Casey Novak - WikiHQ

Casey Novak is a fictional character on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portrayed by Diane Neal. She is the only female Assistant District Attorney (ADA) to have appeared in five complete seasons in any Law & Order series and the third-longest-running ADA in the entire franchise.

Character overview

Casey Novak is a young and focused senior-assistant district attorney  who's been with the Manhattan DA's office since 2001. It is revealed in early season five that she graduated from Harvard Law School, as seen on a plaque in her office. While sometimes deeply affected by the horrific crimes she deals with on the job, she does not often reveal her emotions. Although she quickly loses her innocence when dealing with sex crimes, she still shows uneasiness when dealing with the gray areas of human involvement, preferring the letter of the law to the messiness of each individual reality. Nonetheless, Novak has a 71 percent success rate in the cases she prosecutes, whereas the average for prosecutors is 44 percent. Novak is prone to blur the line between ADA and detective, as exemplified in the season 9 episode "Impulsive," where Novak essentially leads the investigation.

It is revealed that in her final year of law school, Novak was engaged to a man, Charlie, who had schizophrenia. She ended the relationship when his symptoms became so severe she felt she was no longer safe with him. In 2002, Charlie attacked her in her home during a psychotic episode. She convinced the police not to press charges, but ended the relationship. He eventually became homeless, and was found dead as a "John Doe" in the spring of 2007. She developed a deep compassion for the mentally ill afterward. While prosecuting a case, she deliberately sabotages a competency hearing for a schizophrenic child rapist to avoid him being extradited to Louisiana where he would face the death penalty. Manhattan's new DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) calls Novak into his office and threatens to fire her and have her disbarred if she abuses the authority of the DA's office again.

Novak lives in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She is Catholic. Sometimes, she rides her bicycle to work.

Novak is a redhead, although she had her hair dyed strawberry blonde and blonde for some of her appearances. She is also an avid softball player and a batter.

SVU prosecutor (2003–08)

Novak prosecuted white collar crimes before being assigned full-time to the 16th Precinct in October 2003, after Alexandra Cabot (Stephanie March), thought to be dead, transfers into the Witness Protection Program. During her first case, Novak helps the SVU team save a little girl from a pedophile. Following her first case, Novak asks District Attorney Arthur Branch (Fred Thompson) to reassign her because she feels she cannot handle the intensity of prosecuting sex crimes, especially those committed against children. Branch refuses, saying that he had been eyeing her for the job for some time, and thought that she was a perfect choice for the position.

Novak arrives on the scene with guns blazing, intent on leaving her mark on the bureau, and immediately antagonizes detectives Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) by taking a hands-on approach, second-guessing their detective work and interfering with their interrogation of a suspect. Her intuition leads to the rescue of a child locked in a cooler on her very first case, and wins her the respect of the squad. By the sixth season, however, she has a good relationship with the SVU detectives, particularly Stabler, who is especially enraged when she is attacked and beaten up, and risks his career by threatening the man he believed to have done it.

Novak has an adversarial relationship with her former supervisor and mentor, Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light). In one case, Novak forces her (acting upon a directive from Branch) to recuse herself from a case. Occasionally, she finds herself opposing attorneys with whom she has worked before. Like her predecessor, Alexandra Cabot, she has, at various times, run afoul of stern, by-the-book Judge Lena Petrovsky (Joanna Merlin).

Departure

Toward the end of the ninth season, it was announced that Diane Neal was departing the cast. Days later, it was rumored that she had been fired from the series. Neal said she "did talk to the crew" about her departure; she declined to say whether she was fired. She commented: "Rumors are rumors ... I love the crew. The crew loves me. We've really gotten along and bonded over these past five years. And they're always looking out for me and watching my back."