Question: Build a movie plot around this: How long did it take the defendant to retrieve his knife? 3 hours
Answer:
In a New York City courthouse, an eighteen-year-old boy from a slum is on trial for allegedly stabbing his father to death. Final closing arguments having been presented, a visibly bored judge instructs the jury to decide whether the boy is guilty of murder. If there is any reasonable doubt of his guilt they are to return a verdict of not guilty. The judge further informs them that a guilty verdict will be accompanied by a mandatory death sentence.The jury retires to a private room, where the jurors spend a short while getting acquainted before they begin deliberating. It is immediately apparent that the jurors have already decided that the boy is guilty, and that they plan to return their verdict without taking time for discussion with the sole exception of Juror 8 (Henry Fonda), who is the only "not guilty" vote in a preliminary tally. He explains that there is too much at stake for him to go along with the verdict without at least talking about it first. His vote annoys the other jurors, especially Juror 7 (Jack Warden), who has tickets to a baseball game that evening; and Juror 10 (Ed Begley Sr.), who believes that people from slum backgrounds are liars, wild, and dangerous.The rest of the film's focus is the jury's difficulty in reaching a unanimous verdict. While several of the jurors harbor personal prejudices, Juror 8 maintains that the evidence presented in the case is circumstantial, and that the boy deserves a fair deliberation. He calls into question the accuracy and reliability of the only two witnesses to the murder, the "rarity" of the murder weapon (a common switchblade, of which he has an identical copy), and the overall questionable circumstances. He further argues that he cannot in good conscience vote "guilty" when he feels there is reasonable doubt of the boy's guilt.Having argued several points and gotten no favorable response from the others, Juror 8 reluctantly agrees that he has only succeeded in hanging the jury. Instead, he requests another vote, this time by secret ballot. He...