How realistic is Law and Order?

Answer 1

The stories on Law & Order are said to be "ripped from the headlines," and that is the truth. Most Law & Order episodes are inspired by true events. They pick popular news stories, and they take a tiny kernal of truth from those stories and twist it and change it until it becomes fiction.

For example, a couple of years ago the actress/screenwriter/director Adrienne Shelley was murdered in her New York City apartment. It was an apartment she kept as a studio, for writing. There was a lot of construction going on in the building, and the noise was ruining her concentration. So she went down and complained, and one of the workers ended up killing her, because she threatened to call the police and he was an illegal alien.

A few months later, the exact same story becomes the plot of a new Law & Order episode. Except, in the Law & Order episode, the illegal alien worker only injured the woman, not killed her. Instead, the guy who owned the construction company killed her, because he was hiring mostly illegal aliens and he didn't want the police to find out about it. If the woman complained about being assaulted by one of the workers, the police might find out that he was hiring mostly illegals for his business.

I watch a lot of Law & Order, and I also watch a lot of true-crime shows on Court TV (which has now changed its name to TruTV). And it's really funny: I'll watch a true crime story on TruTV, and then I'll change the channel to Law & Order, and I'll find myself watching the fictionalized version of that same story!

However, I don't think the legal stuff is anywhere near as realistic as the crimes. Half of the tricks the prosecutors come up with would never be allowed in real life. Like, last season there was an episode about a man who was obsessed with a girl he met once in college, who he perceived as his lost love. At the trial, the prosecutors brought in another woman, and tricked him into believing she was the girl he'd met in college. While the prosecutor is questioning her, he just loses it and blurts out a confession.

Now, what I know about the law could be printed on a postage stamp. But still, I am pretty sure that such antics would never fly in an actual court of law.