Why Olivia Benson defended Laura Kingsbury in Law and Order season 24 episode 2

The Law and Order season 24 episode that I've personally been waiting for has finally arrived! "The Perfect Man" follows a case where the founder of an AI dating app is murdered in the park. When Riley and Shaw first start the case, the suspects they interrogate all are connected to ELI, the app the victim Tyler Miller created to be the best boyfriend anyone could want.

ELI has ruined an engagement, its users no longer want to explore romance with real people, and even if they want to break up with it, ELI will stalk them to try to "reunite" with them. But none of the disgruntled men they suspected were the killer. No, it was Laura Kingsbury who murdered Tyler and her arrest is what brought Captain Olivia Benson into the fold.

Benson has known Laura for years because of the brutal rape the woman suffered where she wasn't believed by the police. She showed up for her friend as an advocate and was less than happy to learn that Laura had been pinned for the crime because of the local DNA database which means her rape kit was how they traced the DNA at the scene to her.

The use of the local database is very controversial in the episode but Nolan Price didn't see how that trumped the clear fact that Laura did kill Tyler. Benson, however, argued that the defendant's status as a rape survivor and how that changed how she sees the world couldn't be ignored. How did the case pan out? Here's what happened.

Was Laura Kingsbury found guilty in Law and Order season 24 episode 2?

As Benson put it correctly, Laura was a victim of Tyler's stalking. They had dated but when she broke it off, he persisted in pursuing her. He sent her over 100 letters. His advances and tokens of affection were unwanted. She said as much to him but he wouldn't stop. Laura tried getting an order of protection against him but the police dismissed her, saying that Tyler didn't pose a real threat.

In Laura's mind, left without a choice, she did the only thing she could do. When she saw Tyler again, because he somehow managed to pop up everywhere, she shot him. On the stand she said that she took his wallet because she didn't think she'd be believed. She couldn't see how what she did was wrong, it was self-defense because he was a threat to her safety.

Nolan Price, however, was right in his assertion that no matter how Laura felt, Tyler's obsessive behavior toward her did not meet the lawful standards of a just killing. She was 20 feet away from him when she killed him, he had not made a threatening advance, and had never threatened bodily harm against her. It's because of this that Benson, and Laura's defense attorney Rita Calhoun, urged her to take a plea deal.

Though he was against the idea, Price offered to settle for manslaughter which would see Laura serving a 10 year sentence. But she wouldn't agree. It took her years to gather the courage to be out in the world again, to go to the park on her own. She didn't believe she should lose her freedom for taking Tyler's life because she did what she had to in order to keep her own.

Price warned her that the jury would convict her of murder in the second degree and that's exactly what happened much to Laura and Benson's disappointment. But "The Perfect Man" did end with a re-examination of how the local database could be ethically utilized thanks to the captain leaking to the press the situation with Laura's rape kit being used in a trial against her.

Law and Order airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. Next day streaming is available on Peacock. Stay tuned to Americans Undercover for coverage. Follow us on X and Facebook for more content!