‘Law
& Order” ripped the Taconic crash from the headlines — but there are some stark departures from the news in tonight’s episode.
The Taconic crash mom Diane Schuler drove two miles in the wrong direction until she slammed into another car — killing her daughter, her three nieces, three men in the other car and herself.
In the episode titled “Doped,” a woman called Brenda gets on the West Side Highway going in the wrong direction at 60 miles per hour and, like Schuler, winds up killing herself, her daughter, two nieces, and three men in another car.
And the cops find an empty bottle of 151-proof grain alcohol in the car, like Schuler’s empty vodka bottle — yet both Schuler’s husband Daniel and Brenda’s fictional husband denied their wives were alcoholics.
That’s where the similarities end.
Schuler was found to have THC from marijuana in her system, in addition to a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit.
While Brenda was also well over the legal limit, she had traces of the powerful sedative propofol, which lead the “Law & Order” cops to investigate whether she was intoxicated or the victim of foul play.
The show came under some fire last month when it was revealed “Law & Order” would be basing an episode on the crash.
While the show does find inspiration from real-life events — such as Heath Ledger’s death and Jon Gosselin’s reality career — the writers are careful to change details and add their own backstory to the events.
The show has caused some trouble in the past when inaccurate testimony ground the trial of a Texas woman to a halt.
When Andrea Yates stood trial for drowning her five children in the bathtub, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz informed the jury that he was a consultant for “Law & Order” and an episode with a similar scenario aired shortly before the murders — even though there was no such episode.
Dietz’s false testimony as an expert witness for the prosecution resulted in a new trial for Yates.
Since then, writers have been careful not to borrow too much from a crime when creating a storyline.
Executive producer Rene Balcer said in a September interview with NPR, “Back stories are completely our invention . . . What is ripped from the headline is . . . the crime that kicks the story off.”