A teenage slum boy is accused of murdering his father. The hearings in the court are over. The judge leaves the decision to a panel of 12 jurors. The decision is to conclude guilty or not guilty. A ‘guilty verdict’ would result in a death sentence for the murderer. Whatever the decision is, it must be a unanimous decision by all 12 jurors. All the 12 jurors gather in a room to discuss and conclude their verdict on the case. It looks very much like a formality. They expect that this meeting would not take much time as the case is very clear. All evidence and witnesses are pointing towards one conclusion. It appears that the boy is guilty.

As a matter of procedure, they begin the proceedings by a vote to just reconfirm that they all agree about the guilty verdict. When the voting happens, by voice and by raise of hands, all but one vote guilty. That’s 11 voting guilty and 1 voting not guilty. As the verdict has to be unanimous, they all try to achieve that by further discussion. The whole movie is about how the jury arrives at an unanimous verdict. If you think that the 11 jurors would try and convince that one dissenting juror to arrive at a unanimous decision, read on.

The beauty is, it is not the 1 man (juror #8) that changes his vote to guilty, it is the other 11 men who finally change their vote to not guilty. Fantastic isn’t it? You would imagine that it must be easy for the 11 men to convince the 1 man. And that’s how their discussion starts. The one man who votes not guilty is very clear about his unclarity. He says that he is not sure if the accused is guilty or not guilty. The eviences and witness do not convince him either ways. He thinks that the benefit of doubt should go to the accused. They all think that they can convince this one man and just have this whole discussion finished soon. What happens is, that one man’s logic and reasoning makes everyone to reconsider their rationale and subsequently their decisions.

First of all, it’s a great story for a play. This movie was based on a story which made a very successful play. There are only three shooting locations in the movie. One is, the court. Two is, the juror’s meeting room. Three is, the open stairs that lead up to the court. The court scenes are for a few minutes. And the camera shot from the open stairs is for a few seconds. About 95% of the movie happens in the juror’s meeting room. It is a dimly lit small room which cannot hold more than a dozen people. The movie is all about the conversations, discussions and arguments among the jury. That also means that the camera work has to be fantastic. All that the camera would be focusing more often is faces of various jurors and the sometimes the group discussion.

In a matter of few minutes into the movie, we just realise that all these 12 people are 12 entirely different characters. They have different personalities coming from different socio-economic-cultural backgrounds. Until this one juror starts speaking, the other jurors wouldn’t even have thought that there is a need to discuss this case. Each one has their own reasons to have come to the ‘guilty’ conclusion. As the movie goes you see that those reasons range from their own bias, beliefs, prejudices and even negligence. Juror#8 strongly believes that the evidences and witnesses are not good enough to convict this boy and punish him with an electric chair death. He has no problem in being unpopular. He knows that he is the only man out of the twelve who has a different opinion but bravely and honestly and politely he makes his points and refuses to be knocked down by anything other than sound logic and proof.

That one juror (juror#8) does not say that the boy is not guilty. All that he says is that he does not think there is enough evidence to call him guilty. The underlying principle of that juror’s argument is that even criminals can go unpunished but innocents should be punished. Yes, that’s a Gandhian principle as we know. He says that he does not have conclusive proof or arguments to convince himself to say that the boy is guilty. He goes to prove how the witnesses and evidences are not good enough to give someone a death sentence.

During the process of the discussion, the members of the jury, one by one, not only admit they were wrong but also realise why they had come to that hasty conclusion. It ranges from bias to gross negligence to utter disregard to the life of accused individual. Not many of the jurors actually care too much about the accused boy. Deep in their hearts they think that it’s okay even if they’re wrong about their verdict. So what if the world has one slum boy less? The same bunch of jurors would have handled this verdict lot differently if the accused was say, a senator. Whereas the juror #8 looks at this case objectively and goes by one of the important premises of the justice system that all are equal in the eyes of law. As the discussion goes on, voting is taken at various intervals to see where the jury stands. With every voting opportunity, we see that juror #8 has more and more people supporting him and starting vote no guilty. Some of them even openly admit they were wrong and more importantly, why they went wrong.

I was particularly impressed with the way the character of the juror #8 is depicted. It is very easy to show him as the hero, the saviour. But his character stays true all through the movie. He does feel proud that he convinces people. He does not even feel happy. He goes on and on until there is a unanimous not guilty verdict. He does not count his conquests because he does not think so. At the end of the discussion, he only feels no sense of satisfaction that justice is delivered. When that is achieved, they all leave the room and so does he. Juror #8 was just one of the juror who thinks that he must perform his duties and responsbilities as a juror with diligence and principles. He does not think he is a hero or something by convincing everyone around the table. He just thinks that it’s just the part of the process to achieve the group objective of unanimous verdict.

Juror#8 does not know the accused personally. But still that does not stop him from arguing for him passionately for the sake of justice. It is quite natural to think that whatever one does a result or a fruit is expected, sometimes we can’t be patient for the fruit. In this case, the whole discussion that happens inside the room is not known to anyone outside the room. The boy who finally gets released does not even know that it was only juror#8 stood between him and the electric chair death. After the jury’s verdict, they all go back to their own lives. The fantastic efforts of Juror#8 is undocumented and he gets no credit for that. The thing is he does not expect any credit for that because as far as he is concerned he has to do justice to his role as a juror, without caring about whether he gets the publicity for that or not. Juror#8 is one of the most inspiring characters I have even seen in movies. The reason why I keep calling him juror#8 is because the names of the jurors are not mentioned in the movie!

If we start analysing the case in the movie to conclude if the arguments are valid or if the boy is really guilty, we’d have lost whole point of the movie. It’s not about the case. The witnesses and evidences are for the jurors and not for us who are watching the movie. For us, what we need to appreciate is the courage of the one juror, the courage of the other jurors to change their original verdict, the courage of the other jurors to admit why they went wrong, the passion of the juror #8, the noble thought and efforts of the juror#8 which does not expect any personal gain. So, please don’t go analysing the case but just stick to how the discussion evolves and concludes.

This movie was released in 1957. This is a black and white movie that runs for 96 minutes. If you have not watched this movie yet, tonight is a good time. All I can say is, they don’t make movies like this anymore!