Thank God for people like Henry Fonda's character

No, you love being an idiot.

Fonda's character is IMO one of the biggest hypocrites ever to be seen on a movie screen. Chiefly because he presents himself as the man who is without sin who has the right to cast all stones and never be held accountable for his own actions that make him arguably just as bad as his fellow jurors that he condemns. This is not to say that many of the jurors don't deserve to be condemned because many of them do. But if they are to be judged so too must Fonda and here are the things he is guilty of:

1-Fonda commits the most unpardonable of sins that any juror is capable of committing. He has decided to investigate the case outside the courtroom, and he has also chosen to introduce "evidence" that was not part of the trial to influence the proceedings in the form of the second knife. The second knife was not part of the trial proceedings and Fonda has no way of knowing if this wasn't a type of knife that could only have been sold in great quantity *after* the crime (Fonda I doubt was able to check that point). This is a tainted item that should have resulted in one of the other jurors calling in the baliff and notifying the judge of what Fonda did, whereupon Fonda would be removed and replaced with an alternate or else a mistrial would have been declared. At the very least, what Fonda did is not legitimate grounds for swinging a jury to a not-guilty verdict.

2-The manner in which Fonda impeaches the witness based on glasses she wasn't wearing. Perhaps the reason the defense counsel never brought it up is because he *knew* the woman wore sunglasses or was farsighted and thus if he tried to he'd be destroyed and his client would look all the more guilty. Here Fonda was getting the jury to consider "facts not in evidence" and speculative ones at that for which there was no basis for the jury to consider. Now *maybe* if we had seen them ask for the transcript to clarify if this was brought up during testimony and if they discussed it in more depth I could buy it but Marshall's change of heart on this point struck me as uncredible on all levels.

Just think of how much better the drama would have been had the spotlight been turned on Fonda's character showing how he's ultimately no better than any of the others in the room. Is he resorting to this corruption of the process based on his own prejudice against the fact that this is a death penalty case? Is he deciding that because he personally thinks the defendant had a bad lawyer, he should act as a defense counsel instead of a juror? These are questions as relevant as the ones raised that show the others in a bad light and when they aren't answered it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. The proper outcome of this story should have been a mistrial because this is not a true or fair indication of what the term "reasonable doubt" is supposed to mean.

This is not I would note a simple case of a "conservative" railing against a "liberal" interpretation of the law. Even Justice Sotomayor, in praising the film as an inspiration for her entering the law acknowledged that Fonda's actions would indeed have resulted in a mistrial in a real life situation. And a mistrial IMO would have sent the best message. Let 12 men better than these start over anew and judge the defendant's guilt or innocence with the cleanest possible slate.

Yeah, like I said, thank god for manipulative people who act like they're not prejudiced???

Juror #8 was also a bigot, and so were the other jurors. Literally, so much of Juror #8's argument boiled down to claiming that the defendant should be cut some slack because "kids like him" come from bad backgrounds. This like when people try to sound compassionate for a murderer by claiming that he was mentally ill, while at the same time inferring that all mentally ill people are natural murders or that being mentally ill predisposes someone to commit murder.

In other words, it's just as much a racist, foregone conclusion to assume that kids from the defendant's background are predisposed to murder because they "have it rough." What about the vast number of kids from that background who had it rougher and didn't kill anybody? Like Jack Klugman's character, who came from that background? Why is one kid now representative of all of them?

Ditto, the rampant sexism and ageism. "Oh, that old guy, we need to doubt him because old people like him feel neglected and therefore make stuff up for the attention," or, "That middle-aged woman was trying desperately to look 20 years younger. Let's ignore her testimony, because marks on her nose proves that she wears glasses all the time but didn't wear them to court because she was self-conscious about her age."

Same difference.