After sustaining injuries in a 2013 car accident, Neal’s acting career slowed down before ending altogether following a few sporadic appearances on shows through 2015.
Longtime fans of Law and Order: SVU will probably remember Diane Neal’s Casey Novak as the senior Assistant District Attorney (the longest-running in the show’s history), but not for the best of reasons.
In 2018, she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as an independent in an upstate New York district but only received one percent of the vote.
Prone to outbursts of anger and unethical treatment of defendants in the courtroom, Novak’s character was suspended from practicing law for a number of years in Season 9 (a way to work around the actress coming back to the show) before leaving for good after Season 13.