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| “ | It was all that bitch's idea, and I can prove it! | „ |
| ~ Graham blaming Tori Warshofsky for the robbery and murders he committed |
David Graham is the main antagonist of the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Nightmares in Drill City". He is a gangster and pimp who forces the young girls he traffics to assist him in home invasion robberies in which he kills the victims after stealing from them.
He was portrayed by Quincey Giles.
Biography[]
Graham is a professional criminal, specializing in "push-in" robberies and trafficking teenage girls, whom he also beats and rapes. He is also a wannabe rapper, shooting videos under the stage names "G" and "Gutta 18" in which he brags in rhyme about the crimes he commits; he also uses the girls he traffics as dancers and makes them perform in strip clubs, taking all the money they make in return for his "protection".
Eventually, he began combining the two crimes by forcing the girls he pimped out to help him commit robberies. He threatened to kill them and their families if they said no and said he would blame it all on them if they turned him into the police.
Two years before the events of the episode, Graham and his "top earner" Jasmine Cruz befriended 15-year-old honors student Tori Warshofsky, enticing her with drugs and parties and hiring her to dance in his videos; Graham also seduced her and became her lover. Eventually, however, he began abusing her - at one point fracturing her skull - and pimping her out, beating and raping her if she said no, until she did anything he asked her to out of fear and a desire to please him.
"Nightmares in Drill City"[]
When Graham learns that Chris and Mike Miller, school friends of Tori's who shot a few of his videos, has been mocking him behind his back as a "wannabe gangster", he decides to make an example of them.
He tells Tori to text Chris that she and Jasmine want to have sex with him; Chris, who has a crush on her, texts her the address of the apartment he shares with his brother. Graham then breaks into the apartment with Tori and Jasmine in tow and robs it, while shooting Chris and Mike, killing the former and wounding the latter. Tori is also shot amid the chaos, and Graham and Jasmine leave her there to be arrested and charged with murder.
The arresting NYPD officers notice the extensive bruising on Tori's body and call in the department's Special Victims Unit. Tori tells Captain Olivia Benson and Detective Amanda Rollins that she did not know that Graham was going to hurt anyone, and eventually tells them what he did to her. Rollins, her partner, Sergeant Fin Tutuola, and Detective Joe Velasco uncover evidence connecting Graham to several robberies and three unsolved homicides, so they raid Graham's house and arrest him and Jasmine. As they take Graham into custody, however, he insists that the robbery was Tori's idea.
After Graham is arraigned on felony murder and sex trafficking charges, Assistant District Attorney Dominick Carisi Jr. tells him he is facing life in prison, which Graham arrogantly shrugs off as "the cost of doing business". He also puts the blame for the robbery and the murders on Tori's shoulders, saying that he simply went along with her. Carisi does not believe him, but his superiors, Trial Division Chief Roberta Maxwell and Bureau Chief Philip Baptiste, refuse his request to give Tori a lenient plea deal, saying the "optics" of imprisoning a Black man for life while letting his white accomplice off easy would politically damage the District Attorney's office in an election year.
Ultimately, however, Carisi and Benson manage to convince Maxwell and Baptiste to allow a deal for Tori by showing them multiple hospital reports of the physical and sexual abuse she endured at Graham's hands and saying that the "optics" of giving a trafficking victim a heavy prison sentence would earn the D.A.'s office just as much bad publicity. Carisi offers Tori a plea bargain in which she would be eligible for parole in 10 years, but her lawyer, Nikki Staines, talks her into turning it down.
Tori testifies that Graham had raped and trafficked her for two years, that the robbery had been his idea, and that he threatened to kill her unless she helped him. Carisi cross-examines her and asks why she never told anyone what Graham did to her until she was arrested and why she had accepted expensive gifts from him, questions she cannot answer.
Determined to help Tori, Benson tells her detectives to persuade Jasmine to help SVU make a case against Graham. Jasmine refuses at first, but Velasco and Tutuola promise to help her rehabilitate her life if she helps them. Jasmine tells them about the years of abuse Graham put her through, and that she had personally witnessed him abusing Tori. Carisi uses this new evidence to persuade Maxwell and Baptiste to dismiss the murder charges against Tori and Jasmine, who are sentenced instead to probation and community service in lieu of prison. Graham, meanwhile, is sentenced to life in prison for murder, sex trafficking, and robbery.
External links[]
- David Graham on the Law & Order Wiki
