Chapter Text
“No more late night calls, no more rape victims and dead kids… How do you sleep at night?”
“… I don’t.”
Casey knew she’d been taking too many risks in the name of justice recently. Baby Kendall, Saul Picard, the Kastner Center. She was getting sick of following black-and-white in SVU’s world of grey. Sometimes her efforts paid off, sometimes they didn’t, sometimes they put people in danger. She still thought about Jason King, she learned not to make promises. But what she couldn’t reconcile with her words, she would with her actions.
She was beginning to trust her judgement again. She was finally making a difference, what was one more risk?
“Is this partial profile enough to say he’s a match?”
“Yes, but it leaves you wide open on rebuttal.”
“Okay, why?”
“All human cells except platelets have thirteen loci. The semen the lab tested presented only nine, which means it was significantly degraded.”
“… I’ll need probabilities as to the DNA match for Crane.”
“I can’t give them with what we have.”
“Okay without it, he walks. Thomas Crane raped and murdered a young girl, and we gave him the badge to hide behind while he did it.”
“I know what you want me to say, but the science doesn’t support it.”
“… When the defense gets these lab reports, they might have enough for reasonable doubt. Can you live with that?”
“If I have to, because I sure as hell won’t risk my reputation for a verdict we didn’t earn.”
Her conversation with Melinda played over and over in her head as she sat across the table from the disciplinary committee. Her union rep was doing most of the talking while she ruminated. Scowling between the faces staring at her and her rep, biting her lip, thinking back again to the first time she had to meet him.
“Casey Novak? I’m George Baker, I’ll be representing you at the hearing.”
They had to meet at a coffee shop a few blocks from the courthouse. Having been suspended pending the outcome of the hearing, Casey couldn’t get back into her office. And she’d be damned if she let herself be vulnerable in front of a stranger in her own living room. At least she knew how to keep face in public.
She stood up as he introduced himself and shook his hand. “Thanks for meeting me here. Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine, I’d like to just get straight to it, if that’s alright?” A man after her own heart, it would seem. Get straight to it, get it over with. “Okay…” he laid his briefcase on the table and pulled out some folders and bundles of paper, “So we’ve got a start date of May 15th, that’s this Thursday…”
He began to read from one of the sheets of paper as he sat his briefcase on the floor, “So, in your rebuttal letter, you state that the defense claimed a violation of Brady in front of the jury, so we might have a case for jury tampering with that… But otherwise, I gotta be honest, the case against you is pretty solid.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Within herself, that was true. He had to pay for what he did, anyway, anyhow. She could even understand Chester’s reaction, doing what everyone had thought about doing to Crane at some point down the line, saving them the trouble.
Casey retreated to a bar around the corner from her apartment that night. She couldn’t bear to be alone with her thoughts, thinking about the hundreds of ways her life was about to go wrong, and none of the ways it was going right. She was still having them now anyway, but at least she could stare down into a half decent scotch while she did it. She might have to cut back on that now, if she has to get another job, maybe start drinking wine again instead, maybe beer like in college.
“You want some company?”
She turned to find Elliot standing next to her, interrupting her train of thought “How’d you know I’d be here?”
He moved to sit at the stool next to her, “Figured you wouldn’t wanna be downtown right now. We tried calling, but—”
“But I had to hand over my work cell.” she drained the last of her glass and beckoned the bartender over, ordering another while Elliot settled for the beer she’d been thinking about.
“So how you holdin’ up?”
“I am… so fucked.” the bartender slid their drinks over and Casey moved for her credit card.
“Let me.” Elliot reached for his wallet and pulled out some cash before she could argue.
“… Thanks.” she took a sip.
“So, tell me about it.”
“… They’re calling everybody for statements. Petrovsky, Emmett, Warner… Chester.” she took a larger sip of her scotch, almost draining it in one go. Her one date with Chester a year ago might not have worked out, but she still cared about him. She still hated thinking that her actions led him to do what he did. It wasn’t her fault, and yet it also was.
“You’ll be alright Casey, you always are.”
“… I don’t know this time.” She thought back to being called into Liz’s chambers after the trial,
“You wanted to see me, Judge Donnelly?”
“Yes, the uh… the DA is declining to refile charges against Thomas Crane.”
