Bend the Law (Season 24, Episode 19)
Premise: Carisi must build a case against his own boss’s husband when 15-year-old girls are found serving members of an exclusive club, while Velasco tracks down an old cartel friend in Maine.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 19
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Grace Muncy (Molly Burnett), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Trial Division Chief Lorraine Maxwell (Betty Buckley), Det. Tonie Churlish (Jasmine Batchelor)
- Guest stars
- Tom Irwin as Roger Briggs, Joseph Castillo-Midyett as Anthony “Chilly” Suarez, Kailena Mai as Vice Principal Elle Santini, Anna Holbrook as Alice Woolcott, Wynn Harmon as Francis Fuller
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Story: David Graziano & Julie Martin & Kathy Dobie & Nolan Dunbar; Teleplay: Brendan Feeney & Gabriel Vallejo
Summary
“Bend the Law” opens as Benson tells Velasco she has found his childhood friend Anthony “Chilly” Suarez, the cartel gunman Velasco has been shielding since their days in Juárez: money sent to Chilly’s mother traces to a woman named Elle Santini in Camden, Maine. Benson sends Velasco there with Churlish rather than Muncy. In Manhattan, Trial Division Chief Lorraine Maxwell toasts her seventh anniversary with her second husband, Roger Briggs. That night, at his private Whitmere Club, Alice Woolcott, who has found condoms in her husband Harold’s briefcase, storms in and fires birdshot into his groin as he sits with a girl in his lap. The girls serving the members are 15.
Roger, a witness, calls it a misunderstanding. The girls say a man approached them at a mall with jobs as hostesses, and that members later paid them with cash and gifts for sexual acts. Member Francis Fuller, through his lawyer, names Roger as the mastermind and says he traded Polaroids of the girls. Carisi indicts Fuller, Harold and Dean Roberts but lacks evidence against Roger, who claims Fuller is squeezing him over a real estate venture. Maxwell tells Benson and Carisi that Fuller sold his stake a year earlier and that the money Roger lost was hers. Searches turn up nothing until officers search his club locker and find nude pictures of the three girls. Benson arrests him quietly at home. The girls say the pictures were taken without their knowledge, and Roger is charged with possessing sexual images of children; his lawyer, Art Blumfeld, dismisses any trafficking charge. Refusing a plea, Roger warns Maxwell that if he goes down at trial, she goes with him.
In Maine, Velasco and Churlish learn that Santini is a vice principal and that Chilly, now going by Anthony Santini, is her husband. Velasco secretly records him admitting to later killings, including a massacre at a motel in El Centro. Elle discovers the recording and turns a gun on Velasco, begging for her husband, but he talks her down. Back in New York, a drunk Roger lays out a takeout anniversary dinner, insults Maxwell and then begins to choke; she calls 911.
Spoiler, the ending: Roger dies, and the medical examiner rules it an accident, though Carisi finds the timing convenient. Velasco hands Benson the recording, which covers unsolved killings in California and Arizona but was made without consent, illegal in Maine; she tells him the decision is now out of his hands. Maxwell tells Benson she tried to help her husband. Benson says nothing contradicts her story but the death must still be investigated, and Maxwell warns her that the conversation had better never come back on her.
Why it stands out
- Tom Irwin guest stars as Roger Briggs, the second husband of Betty Buckley’s Trial Division Chief Lorraine Maxwell.
- The episode resolves Velasco’s storyline about his friend from his cartel past in Juárez, the man who covered for him on the night of a killing.
- Maxwell tells Benson she left an abusive first marriage with a settlement that supports her and Roger.