Written By Stephen Belber, Liz Friedman and Vanessa Place
Directed By Alex Zakrzewski
An eight-year-old beauty queen's body is found stuffed in a suitcase on a Manhattan bus, leading Benson and Stabler to hunt for a pedophile with a fetish for child pageants.
Tropes
- Amoral Attorney: This is the episode that introduces Barry Moredock (Alex's former law professor), a rare positive portrayal. He represents an alleged child pornographer simply because he believes that everyone has the right to a fair trial, and it turns out that he mostly takes cases such as these where he believes the defendant's rights are being violated.
- Contrived Coincidence: When being asked to prosecute the company that produced the child porn story, Alex notes that they could be anywhere in the world, but luckily for the plot they happen to be located in New York City; otherwise the episode would have been over at twenty minutes.
- Downer Ending: As Alex and Barry are leaving the courtroom after Tommy Hedges is found guilty of murdering Cherie Lathan, Barry compliments his former student for getting the bad guy without stomping on the Constitution, pointing out that "everybody won", to which Alex replies, "Not Cherie Lathan".
- Graceful Loser: Barry Moredock graciously congratulates Alex when she wins the case, then cheerfully notes that he still plans on appealing.
- Poor Man's Porn: Implied in a twisted variation. Detectives interview a pedophile who notes he was home watching Nickelodeon as an alibi.
- Properly Paranoid: A nineteen-year-old model carries around her birth certificate because she looks younger than her age and often gets asked to prove her age by police.
- Smug Snake: Kevin Roumel, one of the early suspects, acts like the detectives can't do anything to him and refuses to give a DNA sample. When his father orders him to, and Munch confirms he can legally do that, he throws a tantrum. Exasperated, his father takes a few strands of his hair by force and hands them over to Munch.
