“Not another word, Mr. Avery!” erupts Judge Elder. “Against my instincts, I have been patient with you, but you just walked up to the precipice of a mistrial. And what’s worse, you know it.”

Quentin’s embarrassment looks genuine enough, like that of an elderly man who momentarily forgot he was in church and started discussing sexual intercourse. But I’m not buying it, and neither is Joe Elder. Quentin was purposefully leading his jury to the prosecutor’s worst nightmare: jury nullification. Jury nullification occurs when a jury disregards all instructions and votes with what some people call its “collective conscience,” but which could more accurately be described as its collective gut instinct. Less charitable critics would call it “frontier justice.”

In a bass voice that could have come from Zeus on Olympus, Judge Elder says, “Mr. Avery—you have been warned.”

“My sincere apologies, Your Honor.” Quentin looks back at the jury. “Let’s return to those two cynical questions I mentioned for a moment. First: Did the victim need killing? Let’s say our murder victim was a foulmouthed, hyena-headed, belly-dragging baboon who beat his wife, cuckolded his neighbors, and abused his children. Everybody who knew him agreed that the world was better off without him in it. So . . . did he need killing? Yes.”

A white man in the jury actually laughs, earning a baleful glare from Judge Elder. I’m sure Shad has been wanting to shout in protest throughout Quentin’s open, but since he liberally abused the rules himself, he hasn’t got much of a foundation for it.

“Question two,” Quentin pushes on. “Did the right person do the killing? Well, if the killer was the victim’s battered wife, his abused son, or his cuckolded neighbor, the answer is probably yes again. And under those circumstances, it’s doubtful that any jury would vote to convict the killer, no matter what instructions the judge gave them. And the DA knows that. So, what happens? He finds a way to avoid going to trial.

“But let’s look at a different set of circumstances. What if the victim was an elderly black woman with terminal cancer? A woman beyond all hope, suffering agonizing torment, and ready to leave this world of toil and tears? Question one: Did the victim need killing? Well, according to the State, the victim herself believed she did. The assisted-suicide pact proves that. What about question two? Did the right person do the killing? If the State is to be believed, the man who took the victim’s life was her personal physician and former lover, a man beloved by the community and trusted by thousands of patients. Now, if that man did the killing, I’d say that by the standards of the Unwritten Law, he was the right man for the job.”