Duty Calls

“It was hardly unusual for a jury to struggle to come to an agreement. What made this case unusual was the context provided by the victim’s identity. Clanton was an actor on The Wire and is now appearing on We Own This City, the new HBO miniseries produced by the creators of The Wire and based on Baltimore journalist Justin Fenton’s nonfiction book about an eye-popping police corruption scandal exposed five years ago.” It’s rare that a journalist is selected for a jury in a case involving a serious, violent crime. But in Baltimore, it can be tough to find any 12 people who don’t have some bias due to being the victim of a shooting, having had an extremely negative experience with the police, or both. In ProPublica, Alec MacGillis chronicles his experience as a jury foreman in a shooting case, providing access to jury deliberations in a city that has been a gun violence warzone and experienced some of the most extreme, and most well-documented, cases of police corruption. Trial Diary: A Journalist Sits on a Baltimore Jury. (I once missed a couple weeks of NextDraft while I sat on a jury in a trial for a violent crime in San Francisco. A few of my fellow jurors might still be subscribers to NextDraft. If so, I haven’t forgiven you for nominating me to be foreman!)

+ It’s the 20th anniversary of The Wire on HBO. And sadly, the story is as relevant today as it was back then. And for a new Baltimore show from David Simon, watch We Own This City. The corruption depicted in this series will seem too extreme to be real, unless you’re from Baltimore.

+ And if you missed it on Friday, I wrote about some of my experiences with school violence and use of metal detectors. What Defund Were You Thinking?

+ While we’re on the topic: Police still searching for Philadelphia gunmen in one of a dozen mass shootings over the weekend.

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