Law & Order SVU Uses Trayvon Martin As A Storyline, Is It Too Soon?

‘Law & Order SVU’ is no stranger to creating story-lines based off of real-life headlines. Earlier this year, the show used Chris Brown and Rihanna’s domestic violence case as inspiration.

When the show aired, fans and critics expressed conflicting opinions of what they thought about the storyline and how the alleged Chris and Rihanna were portrayed. Fast forward to the present day and straight from the world’s most controversial headlines, they’ve done it again. According to the Daily Mail, they are currently filming an episode that looks to be inspired by one of the most controversial legal stories of 2013– the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman. This week, photogs caught SVU actors on set. So who has snagged what will be one of the most talked about episodes in season 15? Cybill Shepard is playing a vigilante-like character who killed a black teenager named Mehcad. Jeffrey Tambor is playing her lawyer. The episode, titled ‘American Tragedy’, will have the usual SVU cast members including: Ice-T, Mariska Hargitay, Richard Belzer and Raul Esparza who were also spotted filming one of the protest scenes. When asked by E! Online if the ‘American Tragedy’ episode was in fact based on the Trayvon Martin case, NBC would only say:

SVU is fiction.

No official statement has been released by the families of Zimmerman or Martin. What are your thoughts on the show using the Trayvon Martin case as a potential storyline? Will you tune in? [Daily Mail, E! Online]