61st Street series review

61st Street, t.v. series, multiple directors including Marla Cunningham, Ramaa Mosley, Ali Salim, and Darren Grant (eight episodes in season 1) and Solvan ‘Slick’ Naim, Michael Trim, Erin K. Feeley and Ramaa Mosley again for the eight episodes of season 2; scripts by multiple writers including Allison Davis, Frank Baldwin, and Peter Moffat across both seasons (2022). One of the best writers on the planet, especially for this kind of crime story, Richard Price, is variously listed online as a cowriter, and the similarities between The Night Of and 61st Street as truth and redemption dramas reflect at least homage to Price. Prominent actor, director, and producer Michael B. Jordan was also involved in the production of both series.  

On its surface, 61st Street is set in Chicago where the street of the title is a dividing line—left or right, south or north—between white (and blue) and black, between wealth and poverty. The series is an extension of the Black Lives Matter movement following the 2020-2022 George Floyd protests. Floyd, Derek Chauvin, and the riots that followed their interaction in Minneapolis are fresh in the minds of the characters and the scriptwriters who bring them to life; they are cited as gospel. In reality, though, 61st Street looks forward to Donald Trump’s second term, Project 2025, and ICE even more, as evidenced by Season 2. It is less prescience than riding the pendulum, though it is prophetic too in a Biblical sense as evinced by the continuous spiritual and gospel music that soundtracks the series along with the roar of el trains and gulls, the rush of the Chicago River, and gulls above Lake Michigan into which it deltas.

            61st Street is also the brainchild of Courtney B. Vance, its coproducer along with six others (including Michael B. Jordan). Vance is the lead actor and thread of continuity in the series as attorney Franklin Robert, whose quest for justice for a wrongly accused man dominates both seasons. Vance apprenticed for his role by playing attorney Johnny Cochran in The People v. O. J. Simpson and, before that, as a Yale School of Drama student versed in Shakespeare’s biblical lyricism and as various attorneys and diverse other characters in dozens of other theatrical and cinema roles. In 61st Street, he is the driving force and personification of the show’s message.

            Season 1 does look backward to George Floyd, but with substantial differences. Main character Moses Johnson (Tosin Cole) is a track star, not a drug addict, and he isn’t murdered by the police, though they tried relentlessly till his arrest and trial for murder of police officer Michael Rossi, hence facing life in prison in place of the athletic scholarship he earned to a Southern California university.

            The premise is complicated, multi-layered, and muddy, and Moses steps right into the mud. The higher-ups in the Chicago Police Department are in collaboration with one of the city’s two main street gangs, The Faction, taking hefty bribes from their drug money in exchange for letting them sell their product on the street, even in front of a police station while bearing down on their rival, The Nation.

I will lay out the opening details that underlie both seasons, all sixteen episodes, but I can’t follow up on all of them in the space of even a very long review. The key characters you need to know to follow the basic story at its outset are: Moses, his younger brother Joshua (Bentley Green), Chicago police lieutenant Francis Brannigan (Holt McCallany), police officer Michael Rossi (Patrick Mulvey), his wife Jessica Rossi (Rebecca Spence), police officer Johnny Logan (Mark O’Brien), and Nation member Rufus, street name Tutu (Matthew Elam). It goes like this: Tutu tells Rossi that someone in the Faction must be paying off the cops big-time for protection. Rossi is wearing a wire secretly (only Jessica knows); he presents the theory to Brannigan in the station. Brannigan asks, “Your idea or you got a source?” Rossi has a source. “Got a name?” Brannigan asks. “Goes by Tutu,” Rossi says.

Soon after, Tutu and his boys are gathering on a street corner with the music of the el trains stopping and starting, laying their background noise. Joshua is hanging out there too. Moses passes the scene headed home from track practice, stops to jive with his brother and the “boys,” but Tutu says to Moses they not boys anymore and takes out a gun to prove it, then aims it at Moses. They’re playing around, but it’s getting more serious, and the corner boys are warning Tutu off. Tutu smiles, then turns the gun into an imaginary track meet’s starting pistol and lauds the college boy for representing the South Side in the Olympics, an extended playful trope. Brannigan and his men are descending on the scene unnoticed. As soon as Tutu starts the race with his gun pointed in the air, Brannigan shoots him dead from a distance. Everyone starts running in multiple directions, Moses fast and far as befits a track star. Rossi is the cop chasing him. After a series of dodges, jumps, and climbs, Rossi shoots at Moses, only grazing him; then the two collide at a wall. Rossi orders Moses to surrender. Moses continues his flight. The men bump bodies. Rossi falls backward and, in a one-in-a-hundred accident, his head lands on a spike in the cement and begins gushing blood. He is fatally wounded. Moses tries to help him, then realizes it is too late, he will. Full of anguish for his bad luck and what will surely follow, he flees and tries to hide for days. The police go out looking for him, to bring him in, dead or alive. This summarizes Episode 1, the series pilot.

            In Episode 2, “The Hunter and the Hunted,” Moses has to find continually new places to hide, as the police search for him and query and try to blackmail his family, planting drugs in the Johnson household while questioning Moses’ mother Norma Johnson (Andrene Ward-Hammond). When Moses phones while she is being interviewed, Brannigan tells her to have him turn himself in. “Instead she says, “This is the most important thing I will ever tell you, ‘Run, Moses, run.’” Brannigan yanks the phone away.

Moses changes his appearance, getting his braids cut off.

Meanwhile, Brannigan tries to convince Logan to alter his account so that it looks as though Moses physically killed Rossi. But Logan, following close behind his partner Rossi, took the wire off him and gave it to Jessica. The Episode ends with Brannigan and his men finally cornering Moses. Brannigan tells Moses to run, hoping he will and thereby give him permission to shoot him. He taunts him as a track star, “Listen to your mother. Run, Moses, run.” Norma rushes out to protect her son but is held back. Moses tries to surrender, but Brannigan, gun aimed, keeps taunting until Franklin Roberts rushes between then, “I’m Franklin Roberts, and I am this man’s attorney.”

            In Episode 3, “Barefoot and Dangerous,” Johnny Logan listens to Rossi’s wire and grasps the extent of Brannigan’s corruption. Logan and Brannigan engage in verbal chess game thereafter through the episode, as Logan tries to use his information from Rossi’s wire to discern just how much lying Brannigan is willing to do and how corrupt he actually is. He also begins his own investigation, snooping around the South Side and the domain of Pastor Richard (Jon Michael Hill), dangerous territory for a cop in Brannigan’s unit that murdered Tutu in cold blood. He is led away by Pastor Richard.

Meanwhile Brannigan writes a confession for Moses to sign. We learn in the same episode that Franklin Roberts is dying from metastatic prostate cancer. He hasn’t told his wife Martha (Andre Ward-Hammond) who is running for district alderwoman. This means that Roberts and Logan are each conducting their own alternative investigations into the series of events that led to the deaths of Tutu and Rossi. These rogue missions will eventually converge and set the basis for Season 2.

We follow Martha and Franklin Roberts’ autistic son David (Jarrell Maximillian Sullivan) who will lead to a series of regular subplots through both seasons involving autistic savants, spontaneous candor, curiosity, David’s original dances, and a view of beginner’s mind that underwrites the complex 61st Street flow. David will continuously interrupt, especially court proceedings, by asking irrelevant, subtly profound questions. He is the Shakespearean fool.

Episode 4, “Chess Moves and Poker Chips,” opens with Franklin Roberts in an MRI tube and switches to Moses bunking down in prison and confronting a power structure in which other inmates take away his belongings and places a price on his safety and survival. He meets his father Speak (Michael A. Goorjian), a lifer. In her own visit, Norma asks Speak to protect their son. He tells her, “The offer is out there,” meaning he can join Speak’s gang, The Nation. She says,” You want your son to join a life that put you in here?”

As Moses attorney now, Franklin starts a strategy he will frame most elegantly as, “They think it’s your confession; it’s not—it’s your defense.” Because Moses has told Brannigan the truth, Franklin wants to use what a pleased Brannigan considers a full confession to turn it around into the reality of what happened when Moses was cornered by Rossi, but from a Black, South Side perspective.

Tutu’s mother and her friend visit the police office and confront Brannigan about her son’s shooting. He couches the truth in subtly spoken lies, hiding the police conspiracy with The Faction and pointing out that Tutu was a snitch and they shouldn’t want that to get out after his hero’s funeral.

David Roberts gets lost on the subway and wanders into an unknown neighborhood.

Franklin finds a police wire planted in their apartment.

Brannigan is gradually letting Logan in on their police-gang payoff scam with The Faction, bring him along. to a street bust of “gambling on the public way” plus one concealed weapon. Brannigan lets the rest flee, but he pushes guy with the concealed weapon against the wall with a threat of serious prison time. The guy offers him the money on the ground. Brannigan bends down, collects a little over $400, and splits it with Logan.

Moses beats a Faction runner called Smoke (Jason E. Kelley) in a race, putting him in jeopardy with Smoke’s Faction supporters. 

Logan starts an affair with Jessica in mutual camaraderie and grief; It starts before it starts, very subtly with her letting him smell his partner Rossi on his shirt she’s wearing. Their mutual decision to turn the relationship sexual resonates through both seasons.

Episode 5 is called “Over the Wall.” It opens with the police having brought David home from a neighborhood it is dangerous for black youth to be in. Franklin is initially outraged to return home and find cops in his house, but their presence shows the complexity of Black/White relations on both sides of 61st Street. With David’s unawareness of the rules of conduct, they could just as easily have shot him.

Moses’ trial begins. He is offered 20 years if he will to murder. Franklin leaves the choice of accepting the plea up to his client. Before the judge, Moses says, “I didn’t do it.” The judge repeats, “I need the words”: she has to say it twice. “Not guilty,” Moses replies.

Norma learns how advanced Franklin’s cancer is and is shocked and angry he didn’t tell her. Dr. Algren, Franklin’s urologist (James Vincent Meredith), has given him 18 months max.

