Derrick Kent Franklin

Derrick Kent Franklin was 28 years old, a Black man from Baltimore, Maryland, and on March 31, 2009, his life was taken on the 3800 block of Lyndale Avenue. However the moments unfolded—whether in a sudden burst of chaos or in a slow, creeping sense that something was wrong—what’s left in the record is the cruel simplicity of it: a name, a date, a block, and the fact that he didn’t make it home.

It’s hard to sit with how little is said afterward, because silence can feel like a ...