Over Here (Season 17, Episode 21)
Premise: Two homeless men are beaten to death, one of them an Iraq War veteran, and the trail leads to a door-to-door magazine crew and a brain-injured soldier failed by a VA hospital.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 17, Episode 21
- Detectives
- Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin), Det. Nina Cassady (Milena Govich)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Ben Curtis as Robert Cole, Vincent Piazza as Peter Harris, Patrizia Hernandez as Audrey Hermenez, Matthew Del Negro as defense attorney Peter Fetzer, Mike Pniewski as Dr. Petravian
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Over Here” opens with two homeless men beaten to death within an hour of each other: one staggers into a veterinary clinic and dies, and the other, carrying a New Jersey license for William McCarter, is found on the Lower East Side. Both bear a boot-heel bruise on the temple. Shrapnel scars and a unit tattoo mark the first man as an Iraq War veteran. A hotel worker knew him as David, and a car dealership names him as David Kreidel, whom it was suing to get him out of the alley where he slept.
A security camera there caught the beating, without the attackers’ faces, along with an onlooker who dropped a tourist map. That leads to a Lower East Side hotel room trashed by young guests and to blank checks stolen from Rachel Hutton, who had bought magazines from a polite young pair. Kreidel’s sister tells Van Buren the Army discharged him for a personality disorder rather than post-traumatic stress, which left him without benefits.
The crew’s manager bought a bus ticket home for Tommy Bennett, who says the sellers were cheated by their bosses and that his crewmates beat him when he tried to quit. He names Pete Harris, Bobby Cole and Audrey Hermenez and leads the detectives to their next sales route, where all three are arrested.
The Trial
The video proves weaker than promised, and Audrey says Harris and Cole rescued her when men from down the hall raped her. Cole, an Iraq veteran with a Purple Heart, suffered a brain injury from a roadside bomb and recovered for eight months, mostly at Linden, a Brooklyn VA hospital, before a general discharge. At the hospital McCoy and Rubirosa find a closed ward full of mold, rats and roaches and learn that Cole attacked staff three times. Harris agrees to testify, and Cole switches to an insanity plea.
Under his deal, Harris describes Cole cleaning his boots after the attacks and slipping into trances, but on cross he concedes he may have redirected Cole’s anger by calling strangers the enemy, but says he was too drunk to recall that night. A federal judge, citing a criminal negligence case against the VA in New Mexico, bars all evidence about conditions at Linden. Branch tells McCoy to comply, and Van Buren recalls how VA doctors and nurses saved her father after he was wounded in Korea. McCoy then grills a VA doctor about Cole’s missing prescription and the ward photos.
Spoiler, the ending: Cole accepts a 20-year sentence, noting he will at least get his medication. The U.S. Attorney’s office seeks contempt charges against McCoy for defying the federal order; Branch offers to represent him but warns him never to do it again.
Why it stands out
- McCoy defies a federal order barring evidence about a VA hospital, and the U.S. Attorney’s office moves to hold him in contempt.
- Van Buren reveals that her father was wounded at Wonju, Korea, in 1952 and was treated for a year at a VA hospital in Tulsa.
- Both the first victim and the killer are Iraq War veterans; the defense ties Cole’s violence to an untreated brain injury from a roadside bomb.