There were a lot of varied emotions portrayed in this movie “12 Angry Men”. These emotions were portrayed throughout the entire movie, from the very beginning of the movie to the very last scene of the movie. The Jurors discussions started out with juror #1 took charge to set the rules as to how they were going to vote and the order in which they were even going to be seated to the order in which they were going to take turns in speaking. From this setup the juror #1 encourage a sort of democratic style of leadership by encouraging the other to voice out what they were thinking and think might work better.
It seems all the jurors were in some sort of hurry to cast their vote so they can be done with that and get to a more important business. All the jurors except juror #8 who cast his first vote by not just basing his decision on only the facts that were presented to them in the court room. All the others had their mind made up without much thought to how substantial the evidence presented were.
It was because of the boldness of juror #8 that logical reasoning was applied to come to the final unanimous NOT GUILTY verdict by the jurors. It is sad to say if juror #8 was not part of this juror group there will not have been any other form of deliberation in favor of the young boy.
I am not sure how the deliberation would have gone had it been a different crowd as the jurors for this case, in terms of gender, social class, race and marital status. Would it have been different? Maybe or maybe not. What I am sure of is that all it took was one bold and willing juror to make the difference from what started out as 11:1 in favor of the boy being guilty to 0:12 in favor of the boy not being guilty. In my opinion there were 2 leaders in this jurors. The one who led them to the best logical reasoning decision and the one who made sure some rules were in place.
The jury speaking rules at the beginning, was demonstrated by the foreman leading the deliberations and every juror taking turns to speak. The foreman directed the speaking by deciding to take an initial jury verdict vote. The jury quickly divided, forming a “guilty” versus “not-guilty” factions with some of the outspoken jurors taking the positions of unofficial faction leaders and dominating the speaking. The jurors, often, the leaders of the “guilty” faction frequently, didn’t comply with the speaking rules. This faction mostly dominated the deliberations, frequently swaying the discussion to issues not relevant to the evidences and facts of the case. The foreman and the leader of the “not-guilty” faction generally had the difficult task of bringing the deliberations back to legally relevant issues relating to the case, such as evidences requisitions, analysis of evidence, witness, and references to the judge’s instructions. The decision-making rules initially tended towards a “verdict-driven” jury. Since the deliberation started with the foreman calling for the initial count of the individual jury verdict decision, the deliberation can be classified as having a verdict-driven decision making rule. These verdict-driven rules lead to an early initial majority for the “guilty” faction. Although, the conviction and persuasiveness of the “lone juror” ultimately had the ability to lead the deliberations back to an “evidence-driven jury” that eventually lead to the non-guilty verdict. Also, reasoning and evidence played a major role in both the initial and final jury verdicts. The jury did not get the whole picture of the evidences relating to the case. In addition, evidences were piecemealed and fragmented, for example, the persecutor presented a knife, which did not have the defendant fingerprints, in addition to jury being lead to believe, that there was no similar knife in existence. Each juror relied on the facts as presented by the witnesses, depending on their personal perceptions, reasoning abilities or biases. The group saw the “lone juror” who advocated for an evidence-driven decision as a non-conformist. The emotion and reasoning of the jury was ultimately swayed from guilty to not guilty, due to the conviction and persuasiveness of the “lone juror.”
This jury displayed intense emotional responses, as a group and individually as expected of any diverse group. Each juror individually had their own conviction as to which verdict they supported. Although, some jurors tried hiding behind other facades, including outside commitments such as, presenting a “football game” as the reason they want a quick verdict, instead of facing the fact that they didn’t have enough evidences. The “guilty” faction’s members mostly based their emotions on anger towards the defendant’s societal class and family background, based on their sentiments, moods, passions, personal and past experiences. The “not-guilty” faction mostly used logical reasoning and rational decision making in controlling their emotions and preventing it from clouding their judgment in examining the “facts” and evidences. The jury intense emotions generally had positive effects, on the case outcome. The jury demographics/composition played a large part in the final verdict. The jury, though, outwardly composed of all white male, had a lot of distinction among the group. The jury composition represented a diverse group of immigrants, seniors, poor family backgrounds, the blue-collar workers, elitist, and the prejudice/not prejudiced. This jury diversity, in the end, affected the views and reasoning’s, which lead to the unanimous decision of a not-guilty verdict. With jury majority rule, the non-prejudiced group was able to exert a normative influence on the group. For example, the juror from the poor background served as a comparative evidence measures, indicating that being from the “the ghetto” does not automatically makes everyone a criminal or a murderer. The “guilty” faction’s votes gradually changed to “not- guilty” as their emotions became subject to logical reasoning, compared to the biases and sentiments laden initially majority verdict of “guilty.” Leadership was a very vital issue in the deliberations and the final jury verdict. The unofficial “factions” group leaders played a major role in convincing and motivating their members, by relating to their emotions and reasoning’s. Eventually, the official group leader “the foreman” eventually, was able to take charge and control of the group and adequately lead the jury to completed deliberation.