Justice Denied (Season 13, Episode 17)
Premise: When a Fleet Week rape copies a 2004 case, Benson must face the possibility that the confession she obtained sent an innocent man to prison.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 17
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Exec. ADA David Haden (Harry Connick Jr.), Defense Attorney Bayard Ellis (Andre Braugher)
- Guest stars
- Guillermo Diaz as Omar Peña, Cynthia LaForte as Gina Logan, Samantha Soule as Ariel Baskins, Mark Consuelos as Matt Martinez, Ramon Fernandez as Javier Maranhao
- Director
- Michael Slovis
- Writers
- Story: Warren Leight; Story & teleplay: Stuart Feldman
Summary
“Justice Denied” opens in 2004, as Benson ends a nine-hour interrogation with Omar Peña’s confession to the rape and torture of Ariel Baskins. Eight years later Peña, representing himself, asks Judge Karyn Blake for modern DNA testing, and she refuses. During Fleet Week, Gina Logan, 23, is found tied to her bed after a man in a white sailor’s uniform followed her from a bar, gagged and slashed her and poured ammonia in her eyes. Benson recognizes every element of Peña’s crime, but he is still in prison. Benson, meanwhile, is secretly seeing Executive ADA David Haden.
Suspecting a copycat, the squad finds Matt Martinez (called Mike in the episode), a parolee and dishonorably discharged sailor whom jailhouse lawyer Peña helped free. A CSU expert reads the knots as a left-hander’s. Benson pushes Martinez to the edge of a confession, but Amaro pulls her out: DNA from under Gina’s nails is not his, so he returns to prison instead for statutory rape of his 15-year-old girlfriend. Bayard Ellis, who answered one of Peña’s thousands of letters, takes his case. Benson assures Haden the confession was clean, and he turns down the retest, though Amaro notes that Peña writes right-handed.
Benson goes back to Ariel, who mentions that the scarf used to gag her was red. Peña’s confession said green, matching an evidence log by an officer whose early multiple sclerosis had affected his color vision. Benson realizes the detail came from the detectives and takes the blame. Touch DNA from the ropes links both rapes to one man, but Peña wants his conviction vacated, not a retrial. Ellis confronts Haden about his relationship with Benson, and Benson asks Ellis for one week to find the real rapist.
Interpol matches the DNA to rapes in Buenos Aires, Naples and Rota, each during an international fleet week, and a Brazilian frigate, the Maranhão, whose sailors’ uniforms resemble American ones, is about to sail. Gina and Ariel both identify Javier, a sailor who testified in 2004 that he saw Peña bothering Ariel at a bar. Brazil will not surrender him, so the detectives lure him ashore with a farewell party, where he shows himself to be left-handed and is taken into custody.
Spoiler, the ending: With Haden telling the court the DA’s office has no objection, the judge vacates Peña’s conviction and apologizes to him, and the lab ties Javier’s DNA to all five attacks. Cragen tells Benson the DA is creating a Conviction Integrity Unit, starting with sex crimes and led by Haden. Benson tells Amaro he is a good partner. Because Haden will now review her cases, he and Benson agree to end their relationship and act as if it never happened.
Why it stands out
- The episode closes the season’s arcs for Harry Connick Jr. as David Haden and Andre Braugher as Bayard Ellis, and ends Benson’s romance with Haden.
- TV Guide ranked the episode 21st on its list of the best TV episodes of 2012, singling out the breakup.
- Some of its scenes and dialogue are taken from the season 6 episode “Quarry.”