Manhattan public defender Eric Burse remembers the moment a panel of roughly 70 potential jurors filed into a criminal courtroom at 100 Centre St. in Lower Manhattan. He scanned the group quickly seconds before they’d be sworn in.
What he saw stopped him cold.
“There didn’t appear to be a single Black juror in the room,” Burse said. “My client was Black, and we were about to start picking a jury. It’s an extremely uncomfortable position. And it absolutely still happens, in 2025, in Manhattan.”…