Law & Order: SVU episode "Unstable" [open spoilers]

Cafe Society
1

This episode aired Sunday in an all-day SVU marathon. I tell ya, watching that stuff for 11 hours messes with your head…

But I have a question about the ending. A full and detailed summary of the episode can be read here:
http://www.tv.com/law-and-order-special-victims-unit/unstable/episode/1294183/recap.html?tag=episode_recap;recap

Ten years prior to the events in this episode, a man Elliot arrested was sent to prison for rape. During the course of this episode, it becomes clear that the man in prison was wrongly convicted. The SVU people are investigating a current rape and figure out that this new guy committed the 10-year old rape, too. The current rapist confesses and Elliot goes to the prison to tell guy #1 that they found the real person who committed the rape that he was convicted for and that he would soon be getting out of prison. I’m not conveying all the tension and emotion in this scene- it was pretty heavy.

Back at the station, a zealous visiting vigilante cop takes the real rapist (who is a serious bad-ass and in fact, a serial rapist) to the john and pitches him out the window, killing him.

Down on the sidewalk, as they’re all standing around the body, Christine Lahti, the temporary super-bitch ADA tells Elliot that guy #1 will have to stay in prison, because now that the real rapist is dead, he cannot testify. She says there’s nothing that can be done. Even though several cops heard the man confess to the rapes.

This is my question: in the real world of law is she correct? Would the first man have to stay in prison even though several people heard the confession of the real rapist? So the guy is dead and can’t testify. Wouldn’t there be some way to get guy #1 out of prison? Surely some judge could find a way around this.

I know this show plays fast and loose with the law and with civil rights, etc., but this one really got to me.

Any lawyers or law students or just Smart People out there who can answer this?

2

I remember that episode.

I know nothing about the law, but I do remember the DA saying something about getting a “pardon” from the Governor.

I always wondered what the S-O-P is to get a pardon for a prisoner that is not “well-connected” politically.

In this case, the wrongly convicted prisoner appeared to have a bunch of advocates that would have some political clout. Would it be enough? Don’t know.

3

I’m watching through them on Netflix streaming. That one disturbed me. I am hopeful that it will come up in another episode that he was pardoned.

I don’t have any legal knowledge beyond what I’ve learned on Law & Order and Court TV.

4

A few episodes later in the same season there is another case of a wrongfully imprisoned man. The plot is convoluted, and brought up some interesting points regarding attorney/client privilege. Victor Tate (the man who ended up not being released in the earlier episode) is named, and briefly seen in the episode.

5

I thought that the issue complicating the prison term of the wrongly-convicted guy was that he had killed someone while in prison. Am I conflating two different episodes?

6

You’ve got to remember that the SVU plot weasels write only to manipulate your emotions to an obscene and traumatic degree. Any relation between their ideas of how the law works and the actual law is mere coincidence.

7

Yeah, you’re mixing up this episode with something else. Easy to do when there are approximately 15,000 episodes of L&O, L&O:CI, and L&O:SVU. And when one mostly sees them in all-day marathons.

I figure, any time of the day or night, you can turn on the tv and see an episode of L&O or an international soccer match.

The only way I can tell the SVU episodes apart is by Mariska Hargaty’s hair. And which ADA is in play.