It would have been too easy if Wheatley was convicted of Kathy’s murder.
On Law & Order: SVU Season 23 Episode 9, Stabler hoped the trial would give him and his family closure, but the opposite happened.
Wheatley’s behavior during the trial should have made the jury think twice about acquitting him, but a jailed Wheatley wouldn’t be as much fun to deal with, so naturally, the trial ended in a hung jury.
The DA’s office took a massive gamble by dismissing all the other charges and only trying to convict Wheatley of Kathy’s murder.
They had more evidence for some of Wheatley’s other crimes, so it would have been a better strategy to nail him for something else that they COULD prove while working to strengthen their case for charging him with Kathy’s murder.
At least then, Wheatley would have been in jail while they were investigating.
Instead, the DA’s office ended up with a stalemate, which made it far less likely Wheatley would ever be held accountable for either Kathy’s murder or any other crime.
It was heartbreaking, partially because we all know Wheatley is guilty of many horrible crimes that he is continually getting away with and partially because so many people feel defeated by the way powerful, connected people get away with literal murder in real life.
Viewers weary of the way the justice system often fails to do its job in real life needed this win in fiction. And we didn’t get it.
But it’s not SVU’s job to make us feel good. This series sheds light on injustice as much as it does on sexual assault, and this particular story did a brilliant job of that.
The trial was doomed from the start, thanks to a seemingly-biased judge and a defense based on making the accusers look bad rather than disproving their allegations per se.
Barba used all the knowledge he’d gained from years working as a prosecutor with SVU to demolish the cops’ case against Wheatley, and he as good as succeeded. No wonder Olivia felt personally betrayed by him!
Barba: Given that Isaak Becker’s head was smashed into a fence and his shoulder was dislocated, would you say that Elliot Stabler used excessive force?
Bell: We had reason to believe Becker was armed, so no.
Barba: But he wasn’t armed. By the way, isn’t your wife currently suing the NYPD for using excessive force against your nephew?
Carisi: Objection. Relevance?
Barba: I’m not sure there is any. I just appreciated the irony.
The biggest mystery here, though, was why Barba took this case in the first place.
He claimed that if a wealthy, well-connected person like Wheatley could be railroaded, anyone could be. But that seemed antithetical to Barba’s worldview.
Barba is a prosecutor turned public defender who sees his job as giving a voice to the voiceless. His whole thing is making sure that poor defendants get a fair shake even though they AREN’T wealthy and well-connected.
In what way did defending Wheatley advance that cause? It seemed backward to suggest that defending a wealthy man who has the connections to beat supposedly spurious charges somehow made the system more equitable.
Did Barba believe that Wheatley was innocent? He had to have researched him before he took this case and should have realized the chances were that he was defending a monster who had done everything he had been accused of and then some.
It made for some great drama, but Barba’s motivation didn’t make much sense. Olivia may not have been far off when she suggested that Barba was acting out of jealousy of her relationship with Elliot.
Although it was predictable that Wheatley would get a mistrial, if not an outright acquittal, there were some surprises at trial.
For one thing, I didn’t catch that Elliot’s tantrum in the courtroom was calculated to get Wheatley to insist on testifying. I thought this was just Elliot being Elliot, though that zinger he threw at the judge before being charged with contempt was worth it!
Stabler: He tried to run my partner’s car off the road.
Barba: Objection.
Judge: Sustained. Jury will disregard. Detective Stabler, you have been warned. Answer only the questions you have been asked.
Stabler: He did it just like he killed his father and my wife and he tried to kill his ex-wife.
Barba: Your Honor, do we let him keep going on until he blames my client for the kidnapping of the Lindenberg baby?
Judge: Final warning, Detective Stabler. One more word and I’m holding you in contempt.
Stabler: How much is Wheatley paying you, Judge?
The judge may very well have been on Wheatley’s payroll, though as biased judges go, he wasn’t THAT bad.
He did sustain some of Carisi’s objections, although he let witnesses answer questions that had been objected to. For example, he kept striking Elliot’s statements from the record but allowed Angela’s comments about being in love with Elliot to stay.
That hardly seemed fair.
The trial was solid courtroom drama, even if we did know how this was going to end.
The Stabler family’s reactions to various events was more compelling.
Law & Order: SVU chose to focus on Olivia’s reactions to learning Elliot and Angela had kissed, but what about his kids? I was curious as to how they felt.
Eli has struggled with his emotions for quite a while, and it wasn’t surprising that he took off rather than deal with the trial, but what about Elliot’s other kids?
While they’re all adults, it couldn’t have been easy for them to hear that their dad considered a new relationship so soon after their mother’s death, never mind that the object of his affection turned out to be involved with Kathy’s murder!
Olivia: Whatever happened between you and Angela, Wheatley knows, which means Barba knows and is going to use it.
Elliot: He doesn’t know anything. He’s riling Barba up and Barba’s riling you up.
Olivia: I need to know what happened.
Elliot: It’s none of your business. And it’s none of the court’s business. The only real question here is why are you really asking?
Olivia: Because I want to trust you.
Elliot: What does that mean? Liv, come on, what does that mean?
Olivia: I understand that you have been working through a mountain of grief and I have tried to be there for you. But this is a one-way street. You have never once asked how I’ve been since the last time we saw each other.
Yet we got no reaction from anyone except Olivia, who was just irritated that Elliot takes more than he gives in their relationship. What a missed opportunity.
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Law & Order: SVU airs on Thursdays at 9 PM EST/PST. The next new episode will air on January 6, 2022.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
