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This play is about twelve jurors who are to decide the verdict of a 19 year old boy who is
accused of killing his father. The jurors go into a room with the foreman to talk about
the case and decide on a verdict. The vote has to be unanimous either guilty or not
guilty for the case to end. To start the deciding, the jurors decide to take a
preliminary vote to see where they stand. After counting the ballots the vote is 11 to
1, guilty. Juror number eight is the one who votes not guilty. The reason that juror
eight voted not guilty was because he was not sure that the boy was guilty and he wanted
to talk about it. One of the jurors decided to take a minute for each juror to tell
their side of the story and what they personally think about the case. After a lot of
main points were made such as there being two of the identical knives, the woman in her
apartment saying she saw the murder take place through the window of the El train, and
how the old man said that he heard the boy say that he was going to kill his father and
then went to his door to see the boy run down the stairs. After all of this has taken
place they decide to take another vote. The verdict is still 11 to 1 in the favor of
guilty. Juror eight is now going over the time periods of when the woman said she saw
the murder. Juror eight is also trying to explain how the man could not have seen the
boy run down the stairs because the old man would not have had enough time to get out of
bed. After juror eight makes all of his points they take another vote. This time the
vote is now 6 guilty and 6 not guilty. Juror ten is very disgusted at how a lot of the
jurors are changing their votes. Some of the jurors now start to get into a fight about
how the boy was able to stab his father who was six inches taller than him. Now a new
vote is taken and the count now is three guilty to nine not guilty. The jury is again
arguing about how the lady could have see the killing. The subject that is brought up is
that she wears glasses and she did not have her glasses on when she supposedly said she
saw the murder. Now juror four changes his vote to not guilty and juror three is the
only one left voting guilty. Juror three sits there for a long time looking at the rest
of the jurors and then he finally changes his vote to not guilty. Now the vote is
unanimous twelve to none in the favor of not guilty.
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