Soon after Franklin has to yank his one witness to the death of Rossi, Calvin Harris (Jayson Lee), out of a drug deal on the street because he needs him clean for the trial.

In a foreshadowing of season 2, while Brannigan is taking Logan around collecting graft, Logan attacks a black guy who was mocking Rossi’s death. Brannigan has to pull him off, something he doesn’t do in the opening scene of Season 2.

Later via Logan the Nation offers Brannigan five points better than The Faction.

Franklin is making Moses a national case, but Tutu’s mother resents that her son, whose murder by the police started the whole set of events, is being forgotten.

At a birthday party, Logan is playing cops and robbers with Rossi’s five kids. One of them mentions a wire, something police wear under their clothes; Brannigan, present with other cops, overhears. His face darkens. He asks Logan over beers, “Where do you think a kid like Michael, Jr. would get something like that?” Logan carefully plays his hand and decides to tell Brannigan that Michael Rossi was wearing a wire when he died. Brannigan wants to know where it is. Logan says he got rid of it, never listened to it. Brannigan says, “Don’t feed me shit and call it sugar, Logan. . . . You weren’t curious?” Logan says, “Their dad died a hero. Whatever secrets were on that tape, Michael Rossi was lucky enough to take them to his grave. That’s where they belong. In the ground.” Brannigan changes the subject, “What are your secrets, Logan?” Logan changes with him, “Someone paid me a visit.” “Someone?” asks Brannigan. Logan tells him about The Faction’s offer, skillfully diverting him, a double camouflage (because it contains the basis of the wire and its secret (chess moves and poker chips). “Dante. He’s offering five points above The Faction. I said I’d pass on the message.” That’s gang leader Dante Blake (Julian Parker), a key figure in both seasons. Logan walks away, ending the scene.

At a party for his wife’s campaign, Franklin inadvertently recruits an assistant, a White Upright Justice Project lawyer, Nicole Carter (Emily Althaus). She tells Franklin she knows how to help him. He asks how old she is. “Twenty-seven.” She ask old he is. “I’m finally a whole lot younger.”

At the same party, Big Phil Robinson (Jerod Haynes) approaches Norma Johnson and begins to flirt with her. He is an undercover police officer and, though married with children, will move in with her and get her pregnant, a key feature of Season 2.

Brannigan spots Logan and Jessica about to kiss at a cops’ party. He will save that tidbit. Logan formally gives Jessica the wire.

Franklin finds technology that can show where the bullet the cops said they didn’t fire at Moses landed. He and Calvin Harris reconstruct the scene with a ladder and with David’s autistic-savant advice about the Moon’s penumbra, figures out where the bullet landed.

Speak tells Moses twenty years is like a vacation, he should have taken it. “Instead that attorney of yours gives you hope. Hope kills. . . . In a fight like this, you don’t win.”

Episode Six, “Sons of the Fathers,” opens with Moses and Speak continue to debate. Speak is still pushing his cynicism on him: “Forget about the Olympic games. Faction trying to put you six feet under and you still dreaming. Time to wake up.” Speak sets him up to earn The Nation’s protection; he has to collect a package of drugs, using his track ability to run along the fence in the exercise yard, packing the delivery vehicle.

Officer Phil Robinson moves in with Norma and makes himself a part of the family. For instance, Norma tells him how Moses was born with crooked feet and ended up fourteen years later state champion. Big Phil conveys everything she says to Brannigan.

The cops pick up Joshua Johnson, beat him up, and threaten to drown him in the Chicago. He comes home shaken and traumatized.

Building on an increasingly detailed series of scientific facts, Franklin figures out where the bullet fired at Moses might have landed. With Nicole and David, finds a Black woman who is wearing it around her neck as a lucky charm, Gloria Hendrix (Deanna Reed Foster). David tells her bullets kill, they’re only death charms, not meant for winning Bingo games.

Joshua goes to work for Dante to earn money for his brother’s defense. Moses warns Joshua he’s starting to sound like Little Speak. Big Phil passes on the damning information about Joshua’s new gig. Pretending to be a plumber, he will later offer to train Joshua in his trade.

Dante spots Logan on the street and tells him The Nation needs an answer. Logan calls Brannigan. Brannigan says, “Butler Boathouse, 5:30.” There Logan tries to convince Brannigan that Dante’s got the stronger operation. Brannigan still says, “Why switch?” Logan says, “Built to last. Strong infrastructure and no cliques. Clear hierarchy.” The calls of gulls increase overhead as Brannigan flips the chess game and asks Logan if Rossi told him “he was looking into me.” He pushes Logan into the wall and tears open his shirt to see if there is another wire. Then he tells him that Tutu knew about his deal with The Faction and he had to go. He had a gun and he was stupid enough to fire it in the air, making himself a target. “Sometimes in life everything just lines up. Rufus had a gun. I took him out, Christmas came early. What happened to your partner was a tragic accident. But here’s the truth. He went out easy.” Then: “Tell Dante he’s got a deal.”

Logan’s romance with Jessica gathers steam.

In Episode 7, “The Two Trials,” Moses’ first day in court begins with the prosecutor, Nina Motherwell (Jamie Neumann) showing a graphic image of Michael Rossi with a hole in his head. She says that Moses was present at the drug bust and his father is an established leader of a gang, The Nation. She called Moses “a drug-dealing gangbanger from a family of drug-dealing gangbangers.”

Franklin counters by describing Moses’ training, diet, discipline, focus, and 3.8 GPA, asking how he also has time to deal drugs and do “gang shit,” then apologizes to the judge before saying, “I’m sorry, your Honor. I’d like to speak my English not the courtroom English during this trial. See, I’m from the South Side, and I want to speak how we speak. This trial is about us, and I think the words should be our word.” He describes how Moses is not standing with drug dealers on the corner but 100 feet from the house he lived in his house. He says that Miss Motherwell is just seeing his blackness. Her white lens provides a story about who he is and what he’s doing. It’s lazy prejudice. He ran and fought because he didn’t want to join the long list of young Black men and women that were killed by police. “It was his self-defense.”

A police officer on the stand describes Norma Johnson as a player in a major drug business. She had drugs in her house (the ones they planted). In cross-examination, Franklin asks, “Who did they arrest, who did they charge?” The answer is “No one.” The reason the officer gives is priorities, they were searching for Moses.

The reason, Franklin retorts, is it was about you planting drugs. The police officer says, “We don’t do that.” Franklin concludes by saying that Norma Johnson makes $15.50 an hour cleaning this entire courthouse. “How many kingpin drug dealers do you know work night shifts cleaning public toilets?”

            On the way into the courthouse, the officers roughed up their undercover officer plumber Philip for show. After the first day, Philip was uncuffed by a laughing Brannigan. Robinson tells him, “Your boy was soft as hell,” as both men chuckle. Brannigan says, “Want them to rough you up a little. Maybe kick you in the nuts so Norma can nurse them better later? Remember what I told you at the start of this. Don’t fall in love, and wear a condom. What have you got for me?” “The brother, Joshua,” Philip says, He’s dealing. This will be very useful during the trial.

Martha tells Franklin that Rufus was a snitch but that he can’t use it because The Nation will come after his mother. “You know. That’s the way it works.”

            When the court resumes the next day, Franklin takes up the booking and roughing up of Joshua, asking the same police officer about what happened during the two hours and nine minutes he was in custody and before he was released. “Did you take him out for ice cream, officer?”

            His son David, missing the irony, elicits the judge’s reprimand by interrupting the cross-examination and calling out, “I want to know. Did you take him out for ice cream?” A wave of laughter also crosses the courtroom.

            Brannigan is next on the stand and he highlights Moses’ confession, then explains how a public defender like Franklin Roberts manipulates and maneuvers his clients into telling him what he wants to hear from him and then gets him to tell that to the jury.

            On cross-examination, Franklin elicits that all six of his shoots in 23 years were Black men and all ruled good shoots by the police board. He wonders, in the case of Rufus, if Brannigan shot first of the six officers there because he was quick to size up the situation, as he claimed on the stand, or because he alone of them didn’t wait to size up context. He wonders then if Moses isn’t entitled to a little bit of fear that the policeman will put a bullet in him, even with his hands up. Brannigan says, “Now you’re making presumptions and there’s a name for that.” “There is,” says Franklin. “And it’s called institutional racism.”

            Johnny Logan on the stand under cross-examination by Franklin says that he didn’t fire his gun. Franklin produces the bullet; an officer of the court is sent to get Logan’s gun. But Brannigan had the guns switched and it doesn’t match the slug. Logan proceeds under oath.

            In the bathroom, Norma and Jessica find themselves together. “He’s lying, isn’t he?” Norma says. She leaves unanswered.

            Dante summons Joshua away from the courtroom. Joshua goes with him to recover stolen drug money, but Joshua stole some of it himself, which makes for a problem with Dante.

After Franklin tells Norma that he’s being paid with Joshua’s dirty money not community donations, it gets back to Moses and he confronts Speak in jail. But Speak tells him he’s teaching Joshua how to be a real breadwinner for his family. He’s smart. “He wanted in.”

            “What kind of man are you?” Moses asks.

            “The kind of man who’s smart and knows what’s best for his boys.”

Dante drives with Joshua, stops the car, puts a gun to his head, tells him, “You know what comes next.”

Joshua says, “You ain’t got to do this.”

Dante says, “I owe your old man from way back. Not killing you now, that’s my debt to Speak. You do this again—” He removes the gun. “You’re mine now.” Hands him the gun. “And this is yours now.” He closes with, “Watch your back, l’ll man.” Music of the el train going by.

Jessica listens to the wire again, the discussion between her late husband and Brannigan in which Rossi gives the name of his man in The Nation. “Tutu.” Because of Rossi’s information on wire, Tutu will soon be dead.

Jessica confronts Logan. She knows Logan’s gun; she helped Rossi pick it out for him. She says, “When the deputy came into court today with that gun, I saw your face, and I watched you decide to lie.”

