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| “ | You know how those people get... you know, street players. 'Don't mess with my homie, yo!' and all that gangsta rap crap. Thinking they can get away with anything because they're so bad. | „ |
| ~ Cougar making racist remarks about his Black teammate Chuck Mosley. |
Riley Cougar is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Sophomore Jinx". He is an arrogant, racist college basketball player who rapes female classmate Jean Gallagher shortly before she dies.
He was portrayed by Kohl Sudduth.
Early life[]
Couger comes from a wealthy, socially prominent family who bail him out whenever he gets in trouble, usually for underage drinking and sexually harassing female classmates at St. Raymond's University, to which his family are major donors. He is a star forward on the school's basketball team, but he is known for being aggressive and selfish on the court, and for drinking heavily and harassing female students at the school's charity functions. He is also a racist, disdaining his Black teammates as "street players" and insinuating that "those people" are handed star positions on sports teams thanks to affirmative action policies.
Two months prior to the events of the episode, he raped classmate Jean Gallagher, who was also his teammate Chuck Mosley's girlfriend, after a party, sending her into a deep depression. One night, she got drunk at a party after a fight with Mosley; the next morning, she was found dead, the apparent victim of a rape-homicide.
"Sophomore Jinx"[]
The NYPD's Special Victims Unit investigates Gallagher's death as a homicide, and question every member of St. Raymond's basketball team, including Couger and Mosley, who end up being the prime suspects. Detectives John Munch and Brian Cassidy question Couger while he is recovering from a hangover in the student lounge, and he tells them that he had seen Mosley and Gallagher arguing at a party the night before. Munch takes an immediate dislike to Couger, whose arrogance and racism are on full display when he dismisses Mosley as a "street player" and typical of "those people".
Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler find out from Gallagher's roommate that Couger raped her, and that the school covered it up so they wouldn't lose a star player and a major source of funding. A campus security officer gives Couger an alibi by saying he had been at the library, but Captain Donald Cragen does not believe it and grills the officer, who admits that he did not see Couger there and only said that he did because he did not want "a girl with a grudge" to ruin Couger's life. Ultimately, the detectives get a warrant to compel semen samples from Couger and Mosley. While neither of their samples match that of the rapist, Couger's matches that of a sample she had given campus security when she reported her earlier rape.
Eventually, the detectives discover that Gallagher was not in fact murdered; she had broken her skull in a drunken fall, and James Henri Rousseau, one of her professors who had been stalking her, had committed necrophilia with her corpse. Rousseau is imprisoned for three years for abusing a corpse and disturbing a crime scene, while Couger is given a much harsher prison sentence for rape and sexual assault.
Trivia[]
- Couger is inspired by the rapist of Katie Koestner. Jeanne Gallagher's death is inspired by the murder of Jeanne Clery and the resulting passage of the Clery Act.
External links[]
- Riley Couger on the Law & Order Wiki
