Law & Order and The Death of Little Bunny Foo Foo (or The Field Mice Pack Heat!)

Cue announcer - "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The police, who investigate crimes and the district attorney, who proscecutes the offenders. These are their stories."

Some of you may or may not remember Little Bunny Foo Foo. Yes, that Little Bunny Foo Foo. That same Bunny Foo Foo that keeps molesting those field mice. I bet they're tired of him going through the meadow and making their lives as misrable as possible. I am sure that they have asked him nicely to stop. Some bunnies (even the dumb ones) don't listen.

What we're seeing here is a possible script idea for "Law And Order." I can just see Jack McCoy trying that case. Here's the scene. It's a quiet day in the meadow, when all of sudden our villan comes along and hits one too many field mice on the head. Someone snaps, gets a weapon (a 9 mm glock) and blows enough holes to make Bunny Foo Foo look like a piece of Swiss cheese. Curtis, Briscoe, Greene, Gorin, Benson and Stabler are sent to investigate. Munch and Tutulo question witnesses until they notice that there's one field mouse named Randy missing and he's on the run to Canada. They send Gorin and Stabler to get him. They arrive back in New York and he lawyers up big time.

Sutherlyn screams in the arraignment that Randy is a flight risk and needs to be sent away for a long time. The judge agrees and sets bail at 3.5 million dollars. He also tells Randy to surrender his passport. Randy agrees and before he and his lawyer (played by Annie Potts of "Designing Women") leave the court room, she hands Sutherlyn a motion that Randywas not in his right mind. Yep, he's claiming insanty. This doesn't sit well with Jack McCoy, who tells the other lawyers in the DA's office that he's going to try this case HIMSELF! He figures that since was elected DA, he may as well earn his paycheck.

A jury is selected after three days of voire dire, in which one juror was dismissed for reading Playboy in court. The courtroom is packed, McCoy goes through his case like a hot knife through butter. The defense puts up several experts, who say that Randy was dropped on his head as a baby by Foo Foo's older sister and he was out for revenge.

So much for the insanty defense.

They finally put Randy on the stand and he tells his side of the story. He's calm, answers all the questions put to him and his lawyer sits down. McCoy, being the ever observant lawyer that he is, finds a hole in the testimony given. He asks him to read a passage from a book. He does with some fear and reluctance. After a few minutes of fact finding and trying to confirm what was said earler, McCoy rips into him. "Were you on drugs when you shot him?," McCoy bellows.

He starts to panic and tries to compose himself but soon he discovers that his story falls like a house of cards and breaks down and says, "Hell yes, I shot him! I got tired of him smacking me and the other mice on the heads! Do you know what our lives have been since Foo Foo's death? It's been like a piece of heaven has been dropped in our laps. Killing him saved us all, Mr. McCoy. If it was you, you would have done the same thing."

The two sides make their closing statements. Randy's lawyer says that while there was a death, it was a needed death. The field mice had complained to the police about Foo Foo and nothing had been done.

McCoy gets up and walks to the jury box. "Let's say you want to go out and kill a rabbit for the sheer joy of killing it. You get a gun. You get ammo. You go to the range and practice. Then you blow bunny away. That's what the defendant did. He took matters into his own hands and killed Foo Foo. We don't condone what Randy did. Bunny Foo Foo is dead and we can't bring him back. What we can't condone is that the defendant chose to take matters into his own hands by pulling a trigger. This is not the old West. Randy has to be punished. If you come back with anything less than first degree murder, you will send a message to other field mice that it's okay to blow your enemies away."

The jury comes back after a week and delivers a verdict. GUILTY! Randy is sent away to Sing-Sing to do life with no parole. Later on in the day, McCoy is at his favorite watering hole, downing a glass of scotch, he sees Sutherland walk toward him. "I knew you could do it, Jack," she says.

"It's like riding a bike, Serena." After a pause, he says, "It's our job to put the bad guys in jail. We can't have field mice shooting rabbits left and right, even if he did deserve it."

Another pause, then Briscoe, Green, Gorin, Stabler and Benson come into the restaurant. "Munch had to run back to Baltimore. Otherwise he'd be here," Benson said. "His former mother in law's near death. Captain gave him a week off." Jack lifts his drink as if to salute him. "He's a hell of a cop. A little off but a hell of a cop. We couldn't have done it without him. To Munch." They raise their glasses in unison as they see Randy on CNN taken in shackles to Sing-Sing to do his sentence.

The moral of this story? Don't go around bopping field mice. They pack heat!