Baby Killer (Season 2, Episode 5)
Premise: A seven-year-old who shot a classmate at recess is charged with murder until the gun leads detectives to a drug killing he witnessed.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 5
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), Dr. Elizabeth Olivet (Carolyn McCormick)
- Guest stars
- Nicolas Salgado as Elias Barrera, Sara Ramirez as Mrs. Barrera, Carlos Leon as Nicky Crow, Gloria Irizarry as Dorothea Strada, Jeffrey DeMunn as Chief Assistant DA Charlie Phillips
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Story: Dawn DeNoon & Lisa Marie Petersen & Robert F. Campbell & Jonathan Greene; Written by: Lisa Marie Petersen & Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Baby Killer” opens with six-year-old Carly Jackson shot dead at recess in the yard of P.S. 387 in East Harlem. The shooter is seven-year-old Elias Barrera. His parents, who spent the morning at the hospital with his newborn sister, say they own no gun. With their consent Stabler questions Elias, who says Carly kept chasing and kissing him and that he had the gun, before his father asks for a lawyer. A school official saw him drop the gun in a trash can, and his teacher, Sonia Paredes, shows the detectives a drawing he made the day before of someone being shot.
Chief Assistant DA Charlie Phillips, who hopes to succeed District Attorney Lewin, has Cabot charge Elias with murder against her judgment, and a Family Court judge sends the boy to a detention center as protesters gather. Ballistics shows the hand-filed hollow-point came from a gun that killed Shorty Esposito, 23, the night before, and the detectives see that the figure in the drawing wears Shorty’s camouflage pants. Shorty frequented a Santeria supply shop run by Nicky Crow near a drug corner, and a dealer called Sweetness turns out to be Antonio Strada, great-grandson of Elias’s babysitter, Dorothea Strada.
The detectives find Sweetness slashed in his apartment, gasping “machete.” Released to his parents, Elias tells Stabler that Sweetness made him carry drugs and that he saw a man called Machete shoot Shorty through a pillow at Mrs. Strada’s apartment; frightened, he took the gun from the couch where Sweetness hid it. Blood and suitcase wheel marks turn up at Mrs. Strada’s, statements taken after a brawl that night narrow the list, and on a walk-by Elias picks out Nicky Crow, who is arrested. Talking with Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, Elias says he fired at Machete’s men behind the schoolyard fence and hit Carly by mistake.
Phillips refuses to drop the charges, then announces at a press conference that the case is Cabot’s alone. At a Family Court capacity hearing, Olivet, retained by the defense, testifies that Elias understands right and wrong now but did not when he fired in fear, imitating what he had seen. Cabot accepts her finding and withdraws the charges.
Spoiler, the ending: Outside, Carly’s mother, Lorena Jackson, asks the protesters to go home to their own children. As the squad heads out for a celebratory drink, Elias is attacked after other children shun him, and police pull off a 12-year-old, Thomas “TJ” James, who shouts that nobody can kill a sister and simply walk away.
Why it stands out
- Carolyn McCormick appears as psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, here retained by the defense.
- Phillips argues for charging a seven-year-old by pointing to young children killing children since Columbine; Cabot counters that the youngest person ever convicted was 11.
- Sara Ramirez and Robert Montano play Elias’s parents, and Jeffrey DeMunn plays Chief Assistant DA Charlie Phillips.