Law and Order seems designed to make people depressed.

[rape, murder, you have been warned.]

There's a reason that I don't like Law and Order, a reason I don't usually watch it.  For some reason I made an exception today and it was a huge mistake.

The story is this:

Two rich families are about to create a merger through marriage.  Because if you're rich that's what marriage is for.  The youngest child of one of the families is raped and murdered.

First there is an attempt to frame the limo driver.

Then it comes up that the sons of the family that doesn't include the victims committed (statutory) rape by having sex with the victim.  They're suspected.

Then it comes up that the member of the victims family getting married had a fight with the victim.  Before she can even be suspected the whole family comes in, says she did it, but it's her medications to blame and tries to plea for a much reduced sentence at a mental hospital.

Then investigation shows she didn't do it and it turns out that her mother did it.

See, rich family secrets.  They never could live with the shame of their daughter getting pregnant at 14 and so treated their granddaughter as their daughter, keeping her away from their daughter (I think boarding school might have been involved) for much of her life.  Having her daughter stolen from her might have contributed to the bride to be's need to be on medication.

So the mother convinced the daughter that she killed her own daughter.  This was so the mother would never be suspected of murder.  And why the murder?  Before daughter was getting married she decided to tell her daughter the truth of their relationship.  Mother/grandmother didn't want that getting out because shame and so killed her.

Then comes the other family, the family of the groom who is having sex with someone else and isn't at all concerned about the marriage as a marriage because it's a merger.

They claim they witnessed everything, it's dumped as self defense and everyone gets away with everything.

---

I'm going to take a moment of "What the fuck?" here.

Take the parents of the groom's family at their words.  Get it in writing first.  Explain that there's a problem where people say one thing in the station and something else in the courtroom and get them to sign sworn statements that they witnessed the killing.  They're not asking for any kind of immunity so don't give it to them.

Take them to court for obstruction of justice and taking part in multiple framings.

When the limo driver was being framed they did what the people framing him wanted them to do and kept quiet even though they claim to have seen the murder and known he was innocent.

When their own sons were suspects (they don't deny their sons committed rape, by the way) they did what the murderer wanted them to do and kept quiet.

When the bride was being framed by her mother they knew that she was innocent but refused to say anything.  Why?  They said it themselves: they wanted to help killer.

If they didn't see the killing then they're trying to cover up a murder by making it look like self defense.  If they did see the killing then they were participants in two separate attempts to frame innocent people.  Either way they're trying to help a killer get away with it.  That, in itself, is illegal.

They should go to jail.

Their sons undeniably committed statutory rape.  They should go to jail.

The person who framed the limo driver should go to jail.  I came in late enough that I'm not sure who it was.

The murderer, matriarch of the bride's family, tried to frame her daughter to the point of telling her daughter and her husband that she saw the daughter do it and convincing the daughter to confess.  That's enough to send her to jail.  Add to that, in a separate trial because the murder and framing were separate acts, that she committed murder and she should go to jail with two sentences.

If people buy that it was self defense then she still has to go to jail because framing someone a killing you committed is illegal even if the killing itself was legal.  But the only reason that people would buy that it was self defense is if they believed the first people I mentioned who by the time of her trial should be in jail for covering up the very killing they claim is self defense.

They should go down first.  Of everyone who actually committed a crime, they're the only ones to confess.  They admitted to knowing who did it and refusing to tell until that person was already a suspect thus participating in two separate attempts to frame innocent people.

Which means that the guy who pulled the DAs off the case was wrong, they're not impeccable witnesses.  Who is going to believe someone who is in prison for covering up (twice!) the very crime they're testifying about?