“… He raped and murdered Alyssa Hernandez, and he gets to keep his badge?!”
“Because of your actions, Counsellor.”
“… With all due respect, ma’am, this doesn’t concern you.”
“It does now.”
“… I’m being called before the Bar?”
“At my insistence.”
“… Why?”
“Because you lost perspective. And because I sit on the peer review board and I cannot allow you to commit a Brady violation and lie to the Court without consequence.”
“The reports weren’t finished, Your Honor! I sent them back!”
“You lied to Petrovsky, and now you are lying to me! The lab reports were dated and stamped…! We are civil servants, Casey! No one is falling on their sword for you… What I wanna know, is why?”
“… Because the bad guys can’t always win. He deserved to pay.”
“… And so do you.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d been threatened with a Bar hearing, hell it wasn’t even the first time in the last year.
“… I’ll tell you what I know. You’re gonna stay on this case through the seven-thirty hearing, and you’re going to behave yourself. Because if you don’t, I’m not only going to fire you, I’ll make sure the Bar yanks your license. And if you don’t think I have the juice to do it: try me.”
“This is a complaint to the disciplinary committee of the Bar, demanding that you be suspended from the practice of law.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your unprofessional, if not criminal, conduct. You revealed confidential, legally protected, medical information to my client’s wife.”
“I’m trying to protect Mary-Ellen from contracting HIV.”
“She thinks that you’re trying to intimidate her to win your case… I can tear this up, if we can make a deal.”
“Let me get this straight: you’re blackmailing me, and in the same breath, accusing me of ethical impropriety?”
“I’m defending my client! I didn’t break the law! Man Two, five years’ probation, take it or leave it!”
“I’ll take the censure.”
“I’m betting suspension! You’ll lose your job!”
“Tell me you didn’t do this.”
“I had to warn her! She has a right to know she’s at risk!”
“You had no legal right to tell her.”
“Mary, her life is at stake.”
“Well congratulations, in any other profession you’d be humanitarian of the year. You’ll be lucky to get out of this with your skin.”
“… I’m screwed.”
“You bet your sweet ass you are... Did you tell Mary-Ellen about her husband only to protect her? Or did you have something else in mind?”
"You still with me, Casey?"
Elliot's hand on her shoulder pulled her back into the room, she looked down to find her glass empty once again, "I'm gonna get another, you want one?"
"Nah I'm... I'm good." He furrowed a brow in concern, but let it slide. She was having a rough time, and it wasn't about to get any better.
She hadn’t heard from Elliot since that night at the bar. She hadn’t heard from any of the rest of them since the night after the trial, as they all watched Chester being driven away in the back seat of a squad car. No one to wish her luck, no one to support her. She’d been left to fend for herself, thrown to the wolves.
She didn’t do anything wrong.
“Before we issue our ruling, do you have anything you wish to add for the record, Miss Novak?”
She turned to her rep. Oh, there was so much she wanted to say. About how she only ever did this in the name of true justice, about how her only regret was getting caught. That she’d do it again if she had to. How sometimes the law fucking sucks and doesn’t go far enough to help the people it needs to. That sometimes the bad guys don’t deserve to be coddled the way the law allows them to be.
He could see the fire behind her eyes, the words waiting to burst out of her like an inferno, and extinguished it with a curt shake of his head.
“… Not at this time.”
“In that case, we’ll now issue our ruling. We find that the actions of the Prosecution, namely the suppression of laboratory reports and the manipulation of DNA test results, in the case of the People of New York versus Thomas Crane, did surmount to a violation of legal criminal procedure as defined in Brady versus Maryland…”
She shouldn’t have felt betrayed, Liz was doing her job. Just like Casey had been trained to do. But she couldn’t help but wonder, which of the two of them was the one who truly lost perspective here?
“… How much trouble am I in?”
“Censure. Possible suspension.”
“For how long?”
“A year. Maybe more.”
“… You are to be censured for a period of three years, during which time you will not be permitted to practise law, or hold a position of employment which may give you the opportunity to do so. For this reason, we will also be recommending the immediate termination of your employment at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. A copy of the outcome of this hearing will be made publicly available for your record. Miss Novak, let this be a lesson to you: no one is above the law. We’re adjourned.”
“What should I do?”
“… Something else.”