“What did you expect me to do? Tell the truth. You know what that’ll mean. Michael’s killer goes free. Is that what you want?”

            “The truth.”

            “Well, here’s the truth. I love you.”

            She slaps him. Then she goes and leaves the wire in an envelope on Franklin’s doorstep. He listens and he knows why Rufus was shot. “It wasn’t a good shoot. It was an execution. It changes everything.”

            “You can’t use this, Franklin.” Martha tells him. “If you use it, Janet Porter dies. If you use this, I can’t live with you.”

In Episode 8, the last of the season, “Man on Fire,” Franklin opens by cutting down a doll hung from a tree by his house and set on fire—a ritual lynching and KKK burning.

            Franklin decides to put Joshua on the stand to tell the jury the truth about funding Moses’ defense with drug money. Joshua said, yes, he’s a member of The Nation street gang. Since when? He just joined to get money for his brother. He can’t earn the same kind of money outside the criminal economy. To the question, are there jobs on the South Side? “You’ve got to be kidding, Mr. Franklin.” He asks Joshua if when officer Frater and his partner took you out of the station that day it was to revisit the crime scene. He swore so on his mother’s life. “Was that true?”

            “On his mom’s life, he said that?”

            “Yes.”
            “No, that’s not true.”

            Joshua explains how he got taken to river to get Moses’ name from him. He said he didn’t give the name voluntarily. Officer Frater and Officer Young made it clear that they would drown him if he didn’t give a name. He breaks down under PTSD of recalling and lies writhing on the floor as Norma rushes to comfort him. Then as Frater and Johnson enter the court, he screams at them, calls them cowards, and is dragged from the courtroom.

            Because didn’t finish his testimony, it is excluded. Franklin tells Moses he has to take the stand, as uncommon as it is for the accused to testify under oath and face cross-examination. But first Franklin collapses in the courtroom from backup in his bladder. Under the circumstances, Moses is offered a new trial with new lawyers. He elects to continue.

            Franklin goes to Logan’s apartment to talk to him. Logan says, “I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules, you talking to me.”

            Franklin: “I’m pretty sure you don’t follow the rules.” He notes that Logan’s conscience has gotten the better of him, so he left the wire at Franklin’s house. But Logan didn’t leave it. It was Jessica.

            He tells Logan that Michael Rossi was prepared to follow his conscience. “Are you?”

Martha Roberts seeks out Dante and confronts him about the old way of doing things. She wants a life, to save a life.

            “Who is he?”

            “She. It’s she.” He means Mrs. Porter.

            “I think you can win this election,” says Dante.

Franklin puts Moses on the stand. He admits that he ran when Rufus got shot. “I thought it would be me next.”

            About Michael Rossi, he’s deeply sorry, “from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know how we got here.”

            Franklin wants to know what was in his mind on that dead-end street.

            “Wasn’t in my mind. Deeper than that. In that moment, in my bones. It’s just that thing that everybody knows. If a cop come for you and a cop get ahold of you, you could die.”

            So what did he do?

            “The only way out was over these containers. And he was between me and that. And I tried to get over there. He stepped across to block my path. There was some shoulder-to-shoulder contact. He fell back. The back of his head hit the iron bar in the ground and there was all this blood all of a sudden.”

            “What happened when the second police officer entered the scene?”

            “He took a shot at me.”

            “Had you shown any aggressive intent toward him?”

            “No, I was running away and I had my back turned to him. He shot at my back. He was trying to kill me. I was right to run away. I was right to protect myself.”

            Under cross-examination, prosecutor Motherwell asks the obvious, that he ran from a cop, down the dead-end street. Did he draw his weapon? Did he make any aggressive record move toward you? Did you know he had an exemplary service record? Did you know he had a wife and five small children? Or where he was born or how much he loved baseball? You made an assumption based on the one thing you knew about him, that he was a cop. What does that make you?”

            She sits down without waiting for an answer.

            “You just don’t get it, lady. How could you?”

            The judge hushes him, but he says, “She just gets to ask me a question and walk away? The way I was raised, that’s rude.”

            Franklin handles it on redirect, giving Moses a chance to continue.

            “You making assumptions that I’m one of those little hood rats on the corner. That’s not me. Every day I train. Every day I train my butt off. I’ve never been in trouble a day in my life. Cops will always be believed. We’ll always be the liars. Dead or in jail. Those are our only options.”

            With the jury out of the room, the judge says that Moses just confessed and he is going to declare him guilty. Amid protests, Franklin is summoned outside the room. With the jury back, he decides to put Brannigan back on the stand. He plays the wire for the court and jury.

            “Which is it, lieutenant? Are not suffering from memory loss or are you a shameless liar?”

            “I forgive you.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “You have to do your job. I understand. But what you’re saying, total fiction.”

            “Let me clear about something. There’s no difference between me the lawyer and me the human being. I’m not being a storyteller. I’m not doing a job. This is me. I’m calling you out. What you did to Rufus Porter was an execution. When Moses ran, he was running from a killer with the letters P-O-L-I-C-E on his chest. That’s you.”

            Franklin puts Norma Johnson on the stand, and she backs Janet Porter and says that she will answer the question Brannigan dodged. “He is a shameless liar.”

            Finally Franklin addresses the jury and asks them to prove that the system works.,

            We switch to a polling place. Dante walks up to Janet Porter and says, “Condolences.” The times are changing. He is running for office. She will not be held responsible. He has given her license.

            At the urinal, Brannigan says to a suffering Franklin, “May the best man win.”

            “Really?”

            Back in the courtroom, the judge asks the returning jury members, “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

            “Yes, we have, your honor.”

            Franklin holds Moses’ hand and rises with Moses.

            “On the single count of murder in the first degree, the jury hereby finds the accused not guilty. The courtroom erupts. Moses hugs his mother. Prosecutor Motherwell shakes Franklin’s hand. Brannigan walks out. The season closes with a “Moses Runs Free” parade. And Martha Roberts wins her election. She downplays the moment by sighing as if she lost before telling the crowd, “We won.” Undercover cop Phil goes back to his family. But his undercover role will continue in the next season. Logan visits Jessica who tells him that she told Brannigan it was her who gave Franklin the recording. “You’re good. You can go back to your life. Just don’t look in the mirror.” The second season will follow from there. The last scene in the has Moses back on the track with his coach and Franklin. We won’t see him in the second season.

Season 2 changes in one striking regard. Franklin’s client is Johnny Logan, but his adversary is still Francis Brannigan and the Chicago police department hierarchy around him. The season opens (“After The Morning After”) with Brannigan explaining to Logan at the police departments favorite watering hole, the Low Bar, that department policy isn’t racist because ninety percent of the crimes committed in the city are by people of the same skin color and they are only doing their job. It is the night of the verdict, and they are all angry. Logan exits the bar alone drunk and tells a black bystander sitting on his car (Jalil Watts played by Marcus Hopkins-Turner) to turn down his profane rap music. Watts says, “You police?” Then he says, “I ain’t breaking no law. Fuck twelve [words from the song] and fuck you!” Logan blacks out from. Only back home does it slowly come back to him that he pounded the guy and now he can’t find his gun. He calls Brannigan.

            Brannigan summons him to his office. He asks Brannigan what happened. Brannigan says, “You tell me.” He only remembers drinking, so Brannigan tells him, “You got into an altercation outside the bar. . . . The other guy got the worst of it.”

            “Where’s my gun?”

            “We took care of everything.”

            “What did I do?”

            We don’t hear the rest of the dialogue, but the next time we see Johnny, he has been taken off the street and is driving police chief Rick Leonard (David Parkes) on his rounds. Leonard says he gets all the “bad boys,” which means “the best cops,” and that it’s only six months after which he can return to the street a saner, quieter cop. . . . Let it go, Logan. We’ll get you back out there.”

            After dropping Leonard off, Logan goes to the hospital to see what happened to his victim. He views Watts through his room window on a respirator. He holds his hand over his mouth and cries. A nurse leads him out of the room, to preserve the dignity of the patient, she tells him, then says that he’s the first cop to visit and asks if they have any leads. Blindsided, he stammers, “No, not yet,” and walks into the room. The nurse asks him to do his job and stay around and talk to his wife. Logan proceeds into the room and sees his victim being lifted as the nurse says, “Now it’s a murder. You want to start paying attention.”

            “We’re on this,” he says, fleeing the rolling cart with the corpse, but they catch up and he has to ride the elevator with them, get a close look at what he did while drunk.

            Brannigan finds Logan punching a bag in the gym; he tells him a fable about a childhood visit to Ireland to look for ancestral Brannigans. A snowfall in May covered the graves and the names. He tells him that Watts passed this afternoon, “but maybe you knew already.”

            “No,” Logan lies.

            “When it stopped snowing finally, all the names were hidden. Like they weren’t there. Or had never been there.”

            Logan resumes dancing around bag, punching even harder, as if punching Jalil Watts, or himself, to undo the deed with the same force with which he did it.

Brannigan and undercover officer Philip are walking along the river. To the sound of gulls, Brannigan tells him, “I’m thinking that next up for you could be vice.”

            Philip says, “I don’t know that I’m done with this job.”

            “This job? Or this woman?”

            “It’s the same thing. She’s a player now.” He assures Brannigan that he is keeping the professional and the personal separate.

Joshua Johnson is riding with Dante with rap music on the car radio. He tells him that he had to get rid of the piece he gave him. “It’s in the Lake.”

            Dante stops the car, gets out, tells Joshua to get out, and says, “Between that heater and the cut you took, you owe me about two stacks. You got it? Plus fronting on your debt to TJ. Nothing to say?”

            They reach a field. Joshua says, “Do what you got to do.”

            “You’re a smart one. I ain’t gonna murk you. Ain’t gonna put you back on that corner either. Could use me a smart one.” He points to the field where they’re standing. “I’m gonna buy up this whole lot. Plenty more.  Build something for the future. Feel me. Black-owned businesses. Couldn’t do that corner shit forever.” He tells him he used to look up to the old guys like his pop Speak. “Look at him now. I need you clean. You out here catching cases, you ain’t no use to me.” He walks him back to the car with his arm around him. “C’mon. I’ll drop you off. You got an uncle now.”

