10th Juror: What do you want? 8th Juror: Nothing. I just want to talk. 7th Juror: Well, what's there to talk… — Reginald Rose
10th Juror: What do you want?
8th Juror: Nothing. I just want to talk.
7th Juror: Well, what's there to talk about? Eleven men here agree. Nobody had to think twice about it, except you.
10th Juror: I want to ask you something. Do you believe his story?
8th Juror: I don't know whether I believe it or not. Maybe I don't.
7th Juror: So what'd you vote "not guilty" for?
8th Juror: There were eleven votes for "guilty." It's not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.
7th Juror: Who says it's easy for me?
8th Juror: No one.
7th Juror: What, just because I voted fast? I think the guy's guilty. You couldn't change my mind if you talked for a hundred years.
8th Juror: I'm not trying to change your mind. It's just that we're talking about somebody's life here. I mean, we can't decide in five minutes. Suppose we're wrong?
p. 12Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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5th Juror: You still don't think there's any room for reasonable doubt?
7th Juror: No, I don't.
11th Juror: Pardon. Maybe you don't understand the term "reasonable doubt."
7th Juror: What d'ya mean, I don't understand it? Who the hell are you to talk to me like that? How d'ya like this guy? I'm tellin' ya they're all alike. He comes over to this country running for his life and before he can even take a big breath he's telling us how to run the show. The arrogance of the guy!
5th Juror: You mean you're calling him arrogant because he wasn't born here? Well, I'm calling you arrogant because you were. How's that?
p. 55
10th Juror: What are we sitting here for?
8th Juror: Maybe for no reason. I don't know. Look, this boy's been kicked around all his life. You know-living in a slum his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That's not a very good head start. He's had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That's all.
p. 16
8th Juror: It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. Well, I don't think any real damage has been done here. Because I don't really know what the truth is. No one ever will, I suppose. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is the safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure.
p. 66

