Ethics in Law and Order

1. First, how realistic was the episode, based on what you know of real legal processes?

This episode seemed to be fairly realistic. It followed the normal legal processes, or at least appeared to, for most of the episode. However, there were many parts that seemed very unrealistic from my limited knowledge of legal processes. These moments started early in the program when one of the detectives attacked a suspect when he asked for his lawyer, a great example of another unrealistic aspect of this episode: the detectives' emotional attachment to the characters. It seemed that they made far too many personal visits to the family of the victim and were extremely emotional whenever interrogating a suspect.

Another unrealistic scene was the one in which the child was allowed to be put into harms way in order to get evidence on another suspect. This would never happen in a real investigation. There are far too many risk factors in a situation like that, the child is obviously in danger, but so is the husband as was shown during the episode when he was stabbed by the emotional mother at the end of the scene. This lead to yet another fantastic storyline as the detective told the mother that her assault charges would "blow over," despite her being caught on camera and the crime being witnessed by several members of the police force.

The final aspect of this episode that was obviously fictitious was the timeline, it was far too fast. It seemed to take only a few days to gather enough evidence for a trial, and then a week or less to complete the trial and get a guilty verdict. This process would take much longer in a real trial situation.

2.Second, how effective was it?

The goal of this program is to entertain. In that respect, it served it's purpose. The episode was highly entertaining, throughout the time that I was watching it I found myself wanting to find out what would happen at the end; whether or not the father would be found guilty, if they could apprehend the website owner without any harm coming to the child, and even at the end I found the trial interesting, even if the defense was a bit far-fetched. The fantastic nature of the episode did not in any way detract from its entertainment value, in fact, it added to it. Even though I knew that it was not a very accurate program, I was still hooked by the plot and the characters which lead to me being entertained throughout the episode.