            We briefly see the memorial for Jalil at his house where Preacher Richards says a prayer about how he was called home to the Lord “for reasons we may not ever understand. All things work to your purpose. Amen.” Jalil’s widow, Naimah Watts (Karen Aldridge) serves his favorite food, crinkle-cut fries, then breaks down crying. Preacher Richards suggests she contact Franklin.

            After some drinks at the Low Bar, Logan sits back at his place watching the video of his beating of Watts. He is breathing heavily and shaking. He goes out driving, parks, and crushing a medicine bottle of dark liquid in his hand (was he considering suicide?). He knocks on Franklin’s door.

            Franklin (in amazement), “What are you doing here?”

            “Jalil Watts. It was me.”

            Perhaps the deepest irony of the transition of the first to the second season—and there are many—is that Logan is enlisting as his lawyer the black public defender who won the Moses Johnson verdict that enraged him so much that he went out on the street and pounded to death the first eligible Black man.

Episode 2, called “Trust Me,” continues the dialogue in Franklin’s garage.

            “I should burn for this.”

            “You can’t plead guilty for something you don’t remember doing.”

            “Well, someone remembers. I know they do.”

            “They? They who?”

            “The Low Bar is a cop bar.”

            “Who were you drinking with, Officer Logan?”

            Pitched forward, hands on the table, he is silent.

            “Either you’re here or you’re not.”

            “Brannigan. Brannigan was there.”

            Franklin asks if they’re looking after him. Logan says they are.

            “Like they always do. No suspension, no meaningful inquiry.”

            Logan nods.

            “Good.”

            “Good?” Incredulous.

            “Get back out there. Investigate yourself.”

            “Get back out there?”

            “Do . . . your . . . job. Bring me back evidence of what they did to hide what you did.”

            “Oh no, I’m not safe out there.” He means from the police.

            “I . . . know. Bring me evidence of that too.”

            As Logan begins to investigate, Franklin is in a double bind, for Naimah Watts has arrived at his house, accompanied by his wife Martha. Franklin presumes that he can work for both her and her husband’s killer at the same time as long the ultimate target is Brannigan, but it will be a tricky business and before the end of the season his wife will throw a dying lawuer out of the house. At this first meeting, Naimah is momentarily euphoric, praising Franklin for his defense of Moses, for bringing hope back into the world. She wants Jalil’s death investigated and for them to figure out who the cop was at the hospital. Franklin and Logan’s separate investigations occupy much of this episode.

            Dante goes to newly elected alderman Martha Roberts (“Alderwoman” she corrects) with his plans for Black-owned business and developing a local empty series of lots comprising a full meadow of mainly dirt with a few weeds. That way he can build local tax revenue. He lays down the meadow’s parcel numbers, his budget, and a business proposal so that she can make an informed decision. He wants to get it away from some yuppie business. He knows what she then tells him, that the land is already earmarked for development.

            “The Masterton Group,” he says. “In business since 1948. Gold-plated reputation for developing land for wealthy White folks to enjoy. Undermining communities for seventy years.”

            “I agree with you, but it’s going to be hard pushing anything from someone with a background like yours.”

            “I’m clean on paper, so what’s the problem?”
            “Oh paper.”

            “147 votes you won by. It’s quite the turnaround in the last twenty-four hours.”

A troubled Franklin goes to Preacher Richards and asks, “Did you ever help somebody that didn’t deserve it?”

            “Define deserve.”

            “Is there a cut-off point where you wouldn’t help somebody?”

            “We’re all born sinful. It’s our work on Earth to prove that we’re not. Everybody started bad. Everybody had it in them to be good.”

            “Everybody?”

            “I met a nun on a train once who told me she felt sorry for Hitler. Crazy, I know. But here’s the thing. You’ve got to try to turn everyone away from darkness toward the light.” He then says that Franklin can’t expect him not to ask who it is.

            “Not yet, my friend,” patting him on the knee. “Not yet.”

            Johnny is getting Jalil’s impounded car out of the lot, saving her $1200. He parks it outside her place and slides the key through the mail slot, is gone by the time he opens the door.

            Brannigan has Logan accompany him on a raid and has Logan go in first with the intent of getting him shot and killed and out of his way. Logan is hit in the chest and lying wounded on the floor as the episode ends.

Brannigan opens Episode 3, “Do No Harm,” by saying to Logan as he comes into fuzzy focus, “An inch to the left. One inch. You’ve got the luck of the Irish.”

Dr. Algren gives Franklin six months of life. Franklin asks a hypothetical question, “If a man in my position wanted three good months instead of six bad ones, could he get them?”

            “Yes. An experimental medication called Prenomax. It’s only been approved for clinical trials.” I imagine Penomax is fictive. “It would put him at his peak but hasten his end. Trouble is, it’s illegal. A doctor prescribing it would lose his license.”

            “There’s something I need to do. It’s big. Will you think about?”

            Dr. Algren later meets him by Franklin by the Lake, seagulls squawking. He has a full doctor’s bag. First he asks, “What are the three months for?”

            “That makes a difference?”

            “I wouldn’t do this for Donald Trump or Adolph Hitler. Nelson Mandela, though. Three more months for MLK?”

            “Three months in which to defend a man who could change everything.”

            “Everything?”

            “About who we are, who we can be. What I see in this man is a bad man with a conscience and the will to set his conscience free.”

            Dr. Algren hands him the bag. “This is three good months, but if you miss one dose, you’re in trouble, quickly.”

Johnny comes to Franklin telling him that they nearly killed him, missed by an inch. Franklin says they need more evidence. It’s the nature of cover-ups that they can’t stop.

            Johnny says, “Put myself in danger so you have something to work on?”

            “That’s about right. That’s it.”

            “What if I die?”

            “That’s the best possible evidence. I mean, I’m just saying.”

            Johnny laughs; they both laugh.

            Nicole asks later, “What was Johnny Logan doing here?”

            “I can’t tell you.”

            “Why not? Does he have something on you?”

            “I can’t talk about it.”

            “He did it, didn’t he?”

            “The only thing you need to know, my eyes are always on the prize.”

            “You’re helping him? No, no, you can’t do that.”

            “George Floyd was murdered, and then 74 million people voted for Donald Trump. Racism is a white person’s problem. . . . Johnny Logan can tell us their stories from the inside.”

            “He’s a monster, Franklin. You can’t do this. Naimah trusts you.”

            “Derek Chauvin didn’t plead guilty. He choked a man to death in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people and did not feel guilty. . . . History gave him permission to lie, Nicole. The truth has to be told. Otherwise, we can’t get there.”

            “Get where?”

            “Reconciliation. A nation at peace.”

            “If you do this, no one will stand with you.”

            “Nobody, Nicole?”

Alderwoman Martha Roberts ask Dante for political cover so she can fend off the Masterton Group. “Ten percent of your profits for the first two years. Earmarked to a special fund that will build three learning centers in the ward., giving back to your community. Our community.”

            “Five percent.”

            That gets him a hard stare.

            “You could have held your own on one of my corners.”

            “I need to know you can hold your own on mine, Mr. Blake.”

            “Call me Dante.”

            “I don’t think so, Mr. Blake.”

Brannigan tells Johnny, “It’s over now, Johnny.”

            “Huh?”

            “The gun you used to bash in his skull is about to land on the state’s attorney’s desk. See, an anonymous tip was just called in, which led us to your gun. When the state’s attorney tests your gun, she’ll find Jalil Watt’s brain matter all over it, after which a warrant will be issued for your arrest. The city is angry. The whole country is angry.” He wants to turn Johnny Logan into Derek Chauvin. “It needs a place to put all that anger. That place is about to be you.”

            But the trap Franklin has set has been sprung. Just as in the case of Moses Johnson, Johnny Logan’s “confession” is his defense. Brannigan continues, “I’ve been watching you, Johnny. Real close. And I’m not sure you can take what’s about to go down.” They are high up on a balcony overlooking the city, and Johnny has admitted having vertigo. “The thing about vertigo,” Brannigan concludes, “it’s not a fear, it’s an urge. And sometimes the urge can become desire. And then. Then it’s impossible to resist.” They both stare down and Brannigan walks away, hoping that Johnny will jump to escape what’s about. He doesn’t, but the camera spirals rapidly down to street as if attached to a person who has jumped.

Martha throws Franklin out. “Why?” she asks. “Why? Naimah trusted you. I’ll tell you what’s happening. You’re gonna leave this house. You’re gonna go now, and you’re not going to come back until you stop doing what your doing with that fucking murderous cop.” Franklin’s third-generation Armenian bartender gives him a room.

Franklin and Logan meet out by one of city’s sports stadiums. Franklin asks Logan why there’s a warrant out for him.

            “Brannigan kept the gun. He said he ditched it, but he didn’t. He was there. He filled in the blanks.”

            “He was there. And he does nothing? All this energy, all of his everything goes into covering it up?”

            “There’s no way out.”

            “That’s what they want you to think. They need you gone so they can carry on being who they are, doing what they do.”

            “There’s no way out!’

            “I’m your way out! Don’t you see it. I’m the way out. I sent you out to get more. We have more now. We’ve got everything we need. Everything I wanted to do now I can do. I can keep you alive.”

            “Alive? Alive for what?”

            “I told you. Truth. Redemption.  All the Bible words are in this one. You may not know this in the front of your brain, but I believe this is why you came to me. You came to me to redeem yourself, to atone for your sins, to tell the truth. So, no, no, no, no, no, you cannot leave. You cannot leave, not when you’re just getting started. Put that gun away. I won’t let you. You cannot leave now.”

Franklin finds Brannigan sitting in the Low Bar. Brannigan looks up from his paper and says, “A lawyer walks into a cop bar.”

