Juror 8 in Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose (Play Analysis)

Throughout the play Twelve Angry Men, written by Reginald Rose, the reader gets a firsthand view of a court jury room in the 1950s and how twelve jurors struggle to reach a unanimous verdict. They are deciding the fate of a boy convicted of murdering his father. At the beginning of the play, however, they take a vote and only one juror believes that the defendant is not guilty. That juror is the main protagonist, Juror 8. He strives to prove that this boy is innocent to the other jurors and ends up succeeding. Juror 8 does this by stating facts and proving witnesses’ accounts wrong which is the other jurors’ main logic for believing otherwise. Juror 8 in this play is the prime reason why one might believe that the statement justice and fairness may prevail over intolerance and prejudice if there is only one fair and just person who is willing to speak out

is correct.

Juror 8 is the perfect example of this because, although some jurors are prejudicial toward the defendant and intolerant of the boy’s innocence, he is willing to fight to see justice be done. Juror 10, on the other hand, is one who is extremely prejudiced in this case. For example, he says, “Look you know how those people lie” and “You know, they get drunk, and bang, someone’s lying in the gutter.” In both of these instances, Juror 10 is stating his opinion on people living in slums, where the defendant is from. Obviously, Juror 10 is being very biased toward people who live or grow up there, but Juror 8 steps in and participates in turning his back towards Juror 10 while he continues to rant. This causes other jurors to join him and the few others to do the same, making Juror 10, and therefore the prejudice in the room, feel unconsidered. 

Along with not tolerating prejudice in the jury room, Juror 8 does an excellent job at standing along and essentially eliminating the intolerance of the defendant’s innocence. First of all, he stands alone at the very beginning being the only juror who voted not guilty in their first verdict vote, which takes a lot of guts not to immediately change his vote to agree with the majority. He then goes on to prove that the murder weapon was indeed not unique, which is what everyone else thought. Juror 8 was able to do such a thing by buying a similar weapon the day before for a few dollars down the street and presenting it to the others. Although by doing this he only convinces one other juror to change his vote, he continues to terminate intolerance. 

Juror 8 goes on to convince even more jurors that the defendant is not guilty with more fact stating. For example, he shoots down a witness account that a man heard the boy say, “I’m going to kill you,” and then saw him running away 15 seconds later. He does this by saying, “The old man would have had to hear the boy say ‘I’m going to kill you’ while the front of the el was roaring past his nose.” Juror 8 then even goes to the extent of acting like the old man in his apartment (right next to the el train) walking to his door to see the boy. He proves the old man couldn’t have possibly gotten to the door in time for the boy, for all the jurors saw how slow the man walked in court. Juror 8 continues with his campaign proving two other pieces of evidence faulty, eventually convincing all the jurors to reach a unanimous verdict of not guilty and succeeding in eliminating intolerance.

All things considered, Juror 8 being the one who was willing to speak out, did, in fact, prevail over intolerance and prejudice making justice and fairness possible. Without Juror 8 speaking out against the other jurors and being the outlier, in the beginning, the defendant convicted of murdering his father would have most likely been wrongly convicted. This is why Juror 8 proves the statement above. His main goal was to see justice be done, and he was willing to fight to see that happen. Juror 8 did fight hard with stating only facts and proving multiple witness accounts false which ended in victory for him and justice in the court.