Law and Order (Franchise)/Headscratchers

This show is the longest running Prime Time drama ever yet I had to create both the Wild Messy Guess page and the It Just Bugs Me page, which just bugs me.

In the Skate or Die, Cutter provokes the Bipolar Roller into attacking him so he can give him some anti-psychotics and get him to testify. Nobody calls him on how bad and unprofessional this is not even Olivet who was actually in this episode, despite the fact Elliot did something similar on SVU and was rightfully scolded and threatened for doing so by Huang.
 * Olivet calls McCoy and demands that Cutter be suspended. What I was more confused by is that him attacking Cutter was necessary to prove that he was a danger to himself or others. What about ?
 * Those didn't prove that he was a danger while restrained at the mental institution. To be forced to take the drugs, Cutter had to prove that, even locked down as Applebaum was, he was still a danger without them.

Here's what bugs me: Where is the 27th precinct LOCATED? They have shown the main characters in L&O investigating cases from Inwood to the Staten Island Ferry terminal (which to people who haven't been in New York are at opposite ends of Manhattan) and that's just not possible.
 * Police have a limited jurisdiction and VERY territorial about it. Investigating cases outside of your area unless you are invited is almost verboten and will usually end up starting a turf war.
 * Of course, in a meta-sense, the real reason it's kept vague is to allow the writers to send the detectives all over the city to investigate crimes and thus open up storytelling possibilities (so they can go to an affluent neighbourhood one week after a run-down one, or look at mob dealings at the docks one week and then a high-society heist-gone-wrong the other) rather than having to limit themselves to a relatively small section of New York. It's just a leap of faith we have to make in order to watch the show.

Why did they never explore the issues that would have arisen when Van Buren lost her lawsuit?
 * It always struck this troper as almost impossible that the case would have been resolved in the manner that it was and that the brass would have acted in the manner that they did. Nobody likes whistleblowers or complainers,that's for sure. But having one of the few (if not the ONLY) black female police Lieutenants being passed over for promotion (and a non-minority given the position) and then treating her poorly as a result of her filing suit seemed to be a recipe for additional lawsuits and poor publicity. Those are things that no police department would need.

There was an episode where a guy was killed and strapped to his bed. This had sexual overtones all over it, so why didn't SVU get it?
 * Early episodes had some SVU-esque episodes before SVU was actually created.
 * Because he was found dead and homicide should always be called when somebody dies regardless of overtone. SVU is only supposed to handle rape, sexual assault and child abuse. They might be asked to consult on a case if they involved one of the above but they should not be the primary investigators. Only an ME as bad as Warner would have called them on a case like that, Rodgers knows better than to put someone like Stabler on a murder case, (why do you think she no longer calls SVU to her morgue)

In "Helpless" (s3-6), how the hell did Dr. Merritt keep his medical license? I understand how he ducked the criminal charges (at first), but when you cop to sexually assaulting a patient, how are you not immediately getting a smackdown from the AMA (at the VERY least)?

In "Killerz" (10-2) why did they charge both defendants with murder when the little girl confessed to being an accessory after the fact and explicitly stated she had no idea what her friend was up to? Her confession seemed fairly candid and they never explain why they're convinced she was guilty of murder.
 * First off they dropped the charges against her and she did not serve any jail time after she testified against her friend and claimed she had nothing to do with it. Secondly she was not an accomplice after the fact she was an accomplice during the murder, she stood lookout while her sadistic misandrist friend abducted the child, she helped take him to an isolated spot with her and she stood by and watched as she killed him. I do not think that the charges should have been dropped against her but she was based on Nora Bell (sidekick of Enfant Terrible Serial Killer Mary Bell) who also did not serve any time.
 * According to my recollection, they dropped the charges against Jenny (the actual killer) so they could get her put in a mental institution; her accomplice was just sentenced as a juvenile. Second, the accomplice never did anything illegal until Jenny ordered her to help put the boy's body in the pipe; her confession specifically stated she had no idea Jenny was intent on killing the boy and presumably thought they were going taking him out to play.

Did Briscoe really hire a hitman to kill the guy that killed his daughter as the final episode of season 8 suggests?
 * Season 9 tried to suggest the killer was offed in an unrelated criminal act, suggesting that Lenny never got the chance to do what he was thinking of doing. I didn't buy it in the least and thought Lenny had the guy whacked.

