User Reviews

I have no idea where the writers thought they were going with this episode but it casts Jack McCoy is an impossibly self-righteous and possibly criminal persecutor -- not prosecutor. In this respect, and in its ultimate conclusion, it's the most unusual story to appear during the first ten years of the series.

The story opens with a parole hearing. Burt Young, looking old but acting no more skilled than in his feature films, has spent 18 years in Sing Sing after being convicted of rape and is now asking for early release. He's been a good inmate. He expresses remorse, says he's overcome his impulses after eighteen years of penitance and claims he only wants to get a decent job, settle down with his daughter, and make restitution to his victims. His daughter -- a spot-on performance by Lisa LoCicero -- is eager to accept him.

McCoy is present and gives an impassioned speech about a rapist's character being unchangeable and no restitution being possible. The Board overrules McCoy and Young is released.

McCoy is not only dissatisfied but he does something about it. Young is monitored wherever he goes. Posters identifying Young as a serial rapist appear all over his neighborhood. ("That didn't come from our department," remarks Brisco.) A young girl is found raped and murdered, smothered to death, in an apartment in a locked building. The detectives discover that in the basement of the building next door, a long-abandoned ventilation shaft runs into the basement of the victim's building. Further investigation leads to the discovery that Young had lived in the building next door as a child of seven or so, and McCoy concludes that he probably discovered the shaft, remembers it now, and used it to gain entry into the victim's building where he raped and -- for the first time -- left the victim dead.

McCoy is now convinced that Young is not just a serial rapist but a murderer as well and police surveillance increases. They toss his apartment and find stroke magazines emphasizing bondage. Olivet, the police shrink, advises McCoy that there is "no cure" for serial rapists. (Neither is there one for the common cold.) The detectives enter the woodworking shop where Young has a job and loudly announce that Young is a rapist. He's fired.

When Young appeals for relief from what he sees as harassment, he's advised to leave town. Young would like to live in upstate New York with another relative, but the police have already queried the Broome County officials and they refuse to allow him to move there. Young then expresses a desire to move to the town in Ohio where he was born, but the police are ahead of him and he can't move there either.

An angrier-than-ever McCoy proposes to Schiff, the DA, that Young be charged with something he hasn't done. Schiff replies, "Do you realize what you're saying? False arrest? I won't allow the law to be dragged through a sewer to catch a sewer rat." With no preamble, Young is caught by his own daughter while assaulting the daughter's roommate, and his daughter beats his brains out with a baseball bat. McCoy's intuition is proved correct. "I guess he couldn't hold himself back anymore," says Brisco. The question of how much pressure the police practices put on whatever it was that Young couldn't hold back is not addressed or even brought up. Nobody ever defines "harrassment." The viewer is left to conclude that "once a serial rapist, always a serial rapist, and next, a murderer," and that McCoy should have been allowed to do whatever he wanted in order to prevent a rapist from continuing his career. It endorses a policy of allowing law enforcement to draw up its own rules (there's a name for governments like that) and that a criminal can't change, even after eighteen years in the slams.

The viewer is left to draw his or her own lessons from the episode. Mine are different from McCoy's.

And who makes that decision? Here ADA Jack McCoy doggedly pursues an ex-con rapist, played by Bert Young. McCoy is sure the guy is guilty of the rape and murder of a little girl, but he cannot prove it. McCoy is sure that the fellow is a repeat offender and will strike again. He brings him in for questioning, has him physically examined, and it is noticed that he shaves his entire body. I guess this was before DNA was prevalently used in such cases. McCoy has the police follow him at work, has posters put up around where he lives notifying the neighbors of his past crimes, and promises to hound him indefinitely unless he voluntarily commits himself under the Mental Hygiene Statute. Eventually, the man does indeed attack again - this time literally stopped dead in his tracks by his biggest advocate up to that point. The question is left open, however, - did the ex-con rapist actually kill the little girl, or did he attack this final time because McCoy's constant harassment sent him over the edge?

One of those episodes that gets the ethical noggin' joggin'. This episode is centered around something I've been slightly miffed about in general about L&O; the over-zealousness of DA McCoy. I'm sure his passion and courtroom antics are appreciated by most viewers, as it makes for more excitement, but I prefer Stone, who was a bit more measured and subtle while still being capable of turning it up a notch when necessary.

In any case, McCoy gets involved in a rather vicious witch hunt against Burt Young, a convicted rapist, six times over, who is released on probation but seems to have raped and murdered another young girl right afterwards. The episode plays with whether McCoy's actions are justifiable or harmful, and leaves us with a certain degree of ambiguity, which is nice, but the real moral point of the episode should have been a different one, in my opinion.

McCoy's actions here are certainly dubious, but the real and obvious wrong displayed in this episode is letting a convicted serial rapist back into society. The concepts of rehabilitation and reform are marvelous, but in the case of someone who has been convicted of six rapes - or similarly devious crimes - you just can't take the risk because even the threat of having someone like that out on the streets can have grave consequences, as is shown in the episode. Like the episode title alludes to; mad dogs should get put down - which in this case can also be interpreted as life imprisonment.

In many episodes Jack McCoy used the law and in many cases abuses it to keep bad people off the streets and in many cases the person deserves it and the audience even cheers him on. This should not be one of those cases. He goes way out of line after a convicted rapist is freed on parole after 18 years.

Of course there's many arguments to be made about parole one way or another, however once the decision is made it's not up to him to harass him to the possible point where the pressure may have actually been what caused him to snap and commit the attack that got him killed since there's no real evidence he's guilty of the one McCoy was harassing over.

Who's the really guilty person here? In this case it looks a lot more like Jack McCoy than anyone else.