Her Negotiation (Season 14, Episode 24)
Premise: A man Rollins arrests for flashing in Central Park refuses an easy plea, then attacks the witness against him, and his record shows a long history of escaping conviction.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, Episode 24
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Rafael Barba (Raúl Esparza), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie)
- Guest stars
- Pablo Schreiber as William Lewis, Judith Ivey as Alice Parker, Lauren Ambrose as Vanessa Mayer, Michael Mastro as Arraignment Judge D. Serani
- Director
- Norberto Barba
- Writers
- Julie Martin & Warren Leight
Summary
“Her Negotiation” opens on a Sunday off. Benson spends hers in Central Park with Cassidy, Fin fills in for Munch at a ballgame with Cragen, and Amaro plays catch with his daughter. Rollins, walking her dog, Frannie, chases down a man who exposed himself to two Finnish teenagers. Alice Parker, a 60-year-old who photographs the park’s architecture, caught him on camera and says she has watched him before. The man, William Lewis, has no ID and freshly burned fingertips; that morning he held them to a hot griddle and then forced another halfway-house resident’s hand onto it. Rollins calls in the squad. Lewis says he is a recovering addict and was only adjusting his clothes. To get his DNA, Barba offers time served at arraignment, but Lewis refuses and is released.
When Cragen returns Alice’s camera that night, Lewis is hiding in her apartment. A friend finds her the next day: Lewis held her at gunpoint for 18 hours, raping her, burning her with cigarettes and branding her with heated keys and hangers. Fin and Rollins catch him at a bodega. In interrogation he taunts Benson with graphic details, all phrased as hypotheticals, until his legal aid lawyer, Vanessa Mayer, stops it. His DNA is on Alice, and a pawnbroker identifies him as the man who sold her cameras and jewelry. Before a lineup he stages a suicide attempt, and Mayer raises his mental state.
Searching other states under reversed and misspelled names, the squad finds his past: an uncharged abduction and rape of his girlfriend’s mother in Kentucky, an Alabama kidnapping and torture case that collapsed when the victims could not testify, and a Maryland trial for the rape and murder of his girlfriend, once his defense lawyer, that ended in acquittal. The judge rules him competent. Then Alice dies of a heart attack, and Warner will not link it to the assault. Lewis turns down a plea deal of four to seven years, and Benson suggests Mayer is his lover.
Spoiler, the ending: At trial, Mayer challenges Alice’s eyesight and the pawnbroker’s motives, then produces an outside report showing the lab tested Lewis’s sample on the same tray as the rape kit. The judge declares a mistrial, and Mayer posts Lewis’s bail. Cragen orders Benson to take two days off. When she arrives home alone, Lewis is waiting inside her apartment and greets her by name, and the season ends there.
Why it stands out
- Pablo Schreiber is introduced as William Lewis, who returns in several Season 15 episodes, beginning with the premiere.
- Dean Winters appears as Cassidy, and Lauren Ambrose and Judith Ivey guest star as Vanessa Mayer and Alice Parker.