In the episode Release (17-8) the detectives and the DA office seemed to really push the boundaries of believability by charging a No Celebrities were harmed version of Girl’s Gone Wild founder Joe Francis with rape and murder. In the case they seemed to be targeting him even when He had an airtight alibi for when the murder went down. Later after they found the real killer she claimed he raped her turning it into a he said she said case, it later turned she signed a contract giving consent and there was no footage of her resisting him. They let her off with man 2 and charged him with murder because he sent his friend to sleep with a girl which he had written permutation to do. They later bring in the mother of another girl he sleped with (both were in exchange for footage of the girls striping despite the they fact they had signed consent forms) and killed herself. The main argument against him seemed to be that he was sleazy which might be true, but none of that is a very solid rape case and absolutely in no way is murder. The defendant’s attorney seemed to be the only one to relies it as the judge and jury sided with the DA.
 * Their argument was that he (Drake) raped her, and that the rape eventually led to the death of his friend Hudson (because the girl, Nicole, fought back when Hudson came in to rape her and ended up killing him). This would fall under the felony murder statute, which says that, if a person commits a felony (even if it isn't murder) and someone else dies as a result, the person can be charged with murder just as if he'd killed the victim himself. If he committed rape, and Hudson died because of it, Drake could be legally held responsible for the murder.

Why are the police "Law" and the lawyers "Order"? The police keep order on the streets, while the lawyers do the legal stuff...
 * Because "Law and Order" is and established phrase, so calling the show "Order and Law," would sound silly. But, you can't very well show the DA prosecuting the criminal before the cops investigate the crime.
 * Also, cops are "the long arm of the law" and "law men". And in court, you say "Order!".
 * The police are the enforcement arm. They impose and execute the functional parts of the law; they represent the law in a very direct and inflexible way, and must. The lawyers, though, actually decide what the law means, and hence represent order in that they can refuse to prosecute, prosecute on a lesser charge, or deal down in the service of the greater good.

Why is it that a kid who was kidnapped as a child can snipe one person who may have screwed him and three random people for an unsympathetic reason and get away with it, but another kid, who is arguable more sympathetic, doesn't get away with killing one person on impulse?


 * Which episode are you talking about?
 * Sheltered and Captive. Both have a boy being kidnapped at a young age. The boy in Sheltered kills his "dad's" boss because he's afraid that his "dad" will get fired. He also kills three random others to throw off the cops. He explained that he knew the difference between right and wrong. But he still got off by reason of insanity. The boy in Captive kills a young boy that his kidnapper had kidnapped because he's afraid of being replaced. Later in the trial they find out that his old family life involved physical abuse at the hands of his step-father. He gets found guilty.
 * To quote a different show, "The courts are like dice. They have no memory." The jury system does not consistently hand out the same verdicts when presented with the same case, much less cases as different as that. This is convenient for dramatic purposes on the show, but it's also pretty much true.

The last episode of Season 6 features the execution of a Complete Monster who raped and murdered a girl, then shows everyone's reactions to it. Problem: earlier in the season, a much more sympathetic murderer was convicted and given the death penalty; he was to be the first person executed under the new system. No mention of him is made here, and they act like the Complete Monster is the first person to be executed under it. Did they seriously rewrite their own canon to make their political views more acceptable?


 * Two people had been sentenced to death at this point (Sandig, in the episode Savages, and Dobson, in Encore), but apparently no one had actually been executed before this episode, or at least the characters hadn't witnessed the executions. For Dobson in particular, the lawyers mentioned that it would take many years for him to exhaust his appeals and actually be executed.

The last episode ended...oddly, for a Law & Order episode. A normal episode would have cut to the credits at having Anita's phone ring. I'm not necessarily upset they didn't trolololol the viewers, it was simply strange in the context of how the show normally worked.
 * Probably along the lines of "People will never see any future exploits of these guys, so we might as well let people think they're well off."
 * We can also probably give the series finale a bit of slack in not being a 'normal' episode as well; since it's essentially closing off the entire show and by extension the entire story, it's not really a normal episode, and they probably didn't want to end proceedings on a cliffhanger note, at least with that storyline.

"Right to Counsel" ends with