Casey Novak

About Casey Novak

Casey Novak is a fictional character on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portrayed by Diane Neal.

Novak is a young and focused Assistant District Attorney who, while sometimes deeply affected by the horrific situations she deals with on the job, does not often reveal her emotions. Novak can sometimes see the world in black and white and follows the law strictly without sympathy for the suspects and their situation, unless she is convinced otherwise by the detectives in SVU, or by extreme mitigating circumstances. 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.

In her final year of law school, Novak was engaged to a man, Charlie, who suffered from schizophrenia. She ended the relationship when his symptoms became so severe she felt she could no longer be intimate with him. It is revealed that in 2002 Charlie attacked her in her home during a psychotic episode. She convinced the police not to press charges, but then 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, but still feels guilty for not being able to help him.