Sam Waterston is back as Executive ADA Jack McCoy, and S. Epatha Merkerson still is the head of the department as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren. Anthony Anderson portrays Detective Kevin Bernard, and Jeremy Sisto as Detective Syrus Lupo.
This episode begins with a photo shoot for a clothing line with a very high-strung shoot director that kicks everyone out of the shoot, including the camera man and takes over himself.
The First Crime Scene Victim Information
The next scene, officers and medical examiners are swarming the site of the shoot, where the high-strung director is dead from what at first glance appears to be asphyxiation. It appears to be self-induced and not a suicide attempt but turns out to be more than meets the eye.
The Investigation From Detective Bernard's Perspective
One of the former models for the director is a prime suspect, as is the model who was left alone with the victim at the end of the shoot. Then it is noticed that the door to the studio was propped open and just after the model left to go get cigarettes, the cameras for the video surveillance system of the building went offline. The detectives find this interesting and are pretty sure that it is more than a coincidence.
Soon afterwards, they discover that the victim’s car had been vandalized a few days earlier, and link it to the former model as a revenge tactic. When they run the fingerprints on the victims’ car they find none that belong to the suspect, but over a dozen that belong to a person in the database as a convicted criminal, a man by the name of Todd Bissell, who was arrested on charges of public lewdness several years earlier.
The detectives believe that this is the man who is responsible for vandalizing the victim’s car. However, that assumption changes quickly and takes the case in an entirely new direction when the database pulls up a picture of the victim attached to the fingerprints of the criminal. It turns out that Todd Bissell and Sid Maxwell are one and the same.
Detective Bernard types Todd Bissell’s name into an internet database search engine and finds a link to Flashposse.com with a blast out on Todd Bissell. There is a photo of the victim texting on his cell phone while driving on the F.D.R. and a tagline for the photo saying that someone should kill him before he kills someone.
A few posts later a member of the website tells that they analyzed the photo and determined the make and model of vehicle, then hacked into the DMV database and located the owner. They then posted his address, a map to his location, and the combination to the front door keypad of his building, with a tag line on “326 Bowery – 11A, in case anybody wants to drop by and teach him some manners…8,4,2,6.” Detectives Bernard and Lupo are incredulous that someone would have the audacity to post directions to someone’s home in hopes of generating a virtual lynch mob.
The Trial and Jack McCoy's Input
The D.A. decides to take on the members of the website for reckless endangerment and assisting and inciting a murder. Defence tactics include freedom of speech and scandalizing Detective Bernard for having a child and not paying child support while paternity was still in question.
Website management claims that they are only providing a public service by exposing the dark side of society. Photos of Detective Bernard are posted on the website and his personal unlisted cell phone number is posted with a request to repeatedly call and tell him what they think. When the district attorney is unable to retrieve a warrant for the website, the detectives turn to tracing posts on the website attacking Detective Bernard.
One of the women who is brought in for questioning is found to be clinically insane, a well-managed schizophrenic who believes that cell phones are a messaging device for the devil. Two other members of the website are discovered to have been the ones to vandalize the victim’s car and the one who disabled the security system at the building.
Later on in the trial, the website owner is found guilty of reckless endangerment when the detectives use a human flesh search engine in the Orient to find photo evidence of the website owner conversing with the woman who was institutionalized for mental defect.
This episode may lead some to become more aware of the dearth of information available on the internet. The question of what people do with the information is for another discussion.
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