Written By Rick Eid and Julie Martin
Directed By Michael Pressman
Continuing from the previous episode, the team continues to investigate the hate crime committed against a Muslim family. When the charges are dropped due tot he star witness being deported, SVU is caught between the victim's family and the family of their prime suspect, both seeking vengeance. Street protests turns more violent by the hour and Benson is faced with a harsh decision to make.
Tropes
- Framing the Guilty Party: The mother of the dead girl perjures herself on the witness stand, falsely claiming to have seen the perps' faces, once it appears impossible to get them convicted any other way. She also falsely claims to have reported this to Benson, forcing her to either perjure herself as well or let the rape/murderers go free. Benson takes a third option, telling the truth on the stand but then getting one of the perps' wives to flip on him.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Benson takes this attitude when Fin asks her if she really would’ve turned a false alibi witness over to ICE if she didn’t retract her alibi.
- Redemption Equals Death: Hector, the perp who in the previous episode objected to his accomplices' choice to rape the victims they were robbing, testifies against them at the grand jury and is assassinated on the courthouse steps by one of his accomplices' racist buddies.
- Season Finale: The show's eighteenth.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The dead girl's gay uncle, who got deported to Syria in the previous episode just before he was about to testify, is never heard from in this episode even though early on the episode seems to be foreshadowing his return as the final-act plot twist. His fear that he'll be killed in Syria for being gay is neither confirmed nor disconfirmed. He's just never heard from again.
- Would Hurt a Child: Both Benson and Rollins threaten the young children of perps with being put in foster care to get their mothers to flip on their husbands.