            Franklin: “Cop doesn’t realize the joke’s on him until it’s too late.”

            After more repartee, Franklin tells Brannigan he’s going to see him in court. “Wrongful death suit?” Brannigan asks.

            “You got me wrong. I’m not representing the Watts family. Johnny Logan is my new client. I’m for the accused.  For thirty years I’ve been wanting to say this, and it just never felt right until now. I’ll see you in court.” He leaves waving his fingers in the air.

Pastor Richard summoned a “Justice for Jalil Watts” crowd to watch Logan turn himself in.

            “Who called all these people?” Logan asks.

            “We did,” Franklin says. “The more public we make this, the safer you’ll be.”

            “I can’t do this.”

            “Yes, you can. I’ll be right by your side. Just look straight ahead. Don’t say anything.

Big Phil is beside Norma watching it on t.v. He tells her, “Find out what Franklin is doing and why. We need to know.

            The Episode ends at the booking desk where Franklin says, “I believe that you’re looking for my client.”

Episode 4 is “Kamikaze”. The female assistant prosecutor and Franklin argue bail for Logan before the judge. She sets it at $3 million D-bond and remands him to “the fine men and women of Cook County jail.” Franklin had just argued that he would be unsafe in there. “They’re trying to kill him.” She considers that a slur. Franklin pulls Johnny away, saying, “It’s all right. They got to her. Let’s go” He asks Logan to give him something to work with. “Tweet,” he says, “Leon Perkins. Goes by Tweet. Brannigan’s informant. He can corroborate the dirty warrant. He’ll talk to the drug bust. Can you stop calling me Logan. Did you call Moses Johnson ‘Johnson’”?

            Franklin goes to the South Side basketball court looking for Tweet. The players wonder aloud whether he’s Moses Johnson’s lawyer or the lawyer repping the cop that killed a brother in Bridgeport. Then he’s told that Moses Johnson buys him one last favor. “Roseland. Three flat on 107th and King. That’s where Tweet’s girl lives.”

            Frankin arrives. Tweet’s girlfriend says he’s not there. Franklin says, “He may not know it, but he’s in big trouble. He needs me.” He leaves his card and says to have Tweet call. After Franklin leaves, Tweet peaks out of the next room and she gives him the card. Would that he had met Franklin in person. That card with be his death.

Norma tells Big Phil she’s pregnant. “Twelve weeks and counting.”

            “Oh, my god!”

            Then the undercover cop pulls himself back into character as her lover. But Joshua Johnson has found out on the street that his mother’s boyfriend is an undercover cop. Now she is pregnant by him. He doesn’t go to his mother. He goes to Preacher Richard. Preacher Richard com,es to Franklin. Franklin asks if Norma knows. Preacher Richard says, “No, he can’t do it. He won’t hurt her.”

            Franklin says, “Good. Then we can use it. Don’t tell Norma. Joshua will keep quiet. We’ll play the cop for all it’s worth. Then at the trial we’ll roll it all out, so everybody can see it.”

            It takes all his powers of persuasion to keep Preacher Richard from telling Norma. They debate the legitimacy of a short-term lie for a long-term truth.

Jessica visits Logan in prison and asks  im hard questions for her children, why the man who killed their father was walking free and the lawyer who defended him is defending him. Johnny says their father wasn’t killed by Moses but by the police department. Then she asks, was that man you beat to death in public killed by you or the department?

            She has hit upon who Franklin is putting on trial, but she doesn’t fully realize it even though she provided the wire that saved Moses. Hers is the most complicated position of all.

Tweet calls Franklin’s number and agrees to meet him in an hour behind the liquor store by Roseland. But the police come immediately and pick Treat up. Tweet wants his money for being an informant. One of the cops in the front seat says, “Don’t worry, Treat. You’ll get your money.”

            “Then what’s up?”

            “I heard that that fancy lawyer was looking for you. You talk to him?”

            “I don’t talk to nobody like that.”

            “Really?”

            They ask for his cell and see a number that, Danny says, “rings a fucking bell with me.”

            “Call him.”

            He rings back the number. “Tweet, where are you. I’m at the bar waiting. Tweet, is that you?”

            The cops smirk back and forth. “I know that voice.”

            “We all know that voice.”

            Tweet: “Where we going?”

After being taken to prison lunch by “the scenic route” and being spat upon with death threats, Logan calls Dante.

            Dante asks, “Why is G.I. Joe calling me?”

            “Listen, I need friends in here, or I’m gone.”

            “Friendship ain’t free. We’ll be in touch.”

            Soon after Logan is attacked by the mopper of the bathroom with a razor, but cops step in an protect him.

Tweet is at the station facing Brannigan and the other cops. Brannigan nods to Frater and Gallagher, and they grab and choke him. Brannigan says to the dying man, “I’m sorry, Tweet,” as he injects a needle in his arm. Tweet’s eyes go blank and he falls. Brannigan says, “Let’s dress it up.”

            Franklin gets the news. “Country morgue? Who?”

            At the morgue, they pull out the tray with Treat. The coroner’s assistant says, “Big fentanyl/heroin overdose. Would have gone out happy and fast. He had no i.d. We’re lucky we found your business card on him.”

Logan is visited in his cell by a Black guy with dreads. The guard says, “Make it quick. You got two minutes. I’ve got you covered.”

            Logan assumes it means curtains.        

            His visitor chuckles. “Relax, man. Dante sent me.” He takes a sandwich from a bag and hand it to him. “Complimentary dinner. Glass-free.”

            Johnny is silent as he holds it.

            “You’re welcome.” The deliverer, Lotty (Al Jaleel McGhee)) grabs at the sandwich he just brought and eats a chunk of it.

            “Thank you,” Johnny finally says.

            “So, you’re like America’s Most Wanted in this bitch.”

            “The guard. Is he—”

            “He’s family. The Nation take care of its own. You are not family. So protection like that, it’s gonna cost you.”

            “I can put something together. How much am I looking at?”

            “Ten racks. A week.”

            “I’ve got 10 Gs in a duffel bag behind my bathtub. I’ll give you the address.”

            “I know where you live. So, that will get you a week. Your week started this morning. You now have the complete protection of The Nation. You can eat, you can sleep, you can sit on this bucket. I’m gonna be handling your meal delivery, so anything that come through this door and it ain’t in a bag like that, don’t eat it. You got any problem in here, no matter how big, no matter how small, you ask for Lotty. You feel me.”

“I got it.”

The unit guard wakes Logan in the middle of the night and leads him out to the yard. An older gentleman is standing there. Logan says, “Hey, dad.” His father is a retired cop.

“300K, second mortgage on the house. The bank worked with me, expedited some things.”

He hugs his father as he cries and says, “Thank you.” Then: “I’m sorry.”

            “The person you should be thanking is your mother. God rest her soul. This is what she would have wanted me to do. Ah, I tried my best to raise you right, to put you on the right track, to teach you what matters. The Logan family . . . honor and loyalty, it’s what defines us. And you decided to turn your back on that.”

            “No, it’s not like that, Dad. It’s more involved. They’re setting me up.”

            “Ten bucks. Bus fare. And a few things to keep you clean for a couple of days. I don’t have to tell you this, but it’s probably not safe for you to go home or touch your car right now.””

            He had bailed him out. “Like I said.I did this for your mother. But you and me, we’re done.”

Episode 5, “Two Truths and a Lie,” opens where the previous episode closed, with Logan walking along barbed-wire fencing on a deserted street at night with ominous jagged, erratic music now associated with him in the background. A motorcycle approaches from the distance. He cringes. It shoots by. It’s his inner world that has become ominous, jagged, and paranoid. A weary Franklin climbs a stairwell to meet him where he is sitting on a top landing, homeless, catches his breath. They go into Franklin’s new apartment and Franklin opens with, “Tweet’s dead.”

“How?”

Franklin tells him.

Johnny thinks it must be Dante. “Dante and The Nation has a history of putting snitches in ditches with an armful of that shit.”

“But how would Dante know that Tweet was two-timing him with the cops?”

“Brannigan.” He gets a cut and “in exchange, he leaves the Nation’s corners alone.”

“How do you know that?”

“I set it up.”

Franklin chuckles. “Normally when a client tells me some bad things about their lives, my job gets harder, but with you—” He shakes his finger, continuing to chuckle.

“You’re using me.”

“Absolutely.” He gets up and walks toward Johnny. “But that’s not all. I’m saving you. I’m your Black liberal savior.”

The scene continues downstairs in the bar.

“What are you saving me from?”

“When we can answer that, my work here is done.”

Franklin wants to get ahold of the chemical analysis of the

 syringe left in Dante’s hand to make the drug look self-administered.

“How are you going to do that?”

“In a minute.”

He steps outside to phone Nicole for help.

“And why would I do that?”

“Truth and reconciliation. You need the first one before you can get to the second, Johnny Logan is the first part; he’s the truth—”

While Franklin is outside, Johnny attacks a bar customer at a table. The bartender separates them. Johnny says to Franklin, “I can’t do this. I need to plead guilty.”

Next scene. Franklin is sitting having breakfast and coffee with the State’s attorney, Kim Pearson (Brenda Strong). He says to her, “My client is interested in a deal.”

“Sure. He can plead guilty to first-degree murder.” She goes on to tell Franklin that he has no intention of making a deal because he wants a trial, so she picked the one prosecutor to prosecute that Franklin would not want as an opponent; she’s going to prosecute the case herself.

Franklin offers his trademark chuckle. “State’s attorney can’t prosecute this thing.”

“Oh, this one can. This one understands what you’re going for her, the whole house of cards.”

Franklin looks thoughtful.

“What’s the matter? You frightened of me? You should be.” She pulls out her list of witnesses and shows it to him.

“That’s a lot of names for a department that didn’t notice there was a man in a coma outside the biggest cop bar in the city.”

            She says that united in wanting to cut out this cancer.

            He says, “There’s a deal we can make, Kim.”

            “Hmm, what’s that?”

