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| “ | For 17 years I've been locked up with these mutts! | „ |
| ~ Bennett raging at the inmates he guards |
Pete Bennett is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Standoff". He is a corrections officer who arranges for the prisoner who raped his fiancée to be murdered.
He was portrayed by Matt Mulhern, who also portrayed Brad Kendall in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Teddy Beckersted in One Crazy Summer.
Early life[]
After getting out of the military, Bennett got a job as a corrections officer at Rikers Island, where he guarded the inmates who committed the most serious crimes. While he genuinely believed in protecting the general public from the criminals in his charge, he also had a history of responding to conflicts between inmates with excessive, and often unnecessary, force.
Bennett was in a relationship with fellow guard Angela Donohue, and they planned to get married once their respective divorces were finalized. Their relationship was irrevocably altered, however, when Rafael Alejo, a drug dealer and murderer incarcerated at Rikers, attacked Donohue and sexually assaulted her with her own baton. While Alejo was found guilty of rape and had 30 years added to his life sentence, Donohue was severely traumatized and went into a deep depression, leaving Bennett feeling helpless and angry and obsessed with getting revenge against Alejo.
He eventually devised a plan to have Alejo killed by hiring another inmate, serial killer Judd Larson, to stab him to death and make it look like a prison brawl; in return, Bennett pulled strings to have Larson's son, who was also incarcerated, transferred to a better facility. Bennett instigated a prison riot and used the distraction to give Larson a shiv, with which Larson stabbed Alejo to death.
"Standoff"[]
While investigating Alejo's murder, NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green review the security footage and discover that Alejo was killed out of sight of security cameras, leading them to believe that the murder was premeditated, not the result of a random brawl. When they learn of Donohue's rape and relationship with Bennett, they come to suspect him of arranging Alejo's murder.
Further investigation leads them to Larson, whose DNA is found on the shiv. They interrogate Larson, who eventually admits to killing Alejo at Bennett's behest, but refuses to testify to that effect unless his son gets the prison transfer that Bennett promised him. Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael reluctantly agree to Larson's terms, and have Bennett arrested and charged with capital murder. His fellow guards, meanwhile, close ranks and refuse to help the prosecution in any way.
During the trial, Larson testifies that Bennett arranged the murder, while Donohue tearfully describes what Alejo did to her and characterizes Bennett as a loving, supportive partner. When McCoy cross-examines her, however, he gets her to admit that Bennett was often jealous and had gotten in fights with several men who tried to flirt with her. Bennett, meanwhile, testifies that, while he hated Alejo and had thought about killing him, he had nothing to do with the murder. When McCoy presses him about Donohue's rape and the evidence proving that he instigated the encounter between Larson and Alejo, however, Bennett explodes in anger and curses the inmates he guards as "mutts" and says that Alejo got what he deserved.
During closing arguments, Bennett's lawyer tells the jury that the case against Bennett rests almost entirely on the testimony of a serial killer, and that Bennett deserves a medal for protecting society from the likes of Alejo and Larson. McCoy counters that the evidence proves that Bennett orchestrated a murder and deserved to be punished, regardless of his motive or the crimes that the victim committed. Ultimately, however, the jury finds Bennett innocent of murder, and he goes back to his job and his old life as if nothing had happened.
External links[]
- Pete Bennett on the Law & Order Wiki
