Snitch (Season 9, Episode 10)
Premise: The murder of a 15-year-old Nigerian bride seems to be a drug dealer’s warning to a witness, until the investigation turns to her husband’s other wives.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 10
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Chester Lake (Adam Beach), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle)
- Guest stars
- Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Chuckwei Bothame, Tracy Middendorf as Sarah Flint, Method Man as Dennis King, Gloria Reuben as Christine Danielson, Muna Otaru as Almani Bothame
- Director
- Jonathan Kaplan
- Writers
- Mark Goffman
Summary
“Snitch” opens when volunteers cleaning up the East River pull out a trash bag holding a teenage girl’s body, her ankles bound with cable. A man found nearby, Jesse Bleyer, punches Benson and then confesses in a daze, but he is an epileptic coming out of a seizure, and video puts him outside a bodega at the time. The cable was cut in an alley on 169th Street, and Warner finds oak splinters in the girl’s scalp and scarring from a badly healed female circumcision done within the past six months. Immigration records identify her as Nikkiel Kwambe, 15, a Nigerian whose visa ran out six months earlier. At her sponsor’s address the detectives catch Mira Otame cutting another girl and arrest her, and she admits she circumcised Nikki.
At Nikki’s home Chuckwei Bothame, a 35-year-old Nigerian with a crippled arm, flees, then says Nikki was his wife of nine months; his alibi holds. A boy there wears a “Lie or die” T-shirt, and its maker points Fin to a website that posts informants’ names and addresses. It lists Chuckwei as a key witness against Harlem drug dealer Dennis King, accused of beating 16-year-old Damon Moore to death; another witness was killed after being named. Chuckwei’s lawyer, Sarah Flint, says he was jailed and beaten in Nigeria and married Nikki by phone to get her away from attacks on Christians that killed her sisters. King turns up at Nikki’s funeral, and Homicide Bureau Chief Christine Danielson has him jailed for breaking a protection order, but he makes bail.
In protective custody, Chuckwei reveals that Sarah and Almani, who called herself his cousin, are also his wives. Prosecutors overlook the polygamy to convict King, but with witness protection money short, the family gets only a motel room and alarm pendants. After a note threatens their son Obi, they go home, and Stabler stays with them. On the stand, Chuckwei says he saw nothing. Given 24 hours to prove intimidation, O’Halloran traces the note to the family’s own printer, and Almani is found beaten unconscious at the house.
Spoiler, the ending: In the hospital, Almani says Nikki fell down the stairs during a fight with Sarah over Chuckwei, that Sarah drove off with her, came back alone and threatened to have her deported. Confronted in front of Chuckwei, Sarah admits writing the note, saying the police were not protecting the family, insists Nikki’s fall was an accident and is arrested for her murder. Chuckwei returns to the stand and identifies King as the man who killed Damon Moore. King screams death threats at him and his family and is hauled out of court, and Chuckwei says he is no longer afraid.
Why it stands out
- Method Man plays Harlem drug dealer Dennis King, and Steven Weber plays King’s defense attorney, Matthew Braden.
- Gloria Reuben plays Christine Danielson, the new Homicide Bureau Chief who prosecutes King.