Gray (Season 12, Episode 9)
Premise: A college student accused of raping a drunk classmate is found to have secretly used an abortion-inducing drug on his pregnant girlfriend.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 9
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Exec. ADA Sonya Paxton (Christine Lahti), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Charlie Barnett as Chuck Mills, Gwynneth Bensen as Carla Vincent, CCH Pounder as Carolyn Maddox, Kate Nelligan as Trial Judge Sylvia Quinn, Allison Siko as Kathleen Stabler
- Director
- Helen Shaver
- Writers
- George Huang
Summary
“Gray” opens with Hudson University’s Take Back the Night rally, where Stabler stands in for Benson, home with Calvin, as a speaker his daughter Kathleen invited. Student Bethany Jennings interrupts to accuse premed Chuck Mills of raping her the previous May, when she was too drunk to walk home after a party and stayed at his place. Chuck says she came on to him. Campus police sent her complaint to a disciplinary committee, which gave him community service, and the detectives argue over whether a drunk woman can consent. With Hardwicke in Albany, Sonya Paxton steps in, sober after rehab and on probation with the DA, and calls it a gray rape she cannot win.
The school hides behind privacy law, but a psychologist who quit the committee says Hudson buries rapes and tells Stabler to ask Kathleen, who was meant to stay sober and watch over Bethany that night but left her alone. Chuck is arrested after scuffling with student Felicia Zorn in a bar, then released when she fails to show. Kathleen brings her father Chuck’s disciplinary file, slipped to her by a friend in the dean’s office. It shows Felicia is being expelled over a banner calling Chuck a murderer, and she explains that his girlfriend, Carla Vincent, recently miscarried; Carla tells the detectives it happened the day after he used a homemade “love potion” during sex. Paxton and the detectives catch him returning with it: petroleum jelly mixed with misoprostol, an ulcer drug that can cause abortion.
Chuck is charged with abortion and assault. His lawyer, Carolyn Maddox, says the drug treats his erectile dysfunction and warns Carla that her earlier abortion will come out. Maddox has also learned where the file came from, and Paxton and Stabler clash over Kathleen before Paxton agrees to credit the file to a confidential informant. At the arraignment Maddox accuses Judge Sylvia Quinn of bias, and Quinn steps aside for Judge Marcus Ridiger, who helped send Paxton to rehab. Quinn then privately persuades Carla to testify by telling her how three college boys raped her nearly 40 years ago.
Spoiler, the ending: Carla does not come to court, and Ridiger gives the prosecution until the end of the day before the case is thrown out. She is found dead at home. Warner attributes her death to toxic shock from the incomplete miscarriage, with the misoprostol having weakened her defenses. Chuck, celebrating the dismissal at a bar, is arrested for second-degree manslaughter.
Why it stands out
- Christine Lahti returns as Executive ADA Sonya Paxton, whose drinking was exposed in season 11; the episode opens with her back from rehab and on probation.
- CCH Pounder plays defense attorney Carolyn Maddox, Kate Nelligan plays Judge Sylvia Quinn and Dick Latessa plays Judge Marcus Ridiger.
- Allison Siko and Isabel Gillies appear as Kathleen and Kathy Stabler.