Self-Defense 17 Law & Order episodes
Defendants who say they killed or attacked to protect themselves or others.
- Season 1 · Episode 2
Subterranean Homeboy Blues
A young white woman opens fire on two Black teenagers on a packed subway train, and the city argues over whether she is a victim or a vigilante.
- Season 1 · Episode 13
A Death in the Family
When a cop is killed during a rooftop chase, the whole city wants the fleeing suspect, but the evidence points somewhere else.
- Season 3 · Episode 7
Self-Defense
A Greek immigrant jeweler shoots two armed robbers, and Stone must decide whether chasing one into the street turned self-defense into murder.
- Season 3 · Episode 9
Point of View
A woman claims she killed a man in self-defense against rape, but the evidence suggests a contract killing for a mob boss.
- Season 4 · Episode 6
Pride and Joy
A Manhattan building superintendent seems to die stopping a burglary, until the evidence points to his gifted teenage son, who says he was defending himself from an abusive father.
- Season 5 · Episode 3
Blue Bamboo
A visiting Tokyo nightclub owner is shot in a Manhattan hotel, and the American singer who once worked for him says years of abuse drove her to kill.
- Season 7 · Episode 14
Working Mom
A retired cop turned corporate security chief is shot with his own gun on a Manhattan prostitution stroll, and the trail leads to a suburban mother who works as a call girl.
- Season 9 · Episode 17
Shield
When a detective is gunned down during a stakeout, suspicion falls on the fellow officer he had been beating, and her trial exposes how the department ignored her complaints.
- Season 11 · Episode 6
Burn Baby Burn
A robbery detective hunting a reluctant witness at the wrong address is killed at a Harlem apartment door, and the former Black Panther charged with shooting him argues he was defending his life.
- Season 12 · Episode 18
Equal Rights
When a Wall Street analyst is gunned down on his way to the ferry, the trail runs past a collapsed tech stock to his wife, who says years of beatings drove her to have him killed.
- Season 15 · Episode 3
The Brotherhood
A member of a white prison gang is executed on the night of his release from Sing Sing, and the corrections officer charged with killing him argues that he had to strike first to protect his family.
- Season 15 · Episode 16
The Sixth Man
A reclusive basketball fan is found with a broken neck in his rent-controlled apartment, and the trail leads to the visiting star he spent two seasons taunting from the stands and over the phone.
- Season 16 · Episode 2
Flaw
A con man shot in an empty office tower dies with Detective Olivia Benson’s number on his phone, pulling SVU into a case against a mother and daughter who have slipped away from Benson before.
- Season 17 · Episode 22
The Family Hour
The beating death of a former senator’s ex-wife exposes years of abuse in his family, and then the senator kills his daughter and claims self-defense.
- Season 18 · Episode 5
Driven
A fight over a basketball ends with two children shot dead near an Upper West Side playground, and both a Black father and a white mother face a jury for the deaths.
- Season 20 · Episode 1
Memo from the Dark Side
The killing of a former Marine who once guarded detainees in Iraq leads to the ex–Justice Department lawyer whose memos shaped the interrogation rules, and McCoy decides to put the memo itself on trial.
- Season 20 · Episode 10
Shotgun
A Spanish Harlem tax preparer in his late sixties becomes a folk hero after gunning down three would-be robbers, but the detectives learn the holdup was meant to scare him into selling a valuable building, and McCoy asks a grand jury to charge him with murder.