This Week's 'Law & Order' Tested a Far-Out Legal Theory

It’s been a fairly solid season of Law & Order, inasmuch as it mostly feels like old-school L&O: they’re ripping cases from the headlines and exploring interesting legal issues. A few weeks ago, there was a Luigi Mangione-inspired case where even the judge seemed to side with the defendant. (Interestingly, the episode ended before the verdict was announced, leaving the conclusion ambiguous.) The series has actually been dabbling in drug-related stories a lot this season — Matthew Perry’s death clearly inspired another episode, in which experimental drug therapy led to someone’s death.

This week’s episode, however, tested a wild legal theory that I don’t recall seeing in any headlines. The case involved a mother (Allison Miller from A Million Little Things) who threw her 13-year-old daughter off a bridge to her death. Ultimately, the prosecution accepted her plea of legal insanity. The woman was suffering from postpartum psychosis, and a voice in her head told her that her daughter was a demon who was going to kill her newborn baby.

The interesting legal twist was that prosecutors ultimately charged and tried the husband for second-degree manslaughter because he didn’t believe in therapy or anti-psychotics and refused to let his wife take her medication. The theory was that, but for the husband (who was defended by a lawyer played by Succession’s Natalie Gold), the mother would have taken the prescribed meds and wouldn’t have killed her daughter.

It’s a very high bar, and unsurprisingly, the defendant was acquitted — in part due to DA Price’s decision not to question the couple’s 10-year-old daughter, fearing it would traumatize her to testify against her father. In real life, even with her testimony, it would have been an uphill battle: there were too many elements to prove, not least of which was that the husband never physically threatened the wife not to take the meds — he simply suggested he’d divorce her.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting legal theory. I should also note that this was the second week in a row Detective Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks) did not appear in the episode — the character was said to be out sick, though Shaw may have had another reason to take time off. Three episodes ago — in the Matthew Perry-inspired case — he cost the prosecution a win by warning his mentor that they planned to force him to testify in a way that would ruin his reputation and career. (The mentor, a retired cop, fled the state to avoid testifying.)

It’s unclear why Brooks was written out of the episodes — although he may have been shooting Mortal Kombat II (he plays Jax). In any case, next week’s promo shows that he’ll be returning. In the meantime, Maura Tierney’s Lt. Jessica Brady and a beat cop played by Jesse Metcalfe last week capably filled in as Detective Riley’s (Reid Scott) partner.