Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV Series)

Institutional Fail (2015)

Raúl Esparza: ADA Rafael Barba

Photos 

Quotes 

• Rafael Barba : [to Janette]  Are you the most incompetent manager in the world who can't tell the difference between a false report and a legitimate one? Or did you instruct case workers to falsify reports to meet productivity goals?

  Mickey D'Angelo : Objection! Badgering!

  Judge Maria Ana DeFeceo : I'll allow. The witness will answer.

  Rafael Barba : So which is it, Miss Grayson?

  Janette Grayson : I didn't want any of this to happen.

  Rafael Barba : You didn't want to advance your career by ignoring innocent children's pain and death, or you didn't wanna get caught?

  Mickey D'Angelo : Objection!

  Janette Grayson : I'm asked to do what the courts can't do, what the cops can't do.

  Rafael Barba : You are asked to do your job!

  Janette Grayson : Oh, God himself could not do this job!

  Mickey D'Angelo : We need a recess, your Honor.

  Janette Grayson : You wanna judge me? You wouldn't last an hour in my world. And if I go, who's gonna be on the front lines?

  [points at Barba] 

  Janette Grayson : You?

  [points at the judge] 

  Janette Grayson : You?

  Mickey D'Angelo : Your Honor!

  Janette Grayson : I mean, you dump the most hapless cases in the world on us every day! More and more! We get the dregs of humanity, children raised by wolves! And you see them come in this court in and out, week in and week out. They come to you as criminals. Do you ever stop to think: "Gee, what happened before that?"

  Judge Maria Ana DeFeceo : Miss Grayson, do you need a break?

  Janette Grayson : Oh, now you wanna gimme a break? After 25 years of "Make your quota, Janette!" "Push that paper!" "Hit those numbers!" Right, Matt? Right? It's impossible! And everybody knows it. You all know it. But you wanna scapegoat me. You wanna make me feel bad. You wanna take me down so you can feel better about yourselves. See? 'Cause you pretended like you don't know that there are poor people out there in the city. Broken people. You don't turn away from the homeless guy on the subway? 'Course you do. Everybody does, 'cause it's too much. You wanna put me in jail for this? Look in the mirror, my friend. Look in the damn mirror.

• Hank Abraham : Hey, Barba, you got your punim on TV, man. The press is kissing your ass, but now's the time to do your real job and plead this out.

  Rafael Barba : I'm sorry. You're NYPD's press boy, right? As you've already made clear, I don't work for you.

• Rafael Barba : [to Olivia and Rollins]  If you want me to go after this guy, I'm gonna need more than maternal outrage to make a case.

• Rafael Barba : [in his opening statement]  Keisha Houston was a happy and healthy girl on Christmas 2014 when she and her family were still receiving regular visits from the Department of Child Services. On August 7th, months after those visits ceased, NYPD detectives found Keisha locked in this cage, battered and starved. She died early the next morning.

  Mickey D'Angelo : [in his opening statement]  We're all outraged. We all want someone to blame, but what Mr. Barba failed to mention, the two people directly responsible for Miss Houston's death: Keith Musio, her caseworker who took a plea deal to save his own skin, and Manuela Ozuna who abandoned her daughter without food or water and went on a drug binge. The state will prove that this tragedy was a direct result of the policies of the DCS. Their system-wide failure prioritized paperwork over field work. Caseworkers were ordered by the defendants, Jeanette Grayson and Matt Sheridan, to falsify reports and to ignore families in need. My clients' only failure is that they trusted their caseworker, and he betrayed them, the same way he betrayed Keisha Houston.