Pools for Juries, Journalists; King Tides

Sunday Reads – Nov. 7, 2021

We’re making the rounds of news from the week — whew! There’s plenty to read and share, so let’s get started…wait…did you set your clock back?

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Murder trial brings international scrutiny

Jury selection ended and we heard opening arguments this week in the trial of three white men accused of killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery while he was out jogging in their neighborhood. Racial considerations have been on the table from the first day through questions to potential jurors and motions by the defense attorneys and prosecutor. A jury of 11 white residents and 1 Black was seated in a flurry of defense moves the judge even called into question as discriminatory. However, Judge Tim Walmsley acknowledged that current law restricted his ability to do anything about it. The jury’s racial disparity sparked a number of stories discussing “the Old South,” but others were clear that racism has played a role in trials across the country.

The press gaggle in Brunswick is so large that it’s taken over Veterans Park across the street from the Glynn County Courthouse. And, most of the broadcast and print journalists you’ll see reporting from there don’t ever go in the courthouse. They watch the court video feeds and receive notes from a pool reporter inside the courtroom. The Current’s editor in chief, Margaret Coker, is a member of the pool of designated reporters who rotate days covering the trial inside the Glynn County Courthouse. The pool reporter takes notes each day and shares them among news organizations covering the trial. Even without Covid-era restrictions, the courtroom is simply too small to accommodate all the media workers and family members who need to observe. Designating a pool spot is a common way to preserve the need to have a journalist as an impartial observer for a trial while freeing seats for citizens, as well.

While The Current has access to daily reports, we’re approaching coverage a little differently. You’ll see links to updates on our designated Arbery case web page each day from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other spots. On that one-stop page, you’ll also find a live feed to the courtroom, a timeline of events, stories that give context and background from The Current and many other outlets. We update the report often, featuring journalism from a wide range of national and international media outlets. If you want to see how news organizations around the country and internationally are reporting the same trial with the same basic information, bookmark this page to visit each day.

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It’s getting deep out there

With wind from an offshore storm and a king tide, the last few days have given us a preview of what sea-level rise fueled by climate change will mean to our coast soon. We knew it would be an interesting few days, so we sent a drone up Friday at high tide for a look at what everyday tides might look like soon. We went to the spot that shows the rise clearly and where money has already been spent to counter the increased water levels — U.S. 80 between Bull River and Fort Pulaski. More than $100 million in taxpayer money was set aside a few years ago to lift that crucial road as much as 8 inches higher, so it’s an indicator for what it could cost for all crucial low-lying arteries, starting with the F.J. Torras Causeway in Glynn County, for example. It was inundated in places on Friday, according to a Glynn Emergency Management official. Now that the U.S. House and Senate have passed the infrastructure bill, it makes you wonder how far the bill’s $110 billion to repair and replace aging roads and bridges will go and how much more will be required to manage the predictable effects of rising seas in Coastal Georgia.

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Quick stop: We need your support

This week, we’ve opened our year-end NewsMatch campaign and you can help! NewsMatch is an industry-wide movement to sustain nonprofit journalism like ours through matching gifts on the local and national level. Since 2016, NewsMatch has raised more than $150 million toward this goal. The impact is huge.

Through Dec. 31, NewsMatch will match your new monthly donation 12 times or double your one-time gift, all up to $1,000. That means that, through NewsMatch, we can earn up to $10,000.

Your support will help us continue to produce unique, in-depth journalism for Coastal Georgia. If you value the critical work we do, please give today to double the support you can provide.

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Redistricting: New map, bad grade

There’ve been a multitude of celebrations for the World Series champions Atlanta Braves, but even with all the noise outside, the legislature opened a special session and dug into the decennial reapportionment process. A World Series banner may be good for a year, but new voting districts will be with us for a decade. The Georgia Senate Reapportionment Committee passed its new map late Friday with votes along party lines, sending it to the whole Senate, which also carries a Republican majority. The move came after a contentious hearing on Thursday where members of the public and Democrat House members voiced anger over a lack of transparency and time for public comment on the draft map.

Work on the state House map continues. While some of the splintered cities and counties may become whole districts as part of the decennial reapportionment process, the Brunswick News reports that Glynn County may be split and represented by 3 state house representatives instead of 2. All of Coastal Georgia would have 11 voices in the House. More populous Chatham could have 6 House members with districts all or partially in the county. Each Georgia House member would represent from just over 45,000 residents to just over 49,000. State Senate districts range from 189,000 constituents each to 192,000. See all the draft maps here.

How do the drafts stack up to the data models from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Fair Districts GA and the Princeton Gerrymandering Project? They give the proposed Congressional map gets a B grade and observe that the map leaves no competitive districts. The current state House version also gets a B. And the speedy Senate map? It gets an F. The groups’ computers tested a million versions of the maps once the Census numbers were released, and the ratings are based on fairness benchmarks that would leave up to 7 competitive districts and 16 Black majority voting districts. The Senate draft leaves 1 competitive and 13 Black majority districts.

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Covid — it’s not going anywhere

Even with all the other news we note, Covid still dominates decisions, travel and daily lives like nothing else. There was good news this week in the form of vaccination approval for children ages 5-11. Teachers, students and their family members with health conditions that turn Covid exposure into a potential death sentence will feel safer every day, and that’s the goal. Cases of Covid for children in Georgia falling slowly, but they remain around 12% for kids ages 5 to 17 who are tested. Cases for people ages 18-22 remain at more than 20%.

The battle over vaccine mandates continues: Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr filed a second lawsuit Friday against the federal government that takes issue with the vaccine-or-testing mandates for federal contractors and businesses that employ more than 100 people. The lawsuits say the mandates endanger businesses because workers would rather quit than be vaccinated and that the order penalizes businesses that want to allow employees personal freedoms. A judge in Maine already allowed the mandates there, ruling against similar challenges. The Biden Administration says the mandates will spur the economy by making workplaces safer. Saturday, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge halted the mandate order and wants briefs by Monday from the government.

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Your second cup

In recent years, Georgia has landed in the basement of health care and health care access rankings across many areas, including mental illness. It was a topic of discussion and some funding in the state legislature, but the rankings remain some of the lowest in the country. Concurrently, discussions about a re-evaluation of policing methods and needs permeate news feeds — including The Current’s. In rural Georgia, Georgia Health News writes about the huge difference a week of Crisis Intervention Training can make for a patrol officer, the department and the community. The class, designed to help officers deal with people who are in mental distress, helps them work through myriad options to de-escalate a threatening situation.

Enjoy.

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