Cruel and Unusual (Season 5, Episode 19)
Premise: The death of an autistic teenager at the precinct leads to a clinic director whose aversion therapy crossed into abuse.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 19
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Lawrence Pressman as Dr. Alan Colter, Steve Burns as Kevin Jeffries, Sheila Tousey as Mrs. Vilardi, Jennifer Harmon as Serena Davidson, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Matthew Penn
- Writers
- René Balcer & Michael S. Chernuchin
Summary
The Investigation
“Cruel and Unusual” begins when a young man fixated on the time grabs at a stranger’s watch and is brought to the precinct as an unidentified suspect. He starts striking himself, Logan restrains him, and he dies. Logan is put on desk duty, but the medical examiner finds that a blood clot from repeated injury to his neck killed him, along with older bruises and calluses from restraints.
Bus and train schedules and a new coat suggest someone was caring for him. He is Kevin Jeffries, an autistic patient who ran away from the Behavioral Control Clinic run by Dr. Alan Colter. Colter demonstrates his shock device on one of the detectives. He collects $175,000 per patient each year from the state, but its rules limit shocks to the arm or thigh, and Kevin had marks on his chest and back.
Serena Davidson says she sued after Colter kept her daughter in a sensory-deprivation helmet called the buzzbox for three days, and the state banned it. The medical examiner says the helmet probably caused Kevin’s neck injury. A night search finds no helmet but catches an aide shocking a strapped-down boy every ten minutes on Colter’s orders.
The Trial
A judge dismisses an assault charge after parents testify that they knowingly consented to Colter’s methods. Former assistant Francine Randazzo then says Colter kept Kevin in the helmet for days at a time, and Colter is arrested for murder. The defense offers Kevin’s nonverbal roommate, David Vilardi, who answers through facilitated communication with his mother steadying his hand and says Kevin wore only a white hockey helmet.
At a hearing, experts disagree over whether the method is accepted science. When McCoy shows David a card while his mother looks away, the answer comes out wrong, and the judge excuses her. But David’s message called the forbidden helmet red, and Mrs. Vilardi admits she has seen it used on her own son.
Spoiler, the ending: Colter pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter, gives up his license, closes the clinic and is sentenced to two to six years. Mrs. Vilardi then confronts McCoy because her son has been sent home with nowhere else to go.
Why it stands out
- McCoy challenges facilitated communication in a Frye hearing and tests it by having the facilitator look away.
- Other parents defend Colter’s methods, and their informed consent defeats the first assault charge.
- Logan is taken off rotation after the teenager dies in his arms, until the autopsy points to earlier injuries.