Directed by Creator/EWSwackhamer

Written by Creator/MichaelDuggan

An African-American teenager named Astrea Crawford is found beaten and unconscious in the street; she claims she was raped by white cops. Congressman Ronald Eaton, whose platform focuses on civil rights, soon gets involved with the case. He rapidly turns the public against the NYPD and portrays Astrea as the victim of a systemic racist conspiracy, despite evidence mounting that she may have lied about being raped. Stone is forced to ask for a grand jury hearing and Eaton admits he is not interested in finding Astrea's attackers; he wants to use her case to bring down the careers of the most senior figures in the justice system.

Astrea and her mother fail to appear at the hearing and are charged with contempt of court. Despite the judge (herself African-American) denouncing Eaton and encouraging the Crawfords to testify, Stone fears that if they go to jail, they will be seen as martyrs and Eaton will have won. Finally, the Crawfords' priest convinces Mrs. Crawford to speak to Robinette. When Astrea got pregnant, she felt she had to lie about being raped so her violent father would let her have an abortion. Eaton accuses Robinette of being a traitor to their race and says that, whatever the truth of Astrea's case, it was his chance to push for racial justice. Robinette rebukes Eaton's view that he could achieve this by undermining the legal system or further polarizing black and white Americans against each other. Later, Robinette questions whether he has really "sold out" to a corrupt system; Stone tells him to listen to his own conscience.
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!!This episode contains examples of:
%%* AbusiveParents
* AlwaysMurder: Averted. In a story based on the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax, Greevey and Logan investigate when an African-American girl falsely claims she was raped and abused by police officers.
* BewareTheQuietOnes: Robinette, threatening Mr. Crawford in their last meeting.
* CrusadingLawyer: How Eaton sees himself.
* DiggingYourselfDeeper: Cragen ends up doing this by sending Greevey and Logan to meet with Astrea while she's sequestered in the local church under the reverend's protection, after previous interviews had already gone badly and public opinion on the case had soured. The meeting escalates into a public incident when Astrea suffers a FreakOut under questioning, leading Stone to yank the NYPD from the case entirely due to the bad publicity.
* DirtyCop: Subverted. Astrea claims to have been beaten and raped by white cops. However, it turns out to be a lie.
* EveryoneHasStandards: While Congressman Eaton certainly has few qualms about exploiting the rape case to attack racism within the police department, it is suggested at the end that he thought it was a genuine case of rape and wouldn't have become involved had he learned earlier that it was a hoax, and that by the time he did learn the truth, [[IveComeTooFar he was in too deep to back out without losing credibility]].
* FalseRapeAccusation: What Astrea's case turns out to be.
* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Astrea wanted one, but because of this trope, her abusive father wouldn't permit it unless she had been raped.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Part of Robinette's moral conflict in the episode.
* MalcolmXerox: Ronald Eaton.
* NoSenseOfPersonalSpace: Stone, when talking to Eaton as they walk down the hall toward the end. He's not ''literally'' in Eaton's face, but he's definitely ''much'' closer than he normally gets with people, particularly opponents. It very subtly (and nicely) demonstrates Stone's complete lack of respect for Eaton.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Robinette gives one to Eaton at the end of the episode.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Heavily inspired by the Tawana Brawley case.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Eaton is one, viewing the case as a rare opportunity to focus public attention on police corruption and racial equality.
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