Shad’s eyes were on my father as he said the last sentence, but now he shifts his gaze to Quentin.

“Ladies and gentlemen, when my learned opponent gave his opening remarks, he spoke to you about something called the Unwritten Law. He described it as what happens when a jury, for some compelling reason, decides to set aside the rules—the law—and vote what it feels in its collective gut. As you all know now, Mr. Avery has a silver tongue, and he made this phenomenon—known as jury nullification—sound downright noble. Like a vote for conscience, if you will. Like a jury being brave, instead of kowtowing to whatever rules some lazy, cigar-chomping legislators wrote over in Jackson. But I’m afraid that’s not the case.

“When Mr. Avery characterized jury nullification as something noble, he was cleverly trying to provide justification for you to set aside the law, and the judge’s instructions, and vote in defiance of the evidence. What Mr. Avery was really telling you was, ‘If you think Dr. Cage is a fine old fellow, no matter how incriminating the evidence against him might be, just vote your heart. You can get a good night’s sleep afterward, because there’s plenty of precedent for it. Why, you’re showing moral courage by doing it.’”

Shad raises his hands, palms outward, like a man showing he has no aggressive intent, but also no choice about what he is about to do. “But there’s a simple corrective for that. Let me give you a little legal history.”

Walking slowly between the jury box and the bar, he speaks, gathering power. “Do you know the most common situation in which juries fell back on the so-called Unwritten Law? When a man came home and found his wife in bed with another man and killed one or both of them. In those cases, no matter what the law said, a jury would sometimes acquit the husband. But let me tell you the type of case in which juries historically resorted to the Unwritten Law in our state. You might be surprised, after how fine a practice Mr. Avery made it sound. It wasn’t cases of assisted suicide. No, it was cases like the Neshoba County trial of the Klansmen who murdered Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in 1964. It was cases like the one in which the killers of Emmett Till were set free in Money, Mississippi, after one of the most gruesome murders in our state’s history. When white juries set aside the law and ignored overwhelming evidence in order to free white men who had lynched African-Americans, they were falling back on the Unwritten Law that Mr. Avery spoke reverently about.”

This time when Shad falls silent, a vapor trail of righteous indignation hangs in the room. Each name he mentioned is a talisman, with positive and negative power depending on the race and politics of the listener.