A Puerto Rican youth is on trial for murder, accused of knifing his
father to death. The twelve jurors retire to the jury room, having been
admonished that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt. Eleven of the jurors vote for conviction, each for
reasons of his own. The sole holdout is Juror #8, played by
Henry Fonda. As Fonda persuades the weary jurors to re-examine the evidence, we learn the backstory of each man. Juror #3 (
Lee J. Cobb), a bullying self-made man, has estranged himself from his own son. Juror #7 (
Jack Warden) has an ingrained mistrust of foreigners; so, to a lesser extent, does Juror #6 (
Edward Binns). Jurors #10 (
Ed Begley) and #11 (
George Voskovec), so certain of the infallibility of the Law, assume that if the boy was arrested, he must be guilty.
Juror #4 (
E.G. Marshall) is an advocate of dispassionate deductive reasoning. Juror #5 (
Jack Klugman), like the defendant a product of "the streets," hopes that his guilty vote will distance himself from his past. Juror #12 (
Robert Webber), an advertising man, doesn't understand anything that he can't package and market. And Jurors #1 (
Martin Balsam), #2 (
John Fiedler) and #9 (
Joseph Sweeney),
anxious not to make waves, "go with the flow." The excruciatingly hot
day drags into an even hotter night; still, Fonda chips away at the
guilty verdict, insisting that his fellow jurors bear in mind those
words "reasonable doubt."
