Line #5 Recap/LawAndOrderS12E10Prejudice

Context Recap / LawAndOrderS12E10Prejudice

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1	Thomas Reddick, the CEO of a successful publishing company, is shot and killed near his home. Briscoe and Green are soon led to a suspect named Ray Burrows, who shot Reddick in a dispute over a cab. It's clearly calculated, since he'd followed Reddick home. Burrows is a violently racist white man and was angry that the cab driver didn't give him priority over Reddick, who was Black. The [=DA=]'s office makes a deal with Burrows' friend Scott Turner, who was with him at the time; Turner confirms that the murder was racially motivated. Furthermore, it turns out that Burrows was recently fired for threatening a Black co-worker with a gun.
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3	Defence Attorney Al Archer denies the murder was a hate crime. But Southerlyn and [=McCoy=] produce evidence of a letter Burrows wrote to try to get an interracial couple evicted from his apartment building. Burrows stands by his statements in the letter and is eager for a jury to hear his opinions about Black people. So Archer files an insanity plea, claiming that Burrows' racist beliefs are so extreme as to constitute a paranoid delusion. Skoda's assessment is that Burrows fully knows what he did was wrong.
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5	At trial, Archer calls a Black expert witness who believes racism could be reduced if treated as a mental illness. [=McCoy=] argues that this is simply creating an excuse for bigotry. Burrows says that he'd already lost his job because of a Black person, and that caused him to lose his home; the argument with Reddick was the last straw. [=McCoy=] points out that Burrows can evidently control himself when he wants to, since he hasn't tried to attack the Black members of the jury. In his summation [=McCoy=] states that treating racism as a mental illness would be very dangerous and turn people like Burrows into victims. Burrows is convicted of second degree murder.
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7	!!!This episode contains examples of:
8	* CallBack: References are made to the events of the Season 5 episode "[[{{Recap/LawAndOrderS5E13Rage}} Rage]]" (in which a Black defendant used the effects of racism as a justification of murder.)
9	* EvilIsPetty: What Burrows' motive amounted to.
10	* InsanityDefence: A key part of the episode's plot is whether racist beliefs justify such a defence.
11	* MalignedMixedMarriage: The interracial couple whom Burrows targeted.
12	* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: The extremely racist and violent Burrows.

Context Recap / LawAndOrderS12E10Prejudice