Why ask why?
September 7, 2008
by HB
David Simon posits a cause for a story I had seen briefly last month reporting that Baltimore City juries acquit far more defendants than those in Baltimore County. Essentially, he credits the Baltimore Police Department’s efforts to make Martin O’Malley look good by arresting as many black people as possible. That tactic, if it can be so described, turned a bunch of people already disposed to distrust the police into a jury nullification factory.
But he also makes a larger point, one he’s made before by means of The Wire and The Corner: it’s very hard to talk about the causes of what’s happening in America. We fight a drug war, but few in the media and almost none in government ask “what for?” That’s one thing; we can’t always be expected to be asking about the that-for-the-sake-of-which while we’re trying to accomplish practical goals, and anyway everybody knows why you fight the drug war. Drug addiction is bad. Somehow, though, our public discourse has lost the ability to refine the intermediate goals between our present efforts and our hazy final causes. We can’t even reexamine the causes of the drug war to learn that, as we did with alcohol Prohibition, it’s impossible to eradicate drug use. As Simon points out, few bothered to ask why these juries were acting this way. Instead, in this and a whole range of other problems, you get “half-assed speculation” and people like him and Jon Stewart offering relatively obvious critiques through entertainment shows. That’s not necessarily bad: the best entertainment is grounded in serious subjects. But it is a little rough when these critiques are the only ones out there and reach so few people.
I recently traveled with a fellow law student (who also lives in the city and is in my criminal defense clinic) to a grocery store near Nate’s and my house. We were investigating an alleged crime. She stated as we got out of the car, “I feel like I’m in another country.” I bridled, naturally, but I shouldn’t have pretended to be holier than her in the article of comfort around urban decay. I surely felt the same thing when I first went to that grocery store, three years ago; I surely feel the same way about going to Anacostia. And if it weren’t for Simon, I wouldn’t realize that that was not just a statement of poetic accuracy, but also of moral debility.
Comments
On September 8 at 9'00 AM
, method wrote:
Nice post.
On September 8 at 9'56 AM
, Clay S. Conrad wrote:
Shouldn’t we at least stop to consider the possibility that Baltimore juries are doing their job, and that suburban juries are CONVICTING too readily? Is it possible that Baltimore juries are appropriately skeptical, and are applying the presumption of reasonable doubt, and that suburban juries are far too willing to trust the police and prosecutors?
The fact that a disparity exists between Baltimore and its neighbors, by itself, does not tell us which is “right” and which is “wrong.” Considering the high conviction rates elsewhere, it seems more likely than not that it is the Baltimore juries that are actually forcing the State to prove its case — something gullible jurors elsewhere just might be making a little too easy.
On September 8 at 12'17 PM
, hb wrote:
After about a month in my criminal defense clinic, I’m more than willing to consider that possibility, Mr. Conrad: I’d say black men regularly (as in, daily) get locked up in DC on bullshit charges and for things they didn’t do. As Simon points out, most of these charges aren’t brought or are dismissed. In DC, the former is called “no papering,” which means you get arrested, spend a night (or up to three nights) in jail, go before a court for the first time, and before you’re even heard, the government says “no papered,” they take the leg irons off and you walk free. No apology, no explanation. Frequently, you don’t see a lawyer at all before that happens. You could sue for false arrest, but that takes money and is nearly impossible to prove.
Thus, it seems to be a necessary part of an accurate assessment to say that Baltimore juries are correcting for the police’s excesses. Do those same excesses occur out in the County? Probably, in that black men are disproportionately likely to be locked up, But not to the same degree. In any case, does holding the government to its burden mean that the government’s wrong 43% of the time in cases that it brings to trial? I’m not quite that cynical. That percentage says to me that a good number of guilty people are going free. Sure, I’d rather err on that side than the other. But I’d also like the genuine thugs to be locked up.
Thanks, Method.
On September 8 at 12'44 PM
, Nate wrote:
Simon’s article helped me understand a bit better some of the changes I’ve gone through since The Wire and The Corner. His mordant explanation that there are 350 shows about one America and just his one about the other gets close to the feeling I have when people express indifference toward Simon’s work and the feeling HB no doubt had when trying for many months to get me to have a sense of urgency about watching the damn show. It is as if, really, I’d been living my whole life next to a whole other country and never knew a thing about its existence. I heard words like “endemic inner-city poverty”, “racism”, and “corruption” without really having any content for the terms. As such, they existed as vague shadow labels, without any real significance for me or my life, simply as things to keep in my personal database of distant unpleasantness.
It’s hard not to feel acutely the moral debility of my former condition and, therefore, the condition of all those currently unexposed to Simon’s world. Of course, this can begin to look an awful lot like a white kid who thinks he’s awfully damn cool because he’s watched a TV show about gangstas. Or because he lives in the ‘hood. (Protected, of course, by a security system and a heavily disproportionate police presence.) So I’m ripe for education, I think, about how to understand the education of The Wire more generally, and Simon’s imperative why seems like a good place to start.
I’m not certain, though, about Simon’s diminution of entertainment as a vehicle for this enlightenment. For me, at least, it’s more difficult than it seems like it ought to be to separate good journalism from bad. My taste is too blunt, my knowledge too shallow to be much of a judge. The Wire, with its ability to shape the context and content of my imagination, has done far more for my ability to separate the genuine from the sham than I could have done on my own, reading good and bad journalism. It seems to me that creators of effective art often complain about how they, as entertainers, shouldn’t be the ones in focus for the critiques they make (I’m thinking specifically of Jon Stewart), but it always seems to me that they may just not be themselves appreciating how essential and uniquely powerful their media are.
I find this subject, by the way, one of the most difficult subjects to write or talk about well. I applaud you for trying, HB.