Summary: Act II, Part 2

8TH JUROR: Mr. Foreman, I want another vote.– CURTAIN 

They vote again with a show of hands. The Foreman and the 12th Juror flip, making the vote nine-three in favor of a "not guilty" verdict. Only the 3rd, 4th, and 10th Jurors vote guilty. The 10th Juror makes a racist speech, arguing that “these people” are born to lie and don’t need an excuse to kill someone. He says human life doesn’t mean as much to them as it does to “us.” He says that the immigrants are dangerous and will “breed us out of existence.” He doesn’t care about the law but that they can make a difference by killing one of the boy’s kind. The 4th Juror tells him to sit down and not open his filthy mouth again. 

The 4th Juror describes why he thinks the boy is guilty, relying on the testimony of the woman across the street. She stated that she saw the boy kill his father through the windows of the passing train. The 3rd and 4th Jurors say that they can toss out all the other evidence except the woman’s testimony. They call for another vote and the 12th Juror switches back to a “guilty” verdict. The 3rd Juror calls for a hung jury.  

The 4th Juror takes off his glasses and rubs the indentations on either side of his nose. The 9th Juror says that it reminds him of the woman as she testified. He noticed the same indentations on the woman’s face and that she rubbed her nose when she was testifying. The 8th Juror points out that she wouldn’t have had her glasses on the night of the murder because she was lying in bed. He asks if she could’ve made a mistake. The 3rd Juror says it isn’t possible. The 12th Juror says it’s possible and changes his vote back to “not guilty.” The 10th Juror changes his vote to “not guilty,” seeing he’s outnumbered. The 4th Juror says that he also has a reasonable doubt. It’s now eleven-one in favor of a not guilty verdict. The 3rd Juror is the last holdout. He’s furious. 

The 8th Juror asks the 3rd Juror for his arguments. He calls them all bleeding hearts. The others remain silent. He says that everything that happened in court proves the boy is guilty. He says everything has been twisted in the jury room and that the boy said he was going to kill his father. He says he is a rotten kid and that kids can kill you every day. He says he can feel the knife going in. The 8th Juror tells him the boy is not his son. The 4th Juror says to let him live. The 3rd Juror changes his vote to “not guilty.” The jurors leave to go to the jury box. The 8th Juror brings the 3rd Juror his jacket and helps him put it on. They are the last to go. 

Analysis

This section introduces the eyeglasses as a symbol of different perspectives throughout the play. The 4th Juror is pivotal in this scene, as he takes his glasses off in the middle of his argument to convict the boy, revealing the indentations that remind the 9th Juror of the neighbor. Crucially, the jurors realize that it’s unlikely that the woman had her glasses on at the time she claimed to see the murder, which renders her perspective unreliable. In the witness stand, she chose to not wear her glasses out of personal vanity. This parallels the way many characters have personal biases that impair their abilities to see clearly. Once the 9th Juror makes his argument about the woman’s eyeglasses, the 4th Juror changes his perspective and votes "not guilty," almost as if he’s seeing the case with new eyes. The argument about the eyeglasses is convincing to many on the jury, which parallels the way that looking at things from a different perspective can reveal different truths. 

This section explores the motif of fathers and sons and how ideas of masculinity can impact these relationships. In the final dramatic scene of the play, the 3rd Juror discards every argument that had been made in the jury room, relying instead on his understanding of how sons in general behave with their fathers. The juror’s relationship with his son has been shaped by ideas of what it means to be a man, as he beat his son because he believed he wasn’t behaving in a suitably masculine manner according to his stereotypical gender ideals. This violence bred violence in his son, who hit him back and treated him with anger. For the 3rd Juror, this feels like sons “kill you every day,” and he can feel the pain of his estranged relationship with his son like a knife going into his body. The juror has so much pain about his relationship with his son and such fraught ideas about what it means to be a man that he struggles to differentiate between the boy and his own son and between himself and the dead man. 

This section illustrates the power of racism to distort people’s perceptions and disrupt due process. After fighting the rest of the jury for the entire deliberation and expressing mounting frustration, the 10th Juror explodes into a passionate racist monologue that reveals his true motivations. Expressing a series of noxious ideas about people of the boy’s race, he admits that he doesn’t care about due process or legality and simply wants to leverage the opportunity to kill a person of color. After the 10th Juror makes this speech, many of the jurors turn against him, and the 8th Juror makes the point that it’s extremely difficult to keep personal prejudice out of their deliberations, but they must try. This implies that the sanctity and efficacy of the American judicial system depends on the ability of citizens to attempt to be impartial, no matter what their personal beliefs are.