Convicted

Earlier this year I wrote a long magazine story about four African-American drug dealers from West Baltimore--essentially, the real-life guys from The Wire--who, after being arrested and indicted on a raft of federal murder, drugs, weapons, and conspiracy charges, suddenly began using a bizzare constitutional fundamentalist defense that has origins among white supremacist militia crazy people. When the story was published, they hadn't actually gone to trial yet; I just assumed they would be convicted since their defense amounts to legal gibberish. Yesterday that's exactly what happened; all four were convicted on most of the charges, three of them for first-degree murder.