On the hottest day of the year, 12 men on a jury were faced to decide the fate of an 18 year old boy who was accused his killing father. From the start, all evidence showed that he was guilty of the crime. One man, juror 8, decided to give the boy a chance because he had reasonable doubt.
As he began to explain his point of view, a few men got fed up with his nonsense. He was saying that he didn’t know what happened, but was not completely confident with the decision to send the boy to the electric chair. The others felt differently and felt as if he was wasting their time. In consideration of the others and their want to make a decision, he made a deal that if anyone other than him votes not guilty they will stay, otherwise they will find the boy guilty. They took a vote and juror 9 voted not guilty as well.
This outraged the other jurors especially jurors 3 and 10. These jurors would not want to listen and would yell over every point against their thoughts. They would yell things to hurt peoples feeling and make them feel intimidated or dumb for thinking differently from them. Through the process, Juror 8 was able to keep his cool and focus on why he and the men were there. Also as the discussions went on it seemed like he had a growing desire to make everyone vote the boy not guilty.
One of the points that he brought up was the buying of the knife. During the trial it was said that the knife was a one of a kind and that there was no other like it. Juror 8 asked to see the knife to the crime. When it was brought in everybody was saying that there could not be any knife like it, and this was when Juror 8 brought out the same knife and stuck it in the table next to the murder weapon. This caused a scene with the men gathered around in disbelief. All the men were asking questions, but in the end only one man changed his vote to not guilty.
Part of the story was that during the killing an El Train passed by the apartment. Also, an old man was a witness and said that he heard the boy scream, “I’m gonna kill you!”, and heard a body hit the floor. Juror 8’s argument was that if the train was going by there would be no way that the man would have been able to hear this. Again, in response to this, many men were shouting and acting out.
With these arguments and many more that the boy was innocent, there were also some about him being guilty. The man who believed this just thought the fact of the old lady seeing the boy stab his father was disputable. This brought up a great debate when juror number 9 and old man questioned this theory.
He remembered seeing that the old lady had the dots on the side of her nose that people get from glasses. Then juror number 4, who wore glasses was asked if he wears glasses to bed. He said that nobody ever does. To this a conclusion was made that the old lady just waking up and gazing out the window could not have seen the clear image of the boy killing his father.
This was the final argument made that made everyone have reasonable doubt that the boy committed the murder. After everyone let out there strong, powerful emotions, the room was dismissed and the decision made was that the boy was not guilty.
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