Accomplice Liability (Season 26, Episode 17)
Premise: Carisi, a witness instead of the prosecutor this time, pushes a Brooklyn ADA to hold the surviving deli gunman responsible for everything that happened, including a hostage’s rape.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 26, Episode 17
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Stacey Farber as ADA Camille Rourke, Keith Machekanyanga as Deonte Mosley, Paige Herschell as Tess Milburn, Juan Pablo Raba as Andre Vaughn, Jon Sklaroff as Jay Goldstein
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Story: Gabriel Vallejo & Nicholas Evangelista; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“Accomplice Liability” picks up after the deli hostage standoff in which Carisi was held at gunpoint. Brooklyn ADA Camille Rourke, who has the case against Deonte Mosley, plans to offer 15 years for the felony murder of clerk Ali Imran plus time for the armed robbery. Carisi, who comes to the meeting with his wife, Rollins, wants every crime he witnessed charged, including the rape of hostage Tess Milburn by Mosley’s partner, Boyd Lynch, whom Mosley shot dead. Rourke has been told the rape count is the weakest. At Rikers, Mosley’s lawyer, Andre Vaughn, turns down the offer, and Mosley says Carisi told him that shooting Boyd would be self-defense.
Tess has been missing for a week. Elizabeth Alden, the other young woman held in the deli, tells Benson and Rollins that Tess seemed to be using and stole her laptop. Its tracker leads to a New Jersey building where a dealer, Marquis Wallace, lives, and they find Tess overdosing and revive her with Narcan; she has fentanyl and benzodiazepines in her system. Velasco, who was at the deli, volunteers to keep watch over her. The judge refuses Vaughn’s request to bar Carisi’s testimony. After Marquis is led out of the hospital, Tess goes into cardiac arrest during withdrawal and is revived. Carisi presses Rourke to pursue the rape, arguing that Boyd had been out of prison only a few hours and must have gotten his gun from Mosley, and Benson and Rollins persuade Tess to testify.
At trial Benson describes watching Mosley on a fiberscope camera doing nothing during the 40 minutes Boyd held Tess in the cooler, and Elizabeth concedes under cross-examination that Boyd gave the orders. On the day she is due in court, Tess vanishes from her hotel; Velasco and Fin find her shaken but not high, and she tells the jury about the rape. Vaughn paints Carisi as vengeful and hot-headed, and when Mosley smiles at him, Carisi shouts at him as he leaves the stand and is threatened with contempt. Mosley testifies that Boyd forced him at gunpoint; Rourke asks where the guns came from and why he never walked out. She then calls Jay Goldstein, a fake lawyer awaiting trial for poisoning his mother, who advised Mosley at Rikers and says Mosley shot Boyd so that Boyd could not testify against him.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Mosley on four counts of armed robbery and the second-degree murders of Imran and Boyd, but acquits him of the rape. Tess, planning to stay with Elizabeth, thanks Carisi, and Rollins tells him it is time he moved on too.
Why it stands out
- A follow-up to “Cornered,” earlier in the season, in which Carisi and three civilians were held hostage in a bodega by Boyd Lynch and Deonte Mosley.
- Kelli Giddish returns as Amanda Rollins, now Carisi’s wife, in one of her five guest appearances this season.
- Carisi is a witness rather than the prosecutor; the case belongs to Brooklyn ADA Camille Rourke (Stacey Farber).