            “Let’s not use cancer as a metaphor. It’s a stupid, lazy cliché, and we’re both better than that. If the world’s going to be watching, let’s raise our games, Kim. Let’s give them something to see.”

            She produces page 2 of witnesses with a smile. “Or to put it another way, I’m going to fuck you up, Franklin Roberts.” She asks for the check, as he reaches for his wallet. “No, no,” she says. “My treat.”

            Franklin returns to his apartment and tells Johnny he got nothing, that they’re lining up to testify against him. Which is a good thing,”

            “Why?”

            “Because I get to cross-examine the whole crew, flush out the poison.”

            “Or I could just plead guilty to murder.”

            “Nobody does that.”

            “But I could.”

            “Do you want to take sole responsibility? Do you feel like you’re the only guilty person in this department?”

            The discussion continues, and Johnny finally changes direction and becomes interesting in living to go to trial. “I’m not safe here, and I don’t think you are either.”

            Franklin has an idea. He takes Johnny to Pastor Richard’s church as a live-in volunteer. Richard shows him around, as uplifting spiritual music plays, its words loosely aligned to each moment; then Richard ask Johnny for his gun. “House rules.” The song “You brought me back to life again. You opened up your heart and took me in. Oh, and you’ve been my savior . . .”

            Before Franklin leaves, Pastor Richard still wants to tell Norma the truth about the man she’s living. Franklin pleads with him not to. A brilliant battle of New Testament parables follows. Franklin leaves, the apparent victor. He has named the episode.

            He returns to his apartment to find a pig’s head nailed to the wall. Nicole enters after him, and says, “Oh, my god.” She carries it off and puts it in her car.

Back at his apartment she explains that the chemical composition of the drugs on the syringe is exactly the same as the batch planted in Norma’s apartment and those seized on the corner the day Michael Rossi died. They were cut the same way.

            “So Brannigan killed Tweet,” Franklin says.

            She delivers the news and starts to leave.

            Franklin clearly wants her to stay. “I need the words,” she says.

            “Please come back, Nicole Carter. I need your help.” They both smile.

            Franklin heads to Norma’s apartment to pick up his son who’s been hanging out with Joshua. He plays Big Phil with some strategic dialogue around training Joshua as a plumber. Outside the door he gives Joshua a recording device to clip inside Robinson’s car.

Preacher Richard tells Johnny, “For this to be worth it, for the pain and sacrifice to mean anything, it all has to come out. God is watching you, and he’s gonna need you to lay it all out there.”

            After Richard leaves, Johnny calls Franklin on his cell and says, “You asked if I told you everything.”

            This is one in a sequences of scenes showing Black and White in collaboration, heading toward truth and reconciliation, as 61st Street is working toward its denouement on many levels simultaneously, suggesting the light of God working subtly now.

Johnny finally tells Franklin that he killed Jalil Watts over the music he was playing. Franklin comes to the church and accosts Johnny. “You killed Jalil Watts over a song? How old are you.”

            Johnny says, “Thirty-two. I don’t know what happened to me.”

            “America happened to you, boy.”

            The scene closes with Johnny looking at the video of him pummeling Jalil Watts to the sound of the rap song. Johnny sobs.

Brannigan meets Jessica by the Lake. He says, “You don’t come to see us anymore, but you go to see Logan in lockup? The visiting logs are public.”

            “What do you want?”

            He asks her not to do this. “We’re on the same side here. Now more than ever.”

            He explains, reciting the sequence of events after the morning after, concluding, “Johnny has to pay, like Derek Chauvin paid.” He wants her to testify. “We can put a dozen cops up on that stand, and we will, but none of us could hold a candle to you.”

            She reminds him that everything her husband knew about the department she knows too.

            He threatens her, saying she wouldn’t want her kids knowing that she was fucking their godfather with their dad barely cold in the ground, not even cold.

            “Are you blackmailing me?”

            He tries to convince her that Logan raped her without her knowing it. “He’s a subtle beast.” Then he says, “A little over two million dollars.”

            “What?”

            “What we’ll pay to see all your kids all the way through college and out the other side. Good kids like that. Worth every cent. Johnny Logan is a thug. He hates Black people and he hates women. A guy like that has to pay.”

Franklin and Nicole are talking through the chain that led to Tweet’s death. Big Phil is missing link. He overheard talk about Tweet and phoned it in to Brannigan. Before they’re done, they discuss her taking over the trial as first chair.

Big Phil is supposed to be training Joshua as a plumber during the day, but he thinks Joshua is still working for The Nation, so drops him off by the el tracks eachj day and pick him up at five. He’s at best an amateur plumber, so he’ll head home to visit his wife and kids.

Dante meets Lotty outside the prison; he’s being released. He immediately tells Dante that they’ve got to get that cop he was protecting before he messes up their deal with the police. “A cop get in the way of that he got to go. Am I wrong?”

            “We move different now, Lotty. It ain’t about the corners anymore. There’s a whole new world out here. Come on.” Gestures for him to get in the Range Rover, Illinois plate HUSTL.

            Lotty repeats, “He gotta go.” Dante stares him down.

            Joshua gets out of the front seat and gets in the back to let an angry Lotty in.

After Brannigan learns from Big Phil that Norma is pregnant, they take it to police chief Leonard who wants Phil to disappear and send her a postcard from Alaska or somewhere. Finally Leonard decides it’s beyond all our pay grades and he and Brannigan take the matter to the Black mayor (Anji White). She agrees. “Keep him in.”

Afger they leave, she calls in her assistant. “That didn’t happen. Those two were never in here. No diary. No electronic record, no trace.” The night el with its train music punctuates the scene.

Franklin visits Martha and offers her divorce papers. He tells her it’s the only way he can protect her and David. “The world needs to know we’re not together.” Her putting her signature on the papers is the next to last scene. The last is Lotty sneaking into Brother Richard’s church deep in the night.

Episode 6 is called “Argue the Facts.” Brother Richards is setting out the prayerbooks. Johnny is kneeled in prayer, crossing himself. Lotty is prowling shiftily through the church, looking left and right, carrying a gun. He opens the door to Johnny’s room and comes up behind him praying. The gun cocks, and Johnny turns around, eyes wide. Franklin enters the room, startling Lotty. He waves his arms, saying, “Don’t shoot. You shoot him you’ll never know.”

            “Know what?” Now Lotty screams “Know what?”

            Franklin has been listening to bug from Phil Robinson’s car, and he plays part of it for Lotty, revealing that Brannigan as a turncoat to The Nation. He asks Lotty what he is first, Nation or a Black man? Does he have loyalty to all brothers and sisters across America or to a select few selling junk on Cottage Grove?

            Lotty reluctantly leaves.

Norma sees Joshua hanging out on the corner with The Nation and realizes that he is not out being trained, as she thought, by her plumber beau. She calls Phil and asks him where he is. He says that he and Joshua are dealing with a blockage at Englewood High. Joshua’s installing an anti-siphon valve in the rest room.

            When Joshua gets home, Norma asks where Phil is. Joshua says he went to his place to get changed. She asks what he did. He says he was at Englewood High all day, learning to install an anti-siphon valve. She asks what he had for lunch. He says he doesn’t remember.

            “Maybe it was Lucky’s on Cottage Grove.”

            “What’s this?”

            “You tell me what this is, Joshua. What, Dante Blake had a blocked drain he needed you to fix?”

            She accuses him of lying, forcing Phil to cover for him. She tells him that lying won’t be permitted in this household. He needs to own his own shit. “Let me hear it. Let me hear it.”

            “He’s a cop.”

            “What are you talking about? Who?” She smacks him. “Who’s a cop, Joshua?”

            “Phil.”

            It takes her a while to absorb the information.“So you both knew and you didn’t tell me. I’m pregnant. I’m having this man’s baby. You knew this and didn’t tell me?” She’s talking to Franklin and Joshua together now.

            “Strategy.”

            “Strategy? Are you fucking kidding me? What is wrong with you, Franklin?”

            “Everything turns on this. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. It’s what we’re trying to change, Norma.”

            “This is me, Franklin. This is me!”

            “I need three days.”

            “How dare you make me a part of your strategy and not tell me? Do you know what that feels like?”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “The way he violated me, and you allowed him to do that.”

            “I got it right with Moses. We saved him, Norma. Three days. I’m begging you.”

            Phil calls. Her choice hanging in the balance, Franklin and Joshua staring at her. Then she indicates that she is going to give them the three days by explaining her long hesitation to Phil as nausea. He chuckles in relief and tells her “it’s normal, Norma.”

            Joshua and his mother close out an extended scene.

Brannigan comes upon Nicole helping tie Franklin’s shoe in the courthouse restaurant because he can’t bend over. In the shoe-related repartee that follows, he mentions that he got his own Doc Martens in Camden Town on a trip to London fifteen years ago. Small things turn big wants. It’s the “for want of a nail” fable. The kingdom was lost.

Prosecutor Pearson tells the jury that the police have changed and they won’t have it any more when a colleague (like the defendant) acts in such an appalling way. “George Floyd has made a difference.” She cites the accused’s brother officers all willing to testify against him as the camera cuts to Jessica in the audience. As Pearson calls Officer Logan a bad apple in the barrel, Jessica turns and leaves.

            During the break, Franklin says to her, “Pretty rarefied up there?”

            “What’s that?” Pearson asks.

            “The moral high ground. Not much oxygen for you folks who just discovered racism.”

            “Don’t tell me who I am and who I’m not. I’m comfortable with the moral map I live by.”

            Note again that it’s a Black man defending a formerly racist white cop and a White prosecutor defending the Black man the cop murdered.

            Franklin counters by asking the jury why Naimah Watts wasn’t on Miss Pearson’s list of witnesses. Then he explains. “If she thinks that this trial is about one individual, one cop, then she . . .  is . . . the problem.”

Norma decides to follow Phil’s truck to see where he goes after he drops Joshua off. They go under the el to more suburban neighborhood. She pulls in down the street and watches him visit his family and wife as his kids come running. She breaks into sobs.

