectives meanwhile are arriving at various times in a hot waiting room and they become engaged in an argument over whether their testimony should be shaded in such a way that will help Annabeth avoid a prison sentence. Either they bring their “baggage” into it or it gets brought up:

• Fin thinks they should just do their job — testify to what they saw. He is the first to testify and does just that. Afterwards, he gets involved in Olivia Benson’s tortured musings.

• Sonny Carisi knew the victim in the Academy. Tommy Pearl was “a macho piece of crap” who never picked up a tab, paid his bets and liked to brag about cheating on his girlfriend. Carisi recalls how he was unable to make an arrest on a domestic disturbance call because there were no signs of physical violence and the next time, the wife was dead when he got there. On the stand, he shades his testimony by interjecting the possibility that Annabeth was in shock before she fired the gun and he also says it’s possible Tommy threatened to kill her.

A pissed off Stone confronts Olivia Benson with Carisi’s departure from his expected role in the courtroom and accuses her of being behind it: “Keep your bleeding heart out of my courtroom,” he rants.

• Amanda Rollins thinks they should just do their job and tell the truth. The fact that Tommy was a cop makes a difference to her and she doesn’t think he deserved to be shot by his wife. She lived through domestic abuse in her childhood and she believes that her mother was weak and liked being a martyr. She testified matter-of-factly to her initial intake and how Annabeth stated that she killed Tommy because he didn’t like her dinner.

Annabeth herself testified next, recalling her paralyzing fear of her husband and how he always left his gun in plain sight because “it made him feel strong.” But to her, she said, it was like “a lion showing its teeth to a zebra.” She described years of increasing isolation and claimed that he raped her every time they had sex from the moment she said “I do.”

• Olivia Benson recalls the hostage ordeal she went through with William Lewis which has made her acutely aware of the plight of rape victims– to the point where, as Rollins accurately states, she sometimes sees “victims where there aren’t any.” Benson conducted the interrogation and is the one that can really bury Annabeth. Benson was called to testify right after Fin told her about how he caught a 35-pound bluefish that fought harder than any perp he ever encountered. He threw it back because “Anything that’s willing to fight that hard to stay alive deserves to live.” Benson thought that meant he was telling her to lie. On the stand, she tried to soften Annabeth’s remorseless remarks by pointing out that it could be misconstrued if taken out of context. Stone reminded her that she just swore on the Bible to tell the truth and Benson replied: “She said that… she said that she was glad that her husband was dead And that she’d prayed about it for years,” accompanied by a lot of squirming and a miserable expression as Annabeth looked like she was about to panic. That was the last line in the episode so we didn’t even get to see the jury’s verdict and were left to supply our own.

I think she was found guilty. As Peter Stone said, there was no evidence that “she was ever in imminent fear of physical harm.” That’s not to say that I don’t think there are cases like this where the woman is powerless to leave an abuser because of psychological abuse or I don’t understand the dynamics of that. Yes, there are and it can be so bad that the victim might even believe her abuser can see everything she is doing even when she is out of his presence. (Evidently, technology has made that worse). Just the fact that her husband was a policeman likely made her distrust the law. But in this case, the jury may have wondered why she wasn’t afraid to pick up the gun and shoot him, especially if they ever saw a movie like “The Burning Bed,” where the victim killed her husband when he was asleep. What if the gun misfired and he had a chance to get up and take it off her? Where did she learn to shoot a gun anyhow? And another thing was that Annabeth had no children, a not uncommon reason why women don’t leave.

January 2019 News: Ireland makes psychological and emotional abuse a crime.

Poking Holes: For starters, we always thought that William Lewis did not rape Benson. Two other episodes came to mind while watching this: Sunk Cost Fallacy, the one when Alexandra Cabot showed up as an advocate for domestic violence workers. Benson behaved very differently when Cabot thought she should have lied on the stand; and In Loco Parentis, the one with Carisi and his niece, where he was all about manipulating the facts. This guy should not even be a police officer. In fact, with all the baggage these detectives are toting around, one wonders if any of them should be on active duty.

Selected Cast of “Part 33”
Mariska Hargitay – Olivia Benson
Ice-T – Odafin “Fin” Tutuola
Kelli Giddish – Amanda Rollins
Peter Scanavino – Dominic “Sonny” Carisi
Philip Winchester – ADA Peter Stone
Paula Malcomson – Stella Russell
Nicholas Turturro – Det. Frank Bucci
Vincent Curatola – Judge Al Bertuccio
Amy Rutberg – Annabeth Pearl