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D.C. Prosecutor Grading 'Law & Order: SVU' Episodes on Authenticity

By Eric Lipman

Via a post on the Volokh Conspiracy, I was made aware of a new blog being maintained by Allison Leotta, a sex crimes prosecutor in Washington, D.C. Leotta's Prime-Time Crime Review has a synopsis of each of this season's episodes of "Law & Order: SVU," with an analysis of how realistic the depiction of investigating and prosecuting sex crimes is. As someone who was once known to say he learned more about criminal law from watching "Law & Order" (the original, RIP) than from his first year of law school, I was intrigued. Taking episode three as an example (because four and five are still stacked up on my DVR), I think Leotta is being a bit too kind. She runs through a litany of unrealistic stuff, including completely off-the-wall harassment of a suspect by police and the fact that the judge (hello, Judith Light!) threw out a rape case at a probable cause hearing despite the victim's clear testimony that the defendant had raped her. And then she gives the show an A- "because of its important, relevant, and powerful message about the need to process the backlog of sex kits in this country." Come on, Allison! You're a...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on October 15, 2010 (boomark / email).