Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a crime drama television series that was first aired on NBC in September of 1999. It began as a spin off of Dick Wolf’s successful show Law & Order. This show focuses on sexually motivated crimes that are investigated and prosecuted by the New York City Police Department. These sexually motivated crimes include rape, domestic abuse, and pedophilia but the show also focuses on non-sexual crimes that are committed against children, elderly victims, and the handicapped. These non-sexual crimes still require handling from specialist of the Special Victims Unit. Each episode of the show follows a new crime, which is often loosely based off of real crimes that have received public attention. The storyline of the

He is originally portrayed to be most interested in convicting criminals to the highest capacity, without consideration for the reason behind their acts. Just as the previous characters, he has also become more empathetic and mindful throughout his time with the Special Victims Unit. When he entered the Unit he was strictly by the book and pressured anyone in order to win his case, whether that pressure was towards the victim of the crime or the criminal who committed it. In Season 19 Episode 13, titled “The Undiscovered Country”, an infant who was born with severe health issues is kidnapped. Since the infant cannot breathe without tubes and may die very easily it is a high profile case. It is discovered that the father of the child kidnapped him because the mother was filing a right-to-die case in court, which the father was not in support of. It is obvious in the episode that the child has no hope for living because he cannot eat, cannot breathe, cannot think, can only feel pain, and is being kept alive only by machines. ADA Barba sees the pain that this causes both of the parents. After speaking with the mother, in an effort to help end this pain he manually unplugs the machines that are keeping the infant alive. This results in a strenuous murder suit against Barba, in which he is not convicted because it is shown that he could not have killed a child that by all accounts was legally dead already. Barba had been with the Special Victims Unit since Season 15, but in Season 19 he chooses to leave after the events in “The Undiscovered Country” make him realize there is more good that needs to be done in the world, outside of processing criminals. He was traumatized by this case and needed to find hope