Law and Order SVU season 20, episode 3: Peter Stone highlights

What happened to Peter Stone in this week’s Law & Order: SVU? Find the highlights in our Philip Winchester-centric SVU season 20, episode 3 recap.

Peter Stone is dishing out Chicago Justice on Law & Order: SVU, and we’re keeping track of what happens next for his character.

Thursday’s episode was entitled “Zero Tolerance” and saw Peter have to flex his legal muscle to reunite a family, while he got a visit from his former Chicago Justice boss Mark Jefferies (guest star Carl Weathers).

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.

So what happened to Peter Stone in this week’s SVU episode?

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Peter’s appearance in “Zero Tolerance” came as the team was investigating the case of a young woman named Delilah who was dumped at Mercy Hospital in the middle of the night.

Unraveling her story led to the discovery of a ring of sex traffickers led by Luke Francis (guest star Shane Patrick Kearns).

Not only was Luke trafficking several teenagers, but he had a 10-year-old girl named Gabriela Sosa (guest star Scarlett Daisy Lopez) kept in a cage!

The team wanted to reunite her with her family, but it wasn’t easy because her history was difficult. She was in foster care in New Jersey, after being involuntarily separated from her birth mother by the federal government. Thus, there was a federal legal issue to contest.

Thankfully, the Special Victims Unit has one heck of a lawyer on its side. Stone showed up as SVU had all of the victims rescued and was trying to figure out their stories, particularly Gabriela’s.

Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) decided to introduce Peter to Luke, which went as well as you’d expect it would. Peter Stone takes no nonsense from anyone, and particularly not when it involves a bad guy taking advantage of children.

"Peter: I’m going to make it my personal mission that you never lay your hands on another girl."

With that confrontation out of the way, the question became what to do with Gabriela. Benson took the drastic step of arresting the federal officer who had separated her from her mother, on the basis of charging him with kidnapping. Naturally, Peter had something to say about that, and it wasn’t congratulating her.

"Peter: I don’t prosecute cases to make points.Benson: Well, then I’ll find someone who will."

Before SVU could get into how insulting that is to Peter, Benson brought him to meet Gabriela so he could see “what you’re fighting for.” Peter was persuaded to show up in federal court to argue Benson’s case on her behalf. Even though she started doing it herself behind him.

The judge ruled that federal law overruled state law, letting the officer go and enabling him to take the girl back to detention.

SVU then segued to Peter having a drink with his old boss Mark Jefferies in Chicago. After Jefferies asked his former subordinate how it was going in New York—and Peter admitted that it wasn’t what he expected—Peter appealed to Jefferies to use his political connections to help the girl and her mother. Jefferies agreed to see what he could do.

That was a long way for Peter Stone to go for a case, not to mention it can’t have been easy to ask Mark Jefferies for a favor, given how often those two butted heads on complicated issues just like this one!

But Jefferies came through, flying to New York just so he could ride with Benson to the military base where Gabriela was being detained. (The scene of Carl Weathers chewing out the guard at the gate was the best of the whole episode.) He’d gotten orders to release Gabriela and get her back together with her tearful mother. Benson was impressed:

"Benson: How in the world did you and Stone pull this off?Jefferies: The supervising judge in the fifth circuit grew up in Chicago…Peter drew up the asylum position and Judge Connors pushed it through."

Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Jefferies to the rescue again! And if nothing else, “Zero Tolerance” undid that reference in “Promise” about Jefferies being too scared to get involved. He’s not that guy, and neither is Peter Stone.

Next. New Law & Order coming to NBC in 2019. dark

For the latest SVU season 20 spoilers and news, plus more on all of Dick Wolf’s other series, follow the Dick Wolf category at One Chicago Center.

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