This recap contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned
Written By Stuart Feldman and Warren Leight
Directed By Michael Slovis
A rape victim is brought to the E.R. after a brutal and lengthy assault, bearing the signature torture marks of a rapist believed to have been caught eight years prior. Benson, who had been the one to close the case, must now determine whether this new attack is that of a copycat acting on the orders of the original accused, or if she had helped place an innocent man in prison all those years ago. It's the latter.
Tropes
- Call-Back: The episode begins with the opening scene from Season 6's "Quarry", in which Olivia is telling Cragen she got their guy after a nine-hour interrogation. In "Quarry", the comment is almost a throwaway and the envelope that Cragen hands her during the conversation (which has nothing to do with the interrogation or the case behind it) is the focus of the story; here we actually learn the story behind said nine-hour interrogation.
- Cassandra Truth: Omar Pena, who SVU put away eight years ago, has continued to insist that his (recanted) confession was coerced and that he didn't commit a particularly brutal rape/assault, but no one believes him, in part because he knew a detail that was never made public; namely, that the scarf used to gag the victim was green. In the course of the episode, the victim mentions casually that the scarf was actually red, and subsequent investigation reveals that the officer who vouchered it was colorblind and wrote the wrong color into the report, which Benson had read and unknowingly told Omar. At the end of the episode, the real culprit is found and Omar, who had served eight years for a crime he never committed, is set free.
- False Confession: Olivia realizes she forced Omar to confess to a crime he didn't commit by playing bad cop on him for eight hours while unknowingly feeding him details about the crime he couldn't have known otherwise.
- Fatal Flaw:
- Benson's biggest flaw is in full display here. Her concern over the victim instead of focusing on the case resulted in her choosing to comfort her instead of looking over the evidence, which meant she never saw the scarf in person. If she had she would have seen that the scarf was a different color than what the report said, and realized Omar really was innocent.
- Actually, she would have most likely just corrected the evidence log. And then, they (either Munch and Fin, or Olivia) still would have accidentally fed him that detail, only this time, would have repeated back the correct color. The officer mislabeling the scarf ultimately got him out after 8 years, rather than for the rest of his life.
- Jack the Ripoff: When a rape case with the same MO as the crime Omar had been put away for turns up, the SVU (Benson, in particular) believe that Omar may have given instructions to an accomplice on the outside in order to create an illusion that he was innocent. Turns out, he hadn't. The rapist wasn't a copycat; he was the actual perpetrator for the rape that Omar had been arrested for.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Thanks to Olivia, Omar spent eight years in prison for a crime he hadn't committed, allowing the true rapist to roam free in that time, during which he assaulted god-knows how many other innocent women.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Benson is horrified to find out that she'd basically forced an innocent man into confessing to a crime he didn't commit. And in doing so allowed the real rapist to continue for years.
- The victim of the crime also realizes she helped put the wrong man in jail.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The rapist's newest victim really gives it to Benson, telling her that if she had arrested the real rapist in the first place, she wouldn't have been assaulted. Knowing that she's right, Benson can only weakly apologize.
