Matt Hastings

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“	That k-ke was going to ruin my life!	„
	~ Matt justifying his murder of a Jewish teacher

Matt Hastings is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Blood Libel". He is an antisemitic high school student who murders a Jewish teacher to prevent her from getting him in trouble for buying grades and putting antisemitic content in the school yearbook.

He was portrayed by Jack Vinson.

Early life[]

Matt is from a middle-class family from New York City whose parents taught him antisemitism, brainwashing him and his younger sister into believing that Jews were responsible for the failure of their father's printing business and their inability to send them to prep schools. He listens to heavy metal with antisemitic lyrics and reads pseudoscientific literature that claims that Jews are subhuman. He is also fond of the poetry of Ezra Pound and the music of Richard Wagner - both of whom were notorious antisemites. He briefly dated a Jewish girl, but she broke up with him after she found out that he was only seeing her to become popular with other Jewish students, which he believed would help him be elected class president.

He is extremely bright, well-read, and computer-savvy, and tested well enough to be admitted to a prestigious charter school, where he is a star wrestler. Nevertheless, he started buying grades from an unethical teacher, Richard Kovax, to maintain his grade point average. The scam worked; he was granted early admission and a scholarship to Princeton University.

Shortly before the events of the episode, the school art teacher, Sarah Aronson, found out that Kovax was selling grades and threatened to have him fired unless he stopped. Matt was convinced that Aronson, who was Jewish, cut off his source of fake grades as part of a "Jewish conspiracy" against him. He and a few likeminded wrestling teammates wrote her death threats filled with antisemitic slurs and posed for yearbook photos with coded quotes that, put together, spelled out "Kill all k-kes".

When Aronson found out that Matt was behind the prank, she told him she would have no choice but to go to the principal, which would likely get him expelled and cost him his scholarship. Enraged, he stalked her to her office, where she was working late, and strangled her to death with the strap of her own handbag. She scratched him while fighting back, leaving his blood at the crime scene.

"Blood Libel"[]

While investigating Aronson's murder, NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis discover that she had stopped Kovax from selling grades to students, and find the death threats in her locker, including a drawing of her being beaten by men with swastika tattoos. They question the drawing's author, Eddie Camarillo, a member of the wrestling team who bought grades from Kovax, but he denies killing Aronson.

While looking through the school yearbook at the kids who bought grades, Briscoe and Curtis notice the offensive message Matt and his friends spelled out in code. They question Matt, who says that the message was only a joke, although he justifies what he and his friends said by referencing antisemitic tropes in literature.

They cannot compel him to provide a blood sample, but Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy and Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid ask the school to perform a random drug urine test of the wrestling team that reveals that Matt, like the killer, has a predisposition to diabetes. That, and the death threats, gives Briscoe and Curtis probable cause to arrest Matt for murder. The judge dismisses the case, however, after ruling that the evidence from the drug test was improperly obtained.

McCoy and Kincaid keep the investigation open, however, and find out that Matt had broken into the school to kill Aronson using a copy of the building key provided by Eddie. McCoy and Kincaid threaten Eddie with 20 years in prison as an accessory to murder, while Curtis, who is also Hispanic, gets him to admit that Matt killed Aronson by telling him that Matt includes him among the "mud people" he hates. McCoy persuades the judge to readmit the drug test evidence, which, along with Eddie's testimony, is enough to charge Matt once again with Aronson's murder.

Matt's parents hire Roy Payne, a "Klan lawyer" with a history of representing the perpetrators of antisemitic hate crimes, to defend him. Payne argues that Matt is the victim of a "Jewish conspiracy" to frame him in order to protect Kovax, whom he claims is the real killer; that Kovax is also Jewish is, in Payne's telling, proof that "the Jews got together" to frame an innocent gentile. He also argues that Briscoe, who is half-Jewish, deliberately misled the investigation and that a Jewish forensic scientist contaminated evidence.

Matt testifies in his own defense that his Jewish teachers and classmates look down on him because he is Christian, and that he was cheated out of being captain of the wrestling team in favor of a Jewish student. McCoy cross-examines him regarding the antisemitic prank and the death threats, which Matt claims were not his idea. When McCoy presses him about Aronson costing him his college scholarship while his Jewish classmates got into Ivy League schools, however, Matt shouts, "That k-ke was going to ruin my life!".

Ultimately, the jury is unable to agree on a verdict, with one anonymous juror - implied to be an antisemite - voting against a conviction. However, Payne, having got the publicity boost he was looking for, abandons Matt's case to "tour the Klan lecture circuit", leaving Matt alone as he faces another trial. Knowing a second jury is unlikely to believe the "Jewish conspiracy" defense, Matt agrees to a plea deal with the District Attorney's office and goes to prison.

External links[]

Matt Hastings on the Law & Order Wiki

Navigation[]

Villains

Exiled: A Law & Order Movie
Gianni Uzielli