Liberties (Season 10, Episode 21)
Premise: A stalker uses a fantasy rape website to set up his former girlfriend, while the judge hearing his case pursues the truth about the son he lost three decades ago.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 21
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Alan Dale as Judge Joshua Koehler, Jon Patrick Walker as Tyler Brunson, Sprague Grayden as Pam Galliano, Silas Weir Mitchell as Owen Walters, Victor Arnold as Roy Lee Dotson
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Liberties” begins when Pam Galliano is raped by a man who drops through her skylight, and she fights back with a dumbbell, leaving him with a concussion. The man, Owen Walters, says he met her on a fantasy rape website and carries the detailed instructions she supposedly sent him. Pam denies ever visiting such a site, but child pornography turns up on her computer, and a TARU technician finds it was planted remotely through a hidden back door. Owen is still charged, since Pam refused and he did not stop. Pam blames her former boyfriend, Tyler Brunson, a computer consultant who stalked her for a year and a half in Rhode Island before she moved to Manhattan. Utility records show Tyler recently rented an apartment directly across the street from hers.
With another judge out for surgery, Judge Joshua Koehler hears Cabot’s request and grants Pam a temporary order of protection. Tyler calls Pam the obsessive one, and his Defense Department laptop is out of reach. He then grabs Pam by the throat on the street, letting go only after her dog, Baby, bites him and takes several kicks. Benson and Stabler bluff that an enhanced copy of a doctored photo of Pam will tie it to his bedroom, and Tyler admits his scheme. His lawyer, Hashi Horowitz, argues the confession was coerced, and Koehler grants a Huntley hearing but revokes Tyler’s bail after he tries to walk out. Tyler shouts a line about tyrants at the judge and insults Pam.
Koehler then asks Stabler for help. Thirty years earlier, his three-year-old son, Marshall, vanished from a picnic, and serial killer Roy Lee Dotson, dying in prison, has never said where the boy is buried. At Sing Sing, Roy taunts Stabler until Stabler chokes him, and he names a pool outside a recreation center, where Warner finds a stain left by decomposed remains. During the trial Koehler takes calls and walks out mid-testimony, then fails to appear in court. Fin, sent to his home, finds that Koehler has attacked Gregory Brunson, Tyler’s father, who Tyler says abused him throughout his childhood.
Spoiler, the ending: Warner reports that the pool remains belonged to another of Roy’s victims, and that Koehler had her compare Tyler’s DNA with hair from Marshall’s baby book. Tyler is Marshall. Koehler explains that Gregory Brunson, not Roy, took the boy, and that he recognized his son when Tyler quoted the moral of an Aesop fable he used to read him. Koehler refuses a trial and says he will accept any sentence. Tyler, angry that the judge caused a mistrial, is brought to see him, and the episode ends as he begins to realize who Koehler is.
Why it stands out
- Alan Dale plays Judge Joshua Koehler, and Victor Arnold plays serial killer Roy Lee Dotson.
- Stephanie March’s Alexandra Cabot prosecutes the case in her last credited episode of the season.