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| - Kim Garnet is found brutally beaten after she sends out nude photos of herself via text message. Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler pay a visit to Kim's boyfriend, Steve Walker, but eventually learn that he is not the only recipient of the nude photos. However, after Counselor Samantha Copeland demands that Benson arrest Kim for producing and distributing child pornography, Kim must face the possibility of lifelong consequences. When Benson brings in Kathleen Stabler to try to convince Kim, Kim finally reveals her boyfriend drove her to do it. With the truth revealed, Copeland plans to drop the case. Judge Hilda Marsden, however, not only refuses the request, but convicts Kim on the spot (not even bothering to allow closing arguments) and hands down a shockingly harsh sentence: on
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| abstract
| - Kim Garnet is found brutally beaten after she sends out nude photos of herself via text message. Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler pay a visit to Kim's boyfriend, Steve Walker, but eventually learn that he is not the only recipient of the nude photos. However, after Counselor Samantha Copeland demands that Benson arrest Kim for producing and distributing child pornography, Kim must face the possibility of lifelong consequences. When Benson brings in Kathleen Stabler to try to convince Kim, Kim finally reveals her boyfriend drove her to do it. With the truth revealed, Copeland plans to drop the case. Judge Hilda Marsden, however, not only refuses the request, but convicts Kim on the spot (not even bothering to allow closing arguments) and hands down a shockingly harsh sentence: one year at a juvenile sex offender facility in Wellsburg, Ohio. Benson and Pond become so upset by the sentence (and the way Marsden ran her court) that they privately investigate her. Copeland, while equally horrified, refused to join in for fear it could run her career. While searching for Marsden's judicial records, the lead clerk, Ed Mangini, alerts Marsden to their presence, and she proceeds to imprison both on made-up contempt citations (Benson for "mocking" her in an explicitly off-the-record conversation, Pond simply for pointing that the judge had no right to so). Much to their surprise, when Cragen arrives to release them, he brings Copeland along. Upon hearing of the arrest, the ADA, convinced by Marsden's behavior that she must have something to hide, had looked up the records herself, and discovered just what Mardsen couldn't let the detective and attorney see: she would target teenagers who had committed minor offences (urinating in public, public lewdness, etc.), turn the offence into a felony sex offence, and ship them off to the Wellsburg facility. Though Cragen points out that, while harsh, such punishments are with her discretion, locking up Benson and Pond to stop them from seeing her records (especially coming from someone whose self-righteous boasts about her sentencing had left them every bit as disgusted as they had been by the sentence itself) along with the clerk tipping her off, suggests something more sinister. Mangini is quickly arrested, and confesses the truth: Marsden's docket is rigged to include the "right" cases, as she gets a commission on everyone she sends to the Wellsburg facility, which her cousin runs. Later that day, Stabler, posing as a father whose daughter's boyfriend took his car on a joyride and totaled it, bribes Marsden to harshly punish the teen. Finally, the next day, with Kim's friend Ethan playing the unfortunate "defendant", Copeland playing prosecutor, Huang playing defense attorney, and Cragen the defendant's father, Marsden is brought to justice for her own criminal acts. Another judge overturns Kim's conviction and even wipes her record clean like it never happened so she can start anew. Marsden gets arrested for false imprisonment, bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and other crimes she committed after an argument.
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