12 Angry Men Scene 5 Summary

  • Back in the jury room, Juror #8 tries to explain why the testimony of the two witnesses doesn't count for much. But he realizes that some of the men are playing tic-tac-toe and angrily rips their game away from them. As he makes perfectly clear, a young man might die, and this is no game.
  • Once they've calmed down, Juror #8 explains why it's impossible for the old neighbor living below the kid to have heard the kid yell, "I'll kill you." A neighbor said a train was passing by at the time of the murder and the train would have been way too loud for the man downstairs to hear voices. Some of the men are actually swayed by this new angle on the case.
  • The men want to know why the old witness would lie, so the old Juror #9 explains that sometimes, old men with no one to talk to want to feel important and get attention. But the other jurors aren't buying it.
  • At this point, Juror #5 says he wants to change his vote to "Not Guilty," which just makes Juror #3 and #10 even angrier. That puts the vote at 9 to 3.
  • Juror #11 steps up and asks a basic question: Why did the boy come home three hours after his father had died? After all, he was immediately caught by police in the process. One juror says the kid probably came home to get his knife since he knew it could be identified. Juror #11 then wants to know why he left it there in the first place, but the obvious answer is that the kid ran off in a panic. But if that's the case, says Juror #11, then how was the kid calm enough to wipe his fingerprints off the knife before leaving? You'd figure he would take the thing if he were that calm.
  • Juror #10 (one of the angry ones) loses his temper again and says the others are just stalling. But Juror #1 calls for another vote to see where people now stand. They take another vote, and it looks like it's still 9 to 3. But then Juror #11 (the dude with an accent) changes his vote to "Not Guilty," making it 8 to 4.