Disturbing spouse abuse episode, 'Crib Job'

This episode always angers me because men should never beat their girlfriends or wives. The wife-beating in this episode was never depicted, only its medical long-term effects.

SPOILER.


A 30-something attractive woman comes home to find a burglar still there. The burglar panics and rushes out, pushing the woman aside so that she falls back on the sofa cushions. Despite her head landing against the soft cushions, she inexplicably blacks out. We later learn that she actually died at that moment from a brain aneurysm that Dr. Quincy determines was not congenital. He determined that the woman had been incurring repeated blows to her face and head over a prolonged time period. It was so bad that a major artery in the back of her lower brain had been damaged to the point that only a tiny further impact would rupture it, which came from falling head back onto the sofa.

The police catch the burglar and it seems an open and shut case. But Quincy, ever the man to dig to the bottom of the truth, wants to place the ultimate blame on the wife-beating husband. He may have a difficult time with the DA's office and the court. The last person to touch the woman before she died was the burglar. Even if the husband was indeed beating the victim, she was still alive at the time the burglar encountered her.