Free Speech (Season 21, Episode 5)
Premise: A would-be congressional candidate is shoved in front of a bus by a conspiracy believer, and Price charges the right-wing media mogul whose fabricated smears drove the killer.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 5
- Detectives
- Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson), Det. Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Jeffrey Nordling as Jordan Reed, Jorge Chapa as Manny Lopez, Dylan Baker as defense attorney Sanford Rems, Shannon Marie Sullivan as Amanda Hoyt, Ian Stuart as Austin Pond
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode reportedly draws on the QAnon movement and its forerunner, the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory, whose false claims of a Democratic child-sex ring led a North Carolina man to fire a rifle inside a Washington, D.C., pizzeria that December.
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“Free Speech” opens with Derek Hoyt, who hopes to run for Congress on a message of political middle ground, walking out of an interview with media personality Jordan Reed when Reed raises QAnon claims about Democrats abusing children. Soon after, a masked man shoves Hoyt in front of a bus on Tenth Avenue. A businessman who quarreled with Hoyt over a company sale says a man was photographing them, and the photographer, a private investigator, says Reed hired him to dig up dirt on Hoyt and he found none.
Deleted emails hold death threats and photos of Hoyt with young girls, but the girls’ parents and police technicians show the images were faked from family social media posts. On a QAnon forum called Rogue Wave, a user celebrated Hoyt’s death an hour after it, and the post leads to Manny Lopez, a day laborer from Staten Island, who admits pushing Hoyt to stop what he believed was a child-trafficking plot. An online fundraiser quickly raises $900,000 toward his $2 million bail.
The Trial
A Rogue Wave ringleader posted the fake photos and an invented FBI tip that Hoyt planned a kidnapping that night. Bernard and Cosgrove confront Reed while he is recording his show and are ordered out, but phone records show he and Lopez spoke before and after the murder. Lopez tells prosecutors that Reed wanted people to “neutralize” Hoyt and promised his company would reward true patriots, and Reed is charged with first-degree murder.
On the eve of his testimony, Lopez hangs himself in his cell. The judge dismisses the murder-for-hire count but lets Price proceed on depraved-indifference murder after he likens Reed’s lies to shouting fire in a crowded theater. An expert traces the fake photos and posts to Reed’s office computer, and defense attorney Sanford Rems calls a rally guest who says Reed and Lopez talked only about the country and the Knicks. Reed testifies that any employee could have used his computer and that he wants only a peaceful exchange of ideas.
Spoiler, the ending: Price then plays a waiter’s video of Reed at a rally musing that getting his followers to attack or kill a liberal would make his company the biggest in the world; Reed calls it a joke. The jury convicts him of second-degree murder, and he shouts that true patriots will have the last word. The office hopes the verdict will make people think twice before posting venom online, but a fresh death threat has already arrived on Twitter.
Why it stands out
- Dylan Baker returns as defense attorney Sanford Rems, a character he played from 2004 to 2006.
- After the hired killer’s suicide wipes out the murder-for-hire case, Price wins a murder conviction against the man who spread the lies, on a theory of depraved indifference.