Law and Order SVU season 19, episode 16: Peter Stone highlights

How did Peter Stone do in this week’s Law and Order: SVU? Check out the highlights in our Philip Winchester-centric SVU season 19, episode 16 recap.

Now that Philip Winchester is officially a series regular on Dick Wolf‘s Law & Order: SVU, we’re keeping tabs on what Peter Stone gets up to.

SVU season 19, episode 16 was called “Dare” and saw Peter having to up his game when defense attorney Nikki Staines, played by the amazing Callie Thorne (The Wire), returned to the show. The two battled it out in the courtroom over a childhood dare that took a very dangerous turn, so who won?

If you missed any of Philip Winchester’s latest episode, or you’re a Chicago Justice fan who wants to know what Peter got up to, we’re breaking down the installment for you with the highlights for his character.

Here are the highlights from Peter Stone’s fourth SVU episode:

1) An accident or something more?

Childhood pranks aren’t normally the jurisdiction of SVU, but that was just the tip of the iceberg for this case. When the victim was unexpectedly pronounced dead, Peter arrived to try and decide if it was worth prosecuting. He didn’t think so at first:

"Stone: These girls don’t sound like Thelma and Louise."

But that became totally irrelevant when the victim’s parents discovered their daughter’s organs had been illegally harvested by a doctor (played by guest star Janel Moloney, The West Wing).

It was cringe-worthy and a whole other legal issue—not just for Stone, but for Benson, who had to decide whether to hold onto the heart as evidence or let it go to a young boy who was likely to die without it. After asking the victim’s parents, Benson took the heart back. Talk about a moral dilemma!

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2) Meeting the parents

Benson took the issue to an equally bewildered Stone, who agreed to hold off on getting an arrest warrant until he spoke to the parents himself. He was the one who had to tell them the doctor had forged more than 30 organ donor consent forms. But did the ends justify the means?

"Stone: There is the ethical question as to whether her actions may have saved other children."

It took one reaction shot for us to see the wheels turning in Stone’s head. Whether or not there was a greater good at stake, he knew the law and what was legally right, too. And like his father, Peter held true to the law over any personal feelings he may have had on the issue. SVU then cut away to detectives arresting Dr. Franchella.

Between this and “Chasing Demons” we’ve seen Peter Stone having to come face to face with the grieving families affected by sex crimes, and while he did that on Chicago Justice with the people in his homicide cases, these scenes feel much more raw and in the moment. Maybe it’s because the show as a whole has a different tone, but you can feel that Stone’s in the deep end now.

3) Can Peter Stone make his case?

The detectives couldn’t even agree on prosecution, so would Stone be able to convince a jury that the doctor had committed 32 felonies? Enter Nikki Staines, who got the victim’s mother to say she had gotten a “guilt trip” from Benson for asking what to do with the heart.

And if that wasn’t sad enough, Staines called as a witness the young man who was supposed to get the heart—until Benson took it back, of course. Peter wisely chose not to cross-examine the kid, even though letting his testimony stand gave even the victim’s father second thoughts. His case took two big hits right off the bat.

So was Peter Stone done? Well, if you thought that, you don’t know Peter Stone.

During a conversation with Benson, he got the idea to look into the doctor’s sizeable donations to charity. And that provided him the opportunity to get back into the fight. Cross-examining her, he brought up her son—her son who had passed away in 2006 after not getting a heart transplant. He turned her from a hero to someone operating from personal motivation.

Plus, you have to love the barbs between Staines and Stone, when she claimed he was asking if her client committed a homicide and his only response was, “Well, did she?” That’s some Michael Cutter-level type smartassery there, and Philip Winchester’s great at it.

4) Another personal revelation

During his bar chat with Benson, Peter revealed something else about his recent history that made us a little emo: that he wasn’t with his father Ben Stone when Ben passed; he was in the hospital cafeteria getting coffee. That’s the kind of moment that can easily turn into a lifetime of regret.

It’s also another piece of the ongoing puzzle that is Peter Stone. We’ll never know how much or what we could’ve learned if Chicago Justice had been renewed, but SVU has done a wonderful job of providing these little facts and specific lines that are truly illuminating the character. They’re showing us how richly layered he is.

Particularly with his summation, and the note-perfect way that Philip Winchester delivered it that sounded just like a throwback to the way Michael Moriarty did it, Ben Stone would be proud of his son.

He got a guilty verdict on all 32 counts, but more than that, he did his job even under such a hard circumstance. And even when Benson suggested he was “overcompensating” for not being there for his father, by pursuing a harsh sentence. Some days, even the good guys have to look bad, and Peter has taken that step now. What’s next?

Next: Why Peter Stone is perfect for Law & Order: SVU

New episodes of Law & Order: SVU air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC. For more show coverage, follow the Dick Wolf category at One Chicago Center.

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