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| “ | I followed him everywhere - the theater, the restaurant. I waited to talk to him. When I thought he was going to duck out the back of the restaurant, I went after him. I told him he was a bastard for abandoning a good man. He laughed and said that he wasn't the problem - the problem was that my father was a murderer. And then he went into the restroom. And I didn't believe him, I couldn't! I was just so angry that I started shooting. And when I saw that other man... I just kept firing. | „ |
| ~ Carson confessing to committing murder. |
Lindsay Carson is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Expert". She is the daughter of a convicted mass murderer who tries to kill the forensic psychologist whose perjured testimony put her father in prison.
She was portrayed by Vera Farmiga, who also portrayed Norma Bates in Bates Motel, Joanna in The Commuter, Eleanor Bishop in Hawkeye, Emma Russell in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and the young Livia Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark.
Early life[]
Carson worked as a freelance events coordinator in Albany, New York. In 1996, her father, Arthur Rigg, committed a workplace massacre after getting fired, killing his boss and his boss' secretary. His defense attorney hired Dr. Leon Mayer, a forensic psychologist, to testify that Rigg had shot up his office while in a dissociative state as part of Rigg's insanity plea, testimony that cost Carson $40,000. The jury found him guilty nonetheless and sentenced him to life in prison. Carson, who steadfastly believed in her father's innocence, was devastated by the verdict, and spent the next two years advocating, unsuccessfully, for his release.
Her last hope was persuading Mayer to testify again in her father's defense for his appeal, so she tried repeatedly to contact him. Mayer refused to help, however, because he had perjured himself while testifying on Rigg's behalf the first time; Rigg had told him that he clearly remembered committing the murders, but Mayer lied under oath that Rigg was in a trance-like state in order to draw attention to his research on the subject of the relationship between dissociation and violent crime.
Carson became obsessed with getting revenge against Mayer, so she stalked him to New York City, where he was scheduled to testify in another murder trial. She followed him to a restaurant one night and even went into the men's room with him, accusing him of abandoning her father. Mayer laughed at her and said that her father was a murderer. Carson, who had brought her father's gun - the same one he used to commit the shooting - with her to scare Mayer, flew into a rage and opened fire, wounding him and accidentally killing another of the restaurant's patrons before fleeing the scene.
In "Expert"[]
Following the shooting, Carson went to Chicago to work at a convention, as if nothing had happened. While investigating the shooting, however, NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis identify her from a suspect sketch given by a witness to the crime and discover her father's relationship to Mayer after speaking to the doctor while he recovers in a hospital.
They get a search warrant for Carson's apartment, where they find several tapes of Mayer's testimony in criminal trials, as well as a true crime book he had authored in which he mentioned Rigg. Carson comes home during the search, and reluctantly agrees to come with them to their precinct to answer questions. She denies shooting Mayer, but Briscoe and Curtis ultimately arrest her after their commanding officer, Lieutenant Anita Van Buren, tells them that gunpowder residue has been found on Carson's work portfolio.
Carson's lawyer manages to persuade the trial judge to exclude the gunpowder residue as evidence, jeopardizing the case. Briscoe and Curtis investigate further, however, and find out that both Carson and Rigg had been staying in the same motel shortly before Rigg committed his crime and had hidden the gun he used in the same motel directly afterward. They also learn that she checked into the same motel the night Meyer was shot. This information gives them enough probable cause to arrest her again.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross offer Carson a plea bargain in which she would serve 25 years to life in prison for second-degree murder, but she refuses and pleads insanity, using the same "dissociation" defense that her father had. When forensic psychiatrist Dr. Emil Skoda evaluates her, Carson claims that she does not remember anything about the shooting, although she does blame Mayer for her father's imprisonment.
McCoy and Ross find out that Mayer refused to help with Rigg's appeal, and also discover the fact that Rigg had told him about staying in the motel right after the shooting; this proves that Rigg was not dissociative, and that Mayer knew it when he testified. McCoy calls him as a witness against Carson and confronts him with his perjury, and Carson bursts into tears as she realizes that her father was guilty all along. She meets with McCoy and Ross and admits to committing the shooting, while expressing remorse for the man she killed. McCoy then offers to reduce her sentence to 20 years to life if she pleads guilty to second-degree murder, an offer she accepts.
External links[]
- Lindsay Carson on the Law & Order Wiki
