Tonight on NBC Law & Order SVU returns with an all-new Thursday, April 3, 2025 episode and we have your Law & Order SVU recap below.
In tonight’s Law & Order SVU season 26 episode 17 “Accomplice Liability,” as per the NBC synopsis, “Carisi tries to put aside her identity as prosecutor to serve as a witness in a trial; Benson supports a rape survivor struggling with her recovery.”
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ADA Dominic Carisi was heading back to court tonight. Just not as the prosecution. He was the victim of a crime and the man that nearly killed him was on trial. The case was being handled by ADA Camille Rourke. She seemed new. She didn’t want to take this to court. She tried to offer Deonte Mosley a deal. Only he didn’t want to take it. He thought he was the hero of the story. He and his buddy took a bodega hostage. His buddy killed the store owner. His buddy sexually assaulted one of the hostages. Deonte let all of that happen before he was finally moved to kill his partner in return for a lesser charge.
Carisi had promised Deonte a deal if he took down Boyd Lynch. Boyd was the dangerous one. Boyd was willing to kill everyone that day and that included himself because he didn’t want to go back to prison. Deonte turned on his friend to save his own neck. He didn’t do it because it was right. He didn’t do it to protect anyone. He did it because he thought he’d get less jail time that way. He was now angry that Carisi wasn’t going to hold up his end of their “deal”. Carisi purposely lied to Deonte just to stop the killing and somehow Deonte thought he was the bad guy.
Carisi hated that Rourke was offering the man a deal. Rourke was willing to drop the rape charge to get Deonte on manslaughter. She was actually giving him a better deal than he deserved and he still turned it down. They had to go to court. Carisi was fine with testifying. It was the rape survivor that was the issue. Tess Milburn never recovered after her assault. She started taking drugs. She stopped talking to friends. Her family hadn’t heard from her in over a week and the cops tracked her cell phone. Tess was living with a drug dealer.
The boyfriend was giving her all the benzos she wanted. Tess was so out of it that she didn’t know what day it was. She had to be rushed to the hospital and they did their best to dry her out. The one thing she was sure about was that she didn’t want her parents to see her like that. She knew she was a mess. She destroyed herself to forget what happened to her. She had a heart attack while at the hospital. The doctors brought her back, but they weren’t sure what her condition would be if she keeps going like this.
Tess was in no condition to testify against Deonte. Deonte’s lawyer also tried to stop Carisi from testifying. He said that Carisi as an ADA would impartially move the jury in his favor and the judge called that out for the crap it was. Carisi wasn’t any old ADA. He was the victim of a crime. He has a right to testify against a man that nearly killed him. Neither Deonte nor his lawyer knew how much this one case affected Carisi. He never recovered from what happened at the bodega. He was trying to take over this case because he thought that would give him closure.
Carisi tried to give Rourke advice. He told her how to pick the jury. He also told her about something he figured out after the fact. He said that Deonte’s partner just got out of prison that day. How did Boyd get two guns when he just came out of prison? Deonte must have gotten it for them. He’s therefore responsible for everything his partner did because he gave him the weapon. Rourke needed to hear that last one. It helped her build her case. She also added the rape back in. She was trying to do the right thing and so she told Carisi that if he respects her at all – he needed stop backseat driving.
Rourke was the prosecutor. She has to make sure he was ready to testify as a victim and witness. She had practice sessions with everyone she was putting in the witness box. She tried to prepare them to be attacked by the defense. The defense was trying to put all the blame on Boyd. Boyd was the problem. Deonte was just going along with him because he was too scared to fight back. The defense left out that Deonte took Carisi’s phone, wallet, and his wedding ring. He planned on robbing them just as much as Boyd did. It was once the cops surrounded the bodega that things took a nasty turn.
Tess also disappeared again. They put her in a hotel. They gave her a phone to use. She was safe and she just didn’t know how to be. She snuck out of the hotel. She left behind her new cell. No one knew where she was. The fear was that she went back to the drug dealer. The cops checked that man’s place. She wasn’t there. She went to another source for drugs. She was found in a drug den. She begged them not to take her to trial. She said she couldn’t face Deonte and they still pushed her into doing so.
Tess testified that Deonte never once tried to help her. She was in that cooler with Boyd for forty minutes. Deonte never did anything until Carisi lied to him about a deal and that made Tess’s testimony compelling. She didn’t fall apart like everyone thought she would. It was Carisi that couldn’t control himself. He saw Deonte smiling and he yelled at him in open court. He was threatened with charges if he didn’t leave. He might have blown up Rourke’s case and he tried to make up for it later on.
Carisi let Deonte get in his head. He finally talked to his wife. They figured out the best way to get back at Deonte was to get in his head and so they found a witness to bolster their case. Deonte had tried a different a lawyer before he found Vaughn. The old guy testified against Deonte. Deonte was later found guilty of murder.
The one thing that didn’t stick was the sexual assault and yet Tess got the closure she needed.
THE END
