‘Law & Order’ Star Mehcad Brooks Breaks Down Shaw’s Crisis of Conscience Over Teen Suspect

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Law & Order” Season 24, Episode 5.

In this week’s “Law & Order” episode, Mehcad Brooks’ character Jalen Shaw has to decide whether his sympathy for a young murder suspect is clouding his judgment, and his decision could affect his career and that of his partner Vincent Riley (Reid Scott).

TheWrap spoke to Brooks about why this case is so hard for Shaw and how it brings up a traumatic time in the character’s life that we — and the actor — previously did not know. We learn that the NYPD detective was in foster care, so he is more than usually invested in the case of 13-year-old Anthony Turner (played by Colton Osorio), who is on trial for fatally shooting his teacher.

The D.A.’s office strikes a deal with the boy after it’s revealed that the school’s principal had heard about the gun and the death threat, but failed to act.

Turner claimed that he didn’t know the gun was loaded, but when the ballistics report cam back, his prints were on the bullets. Shaw considers withholding the report, which would spare Turner from a life sentence, but Riley convinces him to turn it in and Turner’s deal is taken off the table.

TheWrap: This was a tough case for Jalen as it hit so close to home for him.

Mehcad Brooks: Nothing gets in the way for Jalen, except this once, where there’s a kid that reminds him of himself and his own experience. 

The difference is that Jalen sees this kid’s life and he thinks, “Well, that could have been me, except I was lucky and my father came back.” He sees this route in which the anger, the resentment and the abandonment could have manifested in him as it did in the kid. 

There are moments in which Jalen feels that there could be more compassion shown to the kid, there could be more understanding for somebody who has a rough life. And at that age, their minds aren’t fully formed yet, they’re dealing with a lot of stress, anxiety, pain and anger and unfortunately, with easy access to weapons in America. Sometimes the exclamation point of that conversation is a bullet. 

Before the ballistics report comes back, Jalen doesn’t agree with Price about the boy’s level of responsibility.

There’s a lot of factors in play as to why and how the tragedy of this teacher losing his life happened, and [it turns out that] the kid is fully responsible. But at the same time, he is a kid.  Jalen starts to understand the kid, and there’s so many reflections in his life and it’s just tough. 

So he has a moment in which he thinks that he might risk his own reputation and risk Vincent Riley’s reputation, because if he’s going to keep the secret, then Vince has to keep the secret too about the bullets and the gun. Luckily Jalen, I think after losing a lot of sleep, makes the right decision, because that’s who he is.

Early in the case, Price tells Jalen that he isn’t considering the boy’s race in sentencing, but Jalen isn’t convinced. Can you talk about how he might see things differently than his white colleagues, that maybe they can never really understand what he might be going through?

Depending on your personal experience and personal perspective, that is what shapes your reality, period. So there are things that Jalen will perceive and understand and have personal experiences in that Vincent can never have the opportunity of gaining the gnosis.

My mother used to tell me that there’s three Americas: There’s the America that would like itself to be, there’s the America that is, and then there’s the America for Black people. We kind of know a country that no one else knows, and our perspective has been so muted for so long.

There is a perspective that cannot be imparted but must be believed, a perspective that cannot be shown to someone. But someone can simply say that I respect this person, I respect this person’s experience and this person’s perspective, and I’ll never have any way of gaining any personal knowledge other than what they’re telling me.

As a man, I’ll never understand what it’s like to be a woman. I can only listen to women and say, “OK well, that sounds great,” or “that sounds horrible.” There can be more of that in our culture, in our society, and [the show] is taking the opportunity to reflect that there’s not enough of that right now.

“Law & Order” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock.