12 Angry Men Scene 8 Summary

  • Juror #10 says he's sick of debating. He wants to go back into the courtroom to declare a hung jury and a mistrial. It's clear that the holdouts for the guilty verdict will never change their minds.
  • Juror #8 steps forward and addresses the point about the kid not knowing the names of the movies he went to. The kid did, however, remember the names of the movies in court. #8 thinks the boy was just under too much stress when the cops interviewed him at first because his father was dead. The others think the boy's lawyer coached him on what movies were playing on the night of the murder.
  • #8 interrogates Juror #4 about what he did every night of that week. On Monday, the guy went to the movies, and he's pretty shaky on some of the details—and this is for a guy whose father wasn't murdered. We also notice that for the first time, Juror #4 has started to sweat.
  • Juror #2 asks to see the knife again. He says that the stab wound in the dead man was a downward wound. But the father was 6'2 and the son was only 5'7, which means it would have been awkward for the kid to make a downward wound. Juror #3 takes the knife and pretends to be 5'7. Then he walks over to Juror #8 and pretends to stab him, although we have to wonder how much he wishes he could do it for real. He shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the kid could still make a downward wound if he brought the knife down from above.
  • Juror #5 (the dude from the slums) steps in and asks if anyone has ever seen a knife fight, since the kid on trial has a history of being in them. Anyone who's ever used a switchblade would never have used an overhand grip on it, since the knife can't even open if you're gripping it that way.
  • It seems like this new argument is starting to sway Juror #12. At this point, Juror # 7 comes out of nowhere and says he's changing his vote to "Not Guilty" just because he wants to go home. Juror #3 can't believe he'd change his vote for such a petty reason. After all, a man is dead. Even the ones who want a "Not Guilty" vote think this is completely immoral.
  • The room calls another vote and ends up with 9 votes for "Not Guilty" and 3 for "Guilty."