It was a drug deal gone bad. Two white men from the suburbs drive to Harlem one night to buy cocaine. There’s a hassle, a shot, and one of them ends up dead. The judge in the state criminal court in Lower Manhattan explains that much, and the voir dire (jury selection) begins with about forty of us sitting in the jury box. One by one, we answer the judge’s list of questions, then the prosecutor’s questions. But the defense lawyer wants our answers in unison.

“You don’t judge someone guilty because of the color of his skin, do you?” he calls out. A pause. We’re puzzled about how to proceed, but by the next question, we’ve got the hang of it. “You don’t think someone is a murderer just because he sells drugs?” “No,” we sing in unison. A few more rounds, and he’s finished. I look at the defendant and wonder if he can get a new lawyer.

The jury system, Tocqueville wrote, “should be regarded as a free school which is always open and in which each juror learns hi...

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