Killerz

"Killerz" is the 207th episode of NBC's legal drama Law & Order and the second episode of the tenth season.

Plot

The body of a young boy is found in a sewer pipe in Central Park. He has severe head wounds, his trousers are pulled down and he has a battery in his mouth. Detectives Briscoe and Green interview a witness, a young girl named Tara, who says she saw the boy with a man dressed in blue overalls and smelling of gasoline in the park earlier on the day of the murder. The police arrest a garage mechanic whose girlfriend lives in the same building as the murdered boy. But the police can find no evidence against the mechanic and no other witnesses to corroborate Tara's story. A hot-dog vendor remembers seeing the boy with two young girls on the day of the murder; they bought a pretzel from him. Green thinks Tara "held something back" in the initial interview and asks Lieutenant Van Buren if he can interview Tara again. Van Buren agrees, with herself and Tara's mother watching through the one-way mirror. Tara is given toys to play with and candy to eat as Green tells Tara that it feels bad to keep secrets and she will feel better if she tells him a secret she is keeping. Sobbing, Tara confesses that she and her friend Jenny (Brandt) lured the boy from his apartment, bought him a pretzel from the hot-dog cart and took him to the park, where Jenny bashed the boy's head repeatedly with a rock and together they stuffed the body in the pipe. The police arrest Tara and Jenny and charge them with murder.

Jenny is 10 years old and, unlike the 13-year-old Tara, cannot be tried as an adult. The DAs (Schiff, McCoy and Carmichael) are all uncomfortable with prosecuting the case. McCoy is concerned the key piece of evidence, Tara's confession to Green, appears coerced. Van Buren defends Green's interview technique and points out Tara's mother witnessed the interview, but the trial judge rules Tara's statement was coerced by Green and is inadmissible as evidence. McCoy instructs Carmichael to research more about Jenny. From a babysitter, Carmichael discovers that Jenny's father is in prison for auto-theft and her mother has since been with several men, often having sex with them in full view of Jenny (the babysitter says "She (Jenny) knows more about sex than I do"); Jenny is often very angry if she doesn't get her own way; and that Jenny dislikes men, in one example blacking out the eyes of all the boys in the babysitter's magazine.

McCoy asks psychiatrist Dr. Emil Skoda to examine Jenny. To Skoda, Jenny admits that she hates boys, but denies having been 'touched' by her mother's partners ("I wouldn't let them touch me"). She goes on to admit to deliberately poisoning a neighbor's cat. When Skoda affects outrage at this, Jenny does not react in any way, just stares blankly at Skoda. Finally, Jenny admits to killing the young boy. Skoda asks why she placed a battery in the boy's mouth ("to give him some energy so he might wake up") and why she pulled his pants down ("to make him look stupid"). Meeting up with McCoy and Carmichael, Skoda diagnoses Jenny as an extreme sociopath, who requires institutionalization. "She's a serial killer, we just got her early," says Skoda.

Again, McCoy and Carmichael are uncomfortable with committing a 10-year-old girl to life in a state mental institution. Jenny's mother refuses to sign the papers committing Jenny, saying she now has a lawyer and she intends to retain custody of her daughter. Mrs. Brandt's coarse behavior and bullish attitude towards the DAs prompts Carmichael to remark "that just removed any doubts I had about the case." McCoy and Carmichael persuade Jenny's imprisoned father to sign the commitment papers, creating a custody battle and sending the issue to Family Court. The court hearing becomes a contest between the psychiatric opinions of Dr. Skoda and Dr. Liz Olivet, formerly an advisor to the 27th Precinct of the New York police and to McCoy in the DA's office, now in private practice and a specialist in child psychology. Dr. Olivet appears as an expert witness for the lawyer representing Jenny's mother. Dr. Olivet argues that Jenny can be successfully treated outside the often brutal state psychiatric system, and that with such a young child, psychiatric treatment will evolve and improve over the course of Jenny's life. Jenny's lawyer argues that it is inhumane to 'abandon' such a young girl in a mental institution. Skoda argues that Jenny is essentially untreatable and, most likely, her condition and behavior will worsen with time. McCoy points out the girl has already committed a murder, for which she shows no remorse. In the end Judge Carla Solomon decides in favor of Jenny's mother, awarding her custody and agreeing with Dr. Olivet that the girl can be treated, and furthermore that commitment of such a young child to a state hospital is too drastic. The judge also orders regular meetings between herself, Jenny and Jenny's mother.

The final scene shows Jenny staring and smiling coldly at a young boy in the corridor outside the court room, while McCoy and Carmichael look on.

Notes

This episode was based largely on the Mary Bell case with elements of the James Bulger murder case.

This episode was later remade as Law & Order: UK season 3 episode titled "Broken".

External links

• "Law & Order" Killerz at the Internet Movie Database