The trial reopens with the hospital nurse who attended to Jalil Watts through his death on the stand. Pearson elicits the gory details. On cross-examination, the nurse asks Franklin if she can ask him a question.

            “Please, go ahead.”

            “Representing a monster like him, how do you look at yourself in the mirror?”

            Prosecutor Pearson glances at him with a confident smile.

            “By asking everyone else to look in the mirror with me.”

            The next witness is the White woman who called in the murder and then fled the scene. As Franklin cross-examines her, she is confused, asking, “Whose side are you on?”

            But she has raised an essential questions of the trial: who would do such a horrible thing to another human, and why do you say that you would have fled the scene like?

In a multi-layered dinner scene, Joshua and Norma watch Franklin fill Big Phil with misinformation for Brannigan. Norma pleads nausea, and Joshua pleads tiredness with a joke that sets Phil laughing, “Plumbing can be draining.” However, Phil gets a critical piece of information. When Franklin is leading Norma away, he reads Franklin’s medicine capsule with the name of his urologist.

Brannigan is on the stand the next day. His job is to skillfully and cautiously denigrate Logan. Pearson leads him incrementally to disclose with faux reluctance Logan’s affair with Jessica Rossi as Jessica watches. It turns out that Logan hadn’t told Franklin about the affair, and he is quite upset at him during the break. During the same break Chief Leonard asks Jessica why she gave Franklin the tape that cleared Moses. He threatens her. “We don’t want to stop supporting your family.”

With Brannigan still on the stand, Pearson, prompted by Phil Robinson’s spy work, not knowing that he is being fed misinformation, runs through Brannigan’s phone log.

            Based on Phil’s one big steal, cops grab Dr. Algren out of a garage and take him under the el by the river. They lead him to a cop car driven by Brannigan. Brannigan says, “Prescribed and proscribed. I always struggled with the difference, but I think I’ve got it now.” He explains. “If a doctor was confused about the difference, what would happen to him?”

            “What do you want?”

            “I always like a doctor who gets right down to it. How long does he have?”

            “Weeks not months.”

            “He doesn’t look as bad as that.”
            “That’s why he wanted the medication.”

            “You can go now.”

Brannigan immediately decides to get a friend, a black guy at a pizza place who acknowledges he likes playing with cops to post a video of Johnny Logan in another fight outside on the street, compromising juror 9 who claimed he had been hacked.

Judge Evans calls in Pearson, Logan, and Franklin and tells them that the jury has been compromised and they are looking at a mistrial. Franklin asks when the new trial will be. Evans says they’re looking at four months, probably six. Since Logan stands to lose the most from jurors seeing the video, Evans asks him if he wants a mistrial. He says he needs time to think about it. She wants them back in the morning with his decision.

            That night Franklin is sitting with Nicole who asks him to stop replaying the murder video and watch something lighter like Breaking Bad. But Franklin has found something impofgzng. Brannigan is watching the fight, wearing his Doc Martens.

            “Yes, Bingo.”

            “Brannigan was there,” she says in elated surprised

            “Got him,” Franklin says.

            A disguised Nicole delivers an envelope to the paper. It’s not a photograph of the boots. It’s a video of the murder. In the next Episode, prosector Pearson will show it to the jury as planned.

Johnny Logan opens Episode 7, “The Offer,” standing by the L:ake watching the early morning waves roll in as the gulls call out, then staring at a stray dog. His ominous, jagged music is getting softer, softened further by the wind. He calls Franklin. The trial will continue.

            Franklin begins his morning at the trial by a cross-examination of Officer Frater after Pearson has had her shot. He wants to get him to say that Brannigan had gone home already.

            Franklin uses a series of complicated testimonies involving Officer Gallagher and Tesla-owning bar owner Wayne to prove that someone is lying about how sober Gallagher, Frater, Brannigan, and rest were and how drunk Logan was. Logan ostensibly drank $337 worth of alcohol and still walked out alive. Franklin concludes for him that they were all lying. He proposes that they were all sober “the day Moses Johnson walked into the promised land” bt only Johnny Logan was shit-faced drunk in their new, improved police culture. He adds that he believes they were all there when Jalil was dying and left him die and then they did what they were taught to do, cover up for a fellow officer until they realized it wouldn’t work. “Then you cut him loose, and so there he is.” Pointing to Logan. “The poster boy for police brutality. Taking all the shots for a rotten, stinking racist pig of an organization.”

Johnny is getting discouraged that the trial is turning both sides against him. He is in such danger that Franklin trades cars with an old friend to smuggle Johnny away from the courthouse. They drive to across the street from Mohammed Ali’s old house, and Franklin tells his boxing-fan client about meeting Ali as a kid. He explains to Johnny that for them it’s “thrilla in Manilla,” rope-a-dope, early rounds. The prosecution is coming at them with everything they’ve got. Ali won his title back at 32 years of age by doing things his own way. Johnny mentions that the general story leaves out how Ali caught Forman” in the round three, again in round four, and again in round six too, “but it doesn’t fit with the story of the story.”

            “You didn’t notice. We caught ’em. They just don’t know it yet.”

            Johnny indicates he was blindsided by the jury being shown the video. Franklin didn’t warn him. “You had the only copy of that video,” Johnny says.

            “That’s right. We leaked it.”

            “Why?”

            “So the prosecution would see it and show it to the jury.”

            “The jury? The jury hates me. They think I’m a monster.”

            “Round seven.”

            “What?”

            “Forman caught Ali with a big right hand. He knew it was a good one. It felt like a good punch. And George knew what a good punch felt like and what it did to an opponent. So when Ali leaned and whispered to him, ‘Is that all you got, George?’ the big fella knew exactly what he was dealing with now. and it wasn’t normal. And the fight was over. Right there. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Dante explains to Norma that he’s going to exploit the hell out of Joshua, but for the right reasons, and all legit. “The Republic of the South Side of Chicago.”

            “And I grew up on 61st and Prairie.”

In the morning Franklin asks Judge Evans to recall one witness. Prosecutor Pearson is disgusted at this, but the judge will allow it as long as Franklin keeps it short and sweet.

            “Short and sweet. That’s me.”

            Back at the trial, Franklin re-shows the video of the murder of Jalil Watts and stops it at a point at which he can focus in on Brannigan’s Doc Martens boots.

            He has Brannigan step down from the witness stand. He is wearing the same boots.

            “How many other cops at the Low Bar that night were wearing vintage Doc Martins from a little store in Camden Town? Sit down, lieutenant.”

            After he sits, Franklin goes over the time stamps and asks whether Brannigan can be in two places at once or if he brought Gallagher and Frater and Chief Leonard down here to lie to the jury. 

The closing episode of 61st Street, “Judgement Day,” opens with Brannigan, having discovered where Franklin’s borrowed van is parked, pulls Logan out of it onto the ground and holds gun to his head. “The only reason I don’t pull the trigger is everyone would know it was me. Won’t be long now, though. It doesn’t need to be me. So many other guys willing to do the job.” As Johnny gets up, Brannigan turns and adds, “Somebody’s coming for you. And soon. Are you ready for that? Don’t look that way to me. Are you finally asking yourself the question ‘Who am I doing this for?’”

            “I looked up to you.”

            “You know who’s up next on the stand? Jessica Rossi. I wonder what she’s gonna say, how ugly that might get. Doesn’t have to happen. If you do the right thing.”

            “What’s your offer?”

            Then Brannigan goes to Franklin and, after a long interlude that circles through Dante making a deal with his wife Martha (“Ex-wife,” Franklin says), he concludes, “Talk to Johnny. Make his say yes.”

            “About what?”

            “He’ll tell you.”

            “And if he doesn’t say yes?”

            “Then whatever happens . . . is on you.”

            The reason for the offer is that the Mayor realizes, as she tells prosecutor Pearson that if “Logan goes on the stand and starts whistleblowing, I don’t know where it ends.”

            “I think you do know. It ends with you, Madame Mayor,” says Pearson, “and I think that’s why you’re calling me.”

            Franklin is talking to Johnny, but neither of them know what the offer is. Johnny isn’t interested. Franklin says, “You’ve come a long way, Johnny, but you haven’t answered the big question you’ve been asking yourself.”

            “Why I did what I did?”

            “You’re close, and I think you’re about to find out. If you don’t plead guilty. You step off now, you’ll. never know. Never.”

            Pearson enters and says, “I hear there’s an offer on the table.”

            Franklin: “What—it didn’t come from you?”

            Pearson: “It’s off the table now. And just so you know, it was never there.”

After a scene involving the developing relationship between Dante and Joshua, Jessica is on the stand, being questioned by prosecutor Pearson. Pearson asks how long after her husband’s death her affair with Johnny began.

            “Six days.” She describes how in the kitchen Johnny forced himself on her. “I tried to fight him off, but he wouldn’t stop. In my own home. With my children upstairs.”

            “Do you feel able to report what had happened?”

            “No.”

            “Can you tell us why not?”

            After a long pause, Jessica says, “Because it didn’t happen.”

            Pearson: “I’m sorry?”

            “I don’t expect any of you to understand.”

            Judge Evans: “I think you better try.”

            “You won’t understand because you don’t know what it’s like to have your partner die and you have nowhere to go to for help because the people who you are supposed to go to are using you.”

            Judge Evans: “Using you?”

            “Here she is, the grieving widow, the poor wife of the dead hero cop. They made me part of their story.”

            Judge Evans: “Wait. Hold on. Your testimony about the defendant, about what he did.”

            “It was me, it was him. We were both in pain. It just came out of horrible mess, that’s all. I just wanted someone to hold onto, and he was all there was.”

            Judge Evans: “He didn’t force himself on you?”

            “No.”

            “Then I have to ask you, why did you say he did?”

            “Because they want it to be a part of their story. And I can’t do that. I won’t do that anymore. My family will survive with their ‘help.’ You watch us.”

            Judge Evans: “When you say ‘they,” who do you mean?”

