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“ | I didn't mean to. I was so drunk. I swear. I'm not a monster. Please forgive me. Please. | „ |
~ Dressler capitulating to the courts |
Bernard Dressler is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Under the Influence". Dressler is an investment banker and a dangerously reckless alcoholic, guilty of the vehicular homicides of three people while he was drunk at the wheel.
He was portrayed by Daniel McDonald.
Biography[]
Dressler's first arrest was for hitting a little girl on a bicycle in Pennsylvania, resulting in her ending up in a coma and staying in the hospital for a total of eight months even after she woke up. Dressler's license in Massachusetts was suspended, but it didn't stop his drinking. On a flight returning to New York City, he drank fifteen servings of alcohol and smoked on the plane, getting into a fight with the crew. He got behind the wheel of a Jaguar with his girlfriend, Susan Young, in the passenger seat. Dressler believed she was cheating on him, and to take his frustrations out on innocent people, he sped up his car to hit an elderly man named Peter LaValle and a father and son named Leon and Max Galvez. Susan was tracked from a donation sent to the Galvez family anonymously, but she refused to give up Dressler, so he was found out from the report on him by airline security. By then, he had switched his car out to be sold illegally to a smuggling ring taking it to Russia, and he was highly uncooperative and obstructive with detectives. When the car was tracked, he was arrested, resisting the whole time. The prosecution was intent on seeking the death penalty if Dressler didn't plead out, as was presiding judge Gary Feldman. The personal agendas jeopardized the case, in spite of Feldman and Jack McCoy planning to put Dressler through the ringer, which terrified Dressler when he was confronted with the severity of his charges on the stand. But once McCoy came to his senses, he and Feldman both blackmailed each other with the ethics committee, which was their unspoken agreement to convict Dressler under the law. He pleaded guilty to first-degree vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to five to fifteen years imprisonment for each charge.
Trivia[]
- Dressler is heavily inspired by Gerald Finneran, an investment banker tried for disrupting United Airlines Flight 976 while drunk by defecating in a food cart.