Law & Order

Second Opinion - S5-E1

Factual error: Ryan, the laboratory technician, eats his lunch of burger and fries while discussing a murder case with Assistant D.A. Claire Kincaid. Trouble is, they are in his laboratory. No lab technician ever, ever eats or drinks in a laboratory - it is the most basic lab protocol imaginable. He could contaminate his samples in any one of a hundred ways, he inevitably contaminates his gloves or fingers with residue from his meal and he risks poisoning himself with accidental transfer. This is not a character error - lab security is hammered into science students starting with the first day of first year and number one on the list is never, ever eat or drink in your lab.

Show generally

Factual error: Detective Nina Cassady (who was introduced towards the end of Season 17) frequently wears casual tops that show far too much cleavage for a police officer on duty. If she showed up for duty dressed like that she would be sent home to change.

Whiplash - S11-E19

Factual error: While discussing the death of a car accident victim with detectives, the pathologist Dr Elizabeth Rodgers takes out a french fry, seasons it with mayonnaise and eats it. She is in the morgue, wearing bloodstained scrubs. Nobody ever eats or drinks in a morgue. This is not a character error; eating and drinking in a sterile laboratory environment is absolutely forbidden and this is taught to medical and science students from day one of their degree courses. In fact she would not even have food in there in the first place.

Executioner - S18-E9

Factual error: Yost attacks and kills an innocent man, believing him to be Dr. Horace Garrison, a physician who administered a faulty lethal injection to a condemned prisoner, reducing him to a vegetative state rather than killing him. The problem is, medical doctors never, ever participate in an execution except to certify death, a legal requirement. They do not, ever, take an active role in killing the condemned person.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but medical doctors are involved in lethal injections more than just certifying death. This is why so many groups were actively trying to stop the practice of medical profession involvement. In 2007, 17 states required physician involvement, which included doctors at times having to administer the injection.

Bishop73

The botched execution took place in South Carolina, which absolutely forbids medical practitioners to take an active role in killing a condemned prisoner. In fact, they are considering switching executing prisoners by firing squad instead of lethal injection, at least partly to distance medical professionals from the actual procedure leading to a person's death.

Suicide Box - S13-E16

Factual error: Further to the error regarding eating in the morgue, in this episode Dr Rodgers happily munches on a sandwich with a dead body on the slab less than a metre away. As has been pointed out, nobody ever eats or drinks in a morgue.

For Love or Money - S12-E3

Plot hole: At the end of the episode McCoy and his team tape a conversation between Melissa Corbin and her mother Lorraine in order to record her admitting to murdering Alan, her first husband. Trouble is, she says nothing incriminating. The closest they get is Lorraine asking her why she killed Alan, and she replies "You didn't have to sleep with him." That means nothing, and in fact Lorraine says absolutely nothing of any legal significance during the entire conversation.

Personae Non Grata - S18-E17

Factual error: While assisting Detectives Lupo and Bernard, the librarian in the New York library map room handles maps dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth century in a bizarrely cavalier manner. He does not wear soft cotton gloves, and flips the pages of the map books over as if they were modern books. Such maps would be extremely fragile and would never be handled roughly the way he does, and they would not be stored in plastic folders anyway. They would be stored flat in individual glass cases, and they would never, ever be touched with bare hands.

Hindsight - S16-E21

Other mistake: When they are showing the rap sheets for the Cambodian man, the race on the sheet says Caucasian when he is Asian, and for the African American man, the sex says "F" when he is male.

Boobra

Acid - S16-E10

Continuity mistake: When Lt. Van Buren and the victims mother are talking in the kitchen, the cabinet behind Van Buren changes from opened to closed several times.

pross79

Old Friends - S4-E22

Continuity mistake: Whilst Stone is looking at the pictures of the mobsters (as he is talking to Ann Madsen), he is holding the photos quite close together. The shot changes to a wide shot of the people in the room and the space between the photos is considerably wider than before.

Lummie

Tombstone - S15-E20

Continuity mistake: When the murdered female lawyer is discovered, she's lying on her right side with her feet toward the direction of entry. In the next scene where the detectives view the body, she is on her left side with her feet pointing toward the window.

Stiff - S10-E23

Visible crew/equipment: After Dr. Murphy walks back in the operating room, there is a man with a boom microphone headset and paper against the right wall. (00:01:40)

Cut - S15-E6

Continuity mistake: During an interview with ADA Southerlyn, one of the former patients states when she woke up, her left side felt like a lead weight. She was told she had a stroke while under anesthetic. However, the entire time she is talking, it is the right side of her face that is exhibiting signs of the stroke.

Rlvlk

America, Inc. - S16-E17

Continuity mistake: The detectives determine that the victim's cell phone was found in a trash can near the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel. Later, when they are interrogating a suspect Detective Greene tells him "You tossed the victim's cell phone at the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel."

wizard_of_gore

The Wheel - S13-E9

Plot hole: During the beginning moments when the couple go to the top floor, as they are going to the roof they discover a lot of smoke on the penthouse floor which leads them to seeing the charred corpse in the hallway. The only problem is that with the smouldering body wouldn't it have set off the smoke alarm or fire alarm? The building is a very posh apartment block and they are on the penthouse floor making the likelihood something as basic as a fire alarm would be triggered. The killing was more in the heat of the moment and most likely the killer burned the body then and there making the probability of a lot of fire on the floor very high. Even if the woman had been burnt somewhere else and brought back to the floor there is no way the smoke around wouldn't at least have set off the fire alarm or sprinklers.

Lummie

Survivor - S7-E4

Other mistake: In the opening scene, something catches the husband's eye through a window. He asks his wife to take a look and she gets scared. There is a dead body. When Lenny and Curtis arrive, and are lead back to the body, you can see the view from the street is obstructed. There is a display case, a pedestal, a vase and finally a wall. The head of the body wouldn't have been visible from the street and there was no other disturbance to catch someones attention: The husband and wife couldn't have seen anything.

Rlvlk

The Collar - S12-E11

Visible crew/equipment: While the DAs are talking about their options in the case, after they first talk to the Priest and he refuses to testify, there is a few close ups of Nora's face. In most of these close ups the reflection of set lights are visible in her glasses.

Lummie

Self Defense - S3-E7

Audio problem: As the Stone and Schiff are watching the news report on the security camera tape the reporter has a voice over going whilst the tape is playing. Towards the end of the tape she is shown on TV and is doing a report on the case. You can see her lips don't come close to synching up with what she is saying. The piece was already airing on TV, so very doubtful the TV station missed the large discrepancy.

Lummie

Det. Lennie Briscoe: Boy, I'd hate for somebody to trace me by what I read.
Det. Rey Curtis: You read, Lennie?

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Trivia: Before his transfer to the NYPD, Joe Fontana (played by Dennis Farina) worked as a detective in Chicago. Before becoming an actor, Farina served in the Chicago police department, both as a police officer and a detective. Farina also played a Chicago police officer on the short-lived 1980s TV series Crime Story.

Cubs Fan

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Absentia - S13-E13

Question: In one of the court scenes it states the date as the 26th of December. Upon a bit of searching it doesn't seem to fall as a holiday in the New York Supreme Court holidays calendar. While the day is generally observed as a holiday in many countries I am not sure about whether it is observed in any states of the United States?

Lummie

Chosen answer: December 25 is observed and some places close on the 24 (or just close early). The 26th is a normal work day.

shortdanzr

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