            “Why don’t we let Johnny tell you that?”

            But the trial is halted because the police have stolen Franklin’s medicine at the start of the day—he thinks he misplaced it—and he is having the horrible consequences that Dr. Algren warned about. He is paralyzed in a wheelchair. He asks Nicole to take over.

            Meanwhile a newspaper article has appeared linking alderwoman Martha and Dante, and the jury is bound to speculate. “Being told not to speculate is like being not to panic,” Nicole says. “People do just the opposite.”

            Judge Evan’s is unmoved.

            “Then we’ll call the witness who can end all speculation.”

            “I must tell you, Miss Carter, that calling your lead counsel’s wife to testify would be borderline unethical.”

            “Martha? I didn’t mean Martha?” She meant Dante.

            Meanwhile Norma is convincing a reluctant Phil Robinson to accompany her to Courtroom 1.

Dante testifying allows him to put his entire vision before the court. He vies with prosecutor Pearson with candor and clarity, showing how biased and prejudiced she actually is. She implies that his working getting out the Black vote is illegal even though she doesn’t realize that is what she is saying. In the process, Dante gets rebuked for by Judge Evans for calling her “Your Holiness.”.

            At one point, Dante says that he gave 5% of his profits too to a great organization in his previous career.

            “What charity was that?” asks Pearson.

            “Chicago Police Department. Also known as cops making money off me in exchange for letting me do what I used to do. Protection money, I call it. Or maybe you call it ‘legitimate business,’ Miss Prosecutor?”

            “Why would we believe that?”

            He stares at Brannigan. “Ask him. He right there.” Then Dante says that at least he’s seen the error of his ways and his work now is to get fools like him to follow him out of the darkness into righteousness. “Are we done here? Or do y’all need some more?”

            Pearson then says that Dante’s people took Leon Perkins, street name Twitch, out because he was snitching. “You people ended his life by sticking a big dirty overdose needle in his arm.”

            “You go it. You got that right. Wrong gang, though.”

            “And you’re going to tell us the name of the right gang?”

            “The gang you looking for is called CPD.”

            Immediately Evans says that all this is unsubstantiated, none of this is corroborated and Pearson asks that the testimony be struck from the record. 

            Dante: “He here now,” says as the door opens to admit another Black man. It’s a fourth police officer who was standing to the side during the execution of Leon Perkins. “I was there with Frater, Gallagher, Brannigan. They held him down. Stuck that boy with a needle. And watched him die.”

            Nicole: “And you?”

            “Yeah. I put the used syringe in his hand. To make it look like he was just another young Black life lost to drugs. So nobody would look any further. And nobody did.”

            “Until now.”

            “Until now.”

            Pearson on reexamination: “Why would they do this?”

            “Because he was two-timing us.”

            “With who?”

            “Franklin Roberts.”

            “How would you know that? You can’t know that.”

            Franklin: “We had it tested.”

            Once Big Phil is on the stand. Nicole slowly and suspensefully brings it around to “And how that sit with your other family, your wife and your two kids.”

            “What kind of question is that?”

            “Oh. You want another question. We can try another question. How about this one? Are you a police officer.”

            “C’mon on. No. No. What. Are you crazy? What?”

            Franklin lifts his recorder and plays some of the wire picked up from Office Robinson.

            Nicole: “Who was that? We can come back to that question.”

            Franklin struggles to his feet and whispers to Norma. Then he asks, “Are you spying on Norma Johnson?”

            “Yeah.”

            “You started a relationship with her in order to report to your boss what she’s been telling you.”

            “Yeah.”

            “First with Moses. And with Johnny.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Are you fucking the woman you’re spying on?”
            Silence. Murmurs in the audience.

            “Answer the question or are you too much of a coward?”

            He doesn’t answer.

            “Is Norma Johnson pregnant.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Are you the father?”

            “Yes.”

            “Who’s your boss.”

            No answer.

            “Maybe we can help with that.” He plays more of the recording with the “Yeah, uh Brannigan” in Phil’s voice. “Is that the same person you talked to about Tweet?”

            No answer.

            “Tweet was killed by the cops ’cause he was talking to me. I told Norma. Norma told you. Follow the thread. Who did you tell?”

            “Brannigan. Lieutenant Brannigan.”

            “The question Miss Carter said we’d come back to, let’s do that now. Who was on the wire with Brannigan? Is it a lying, misogynistic, sociopathic, evil apology for a human being?”

            In a private session afterwards, Pearson looks at Brannigan, Chief Evans standing behind him, “Nothing to say?”

            “Undercover cops are a fact of life. They do a great job.”

            Pearson: “Oh, shut up!” She takes out her cell phone and calls the Mayor. “I’m taking this to the top.”

            She doesn’t answer. Pearson: “She knows?”

            Brannigan: “We’re the stitching, Kim.”

            “Stitching?”

            “Holding the whole thing together. And you’re a part of that. One stitch comes free and the whole thing unravels. We can’t have that.”

Now Johnny Logan is on the stand and takes the oath with the Bible. Franklin plays Jalil Watt’s rap song and asks Johnny how it makes him feel.

            “Angry.”

            “Why?”

            “Because it was like he was taunting me. Us.”

            “Us?”

            “My family. Cops. Michael.”

            “So what are the words that are in your head?”

            “I don’t remember.”

            “Sure you do. The nigga was taunting you with his music, with the car, with the way he was looking at you?”

            “Yes.”

            “How did that make you feel?”

            “Angry. Really angry.”

            “How dare he? On that night? With your partner not even cold in the ground? So what did you do?”

            “I told him to stop.”

            “Did he do that?”

            “No.”

            “Why should he?”

            “Why should— Could we turn this down?” But Franklin wants it to keep playing to bring him back to the moment and the feeling—courtroom gestalt therapy.

            “Why should he?”

            “Please, Jesus.”

            “What did you do?”

            “A terrible thing.”

            “What did you do, Johnny?”

            “I hit him.” Franklin finally stops the rap music.

            “Why?”

            “I just did.”

            “No, no, no, no, no. You gotta do better than that. You hit him.”

            “Because I was angry. I hit him again. With my gun. With the butt of my gun.”

            “And again?”

            “Yes.”

            He repeats this q&a three more times.

            “You were way past angry. You hated him.”

            “Yes,”

            “This person you never met before taunting you with this damn song! You were angry, frightened to the core.”

            “Yes. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.”

            “Why did you kill Jalil Watts?”

            “Because I could.” He sobs and shakes as the courtroom falls silent. Franklin’s primal scream is over.

            “Who told you you could do that?”

            “I’m sorry. What?

            “Who told you it was okay to beat a stranger to death by hitting him in the heat with the butt of your gun? Who told you, Johnny? Who told you it was okay to kill us.”

            “My people. My dad. All my life.”

            “Who is responsible for the death of Jalil Watts? Is it you?”

            “Yes, it’s me.”

            “Who else? What else? Can you see now? Do you see now, Johnny?”

Franklin begins his address to the jury. “The state chose to try Johnny Logan for the murder of Jalil Watts. Not wrong to do that. But it is the most comfortable, least inquiring, least honest way to go. People look at Johnny Logan and they see evil. And by seeing evil, they avoid talking about how he got like that. All nature. no nurture. How you like your racism to be. And by calling him bad, they avoid looking at themselves and asking what role they played in how he got like that. Johnny Logan is other. Like Black people are other.”

            He concludes his closing argument with: “And here’s the really hard part. And I want you all to look me in the eye, all twelve of you when I say this. I want you all to find Johnny Logan not guilty. No, don’t look away, please. Stay with me, please. I want you to find him not guilty because all of you are culpable.” He turns to face the court. “All of you are culpable. You don’t get to walk away from this horrific problem by condemning one man. Do you feel me? I said, ‘Do you feel me?’”

The jurors return. They haven’t reached a verdict. “We’re split 6-6.”

            Judge Evans: “I have to ask. Is there a realistic chance of you reaching a unanimous verdict?”

            “No. None.”

            Judge Evans: “I’m going to have to discharge this jury. Miss Pearson.”

            Prosecutor Pearson: “This is the most important prosecution in this country in my lifetime. Public interest demands that there be a re-trial, which is what I’ll start work preparing tomorrow.”

            “Presumably you’d be in a position to begin very soon?”

            “No.”

            “I’m sorry?”

            “I said no.”

            “Why not. The same witnesses. Same issues.”

            “Partly.”

            “You’re going to have to explain yourself, counselor.”

            “I’ve been listening to my opponent. And I’ve been listening to and learning about my witnesses, who they are and who I am. And I’ve seen what needs to happen. I have the great good fortune to be in a position to make it happen. There will be a new trial. Johnny Logan will be indicted again for the murder of Jalil Watts.”

            “Then there’s no need for a new indictment.”

            “I think there is.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            ”Alongside Johnny Logan on that indictment, there’ll be some other names.”

            Pearson’s words change to a voiceover as sheriffs start appearing at the Low Bar to arrest cops. The film shows the startled outrage of each of them.

            “Office James Frater, officer Marty Gallagher, the registered owner of the Low Bar, Wayne Morris, Philip Robinson, Deputy Superintendent Rick Leonard, the Mayor of Chicago, Lieutenant Francis Brannigan.         

            Brannigan: “What! Arrest me? Are you kidding me? I served this city for 23 years. Get your hands off of me. I protected you. I protected all of you. From murderers, rapists, gangbangers. You think Chicago’s bad now? You need guys like me putting on the badge! You picked the wrong cop, Franklin Roberts!”

            Pearson: “This is more than a murder trial now. This new trial is what this trial should have been about from the start. The state prosecuting the whole barrel of bad apples . . . and the barrel itself. We owe a debt of gratitude to one man.” People in the audience rise one by one. Franklin leaves the courthouse with gospel music on the sound track. He won’t live to see the new trial. Or the Republic of South Chicago, as he walks over Dante’s arid field. In the final shot, the El train passes behind him, signet of 61st Street.