Rogue Juror

aka: One Angry Juror

Hazing the holdout, quite literally so.

"Boy, oh boy. There's always one."

— Juror #10, 12 Angry Men

You've seen this one a million times: a character is serving on a jury for a criminal trial, and is the lone person holding out for a "not guilty" verdict.

Sometimes another main character will also be on the jury, and will try to change the Rogue Juror's mind. More commonly, the Rogue Juror will manage to gradually bring the rest of the jurors around to their view. Occasionally this will be subverted with the acquitted defendant turning out to actually be guilty, or perhaps with the jury remaining deadlocked and forcing the case to a retrial.

Note that in real life, many jurisdictions do not require a unanimous jury verdict, whether for conviction or acquittal. However, unanimity is a characteristic of the English judicial system and those of its former colonies such as the United States (although the modern UK and US don't always require it, either). Outside of those countries, a Rogue Juror's objection would be futile.

This is a common template for a Courtroom Episode and frequently turns up in Sitcoms. Very likely to involve a Shout-Out, if not a Whole-Plot Reference, to 12 Angry Men.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • An issue of The Batman Adventures has Bruce Wayne selected to sit on the jury of a man he caught trying to kidnap a wealthy couple's baby, (as Batman, not Bruce). The rest of the jury are taken in by the defendant's innocent act, so he has to convince them that the defendant is actually guilty. In an amusing moment, Bruce honestly answers a jury selection question about whether he is fit to sit on the jury by confessing that he is prejudiced about the case because he's actually Batman — and after everyone stops laughing, the judge tells him to stop jerking around and take things seriously.
  • The Batman (Tom King) storyline "Cold Days" has Bruce, questioning himself in the wake of his aborted wedding, arrange to be on the jury for Mr. Freeze's trial, where he's the only juror asking hard questions about Batman's involvement, and asking if being a supervillain is necessarily evidence that Freeze is guilty of this particular crime.
• One of the City of Heroes comics (the Blue King run, not the Top Cow run) throws superpowers into this mix, with Apex appointed to the superpowered jury, when a superhero stands accused of second-degree murder — and naturally, he has to face a jury of his peers. Needless to say, the case does not go smoothly...
• A Spider-Man story from the late 1980s involves a jury deliberating over the fate of an accused criminal apprehended by Spider-Man. Making matters problematic is the holdout juror is Mary Jane Watson-Parker... Spider-Man's wife!

Film

• The Trope Codifier is 12 Angry Men. A rogue juror (#8) is the sole holdout on a case which appears to indicate that the accused is definitely a murderer. However, as the jury is forced to analyze the evidence in detail, they slowly discover that almost all of it is flawed in some way. Worth noting that, unlike some other examples, the rogue juror isn't convinced of the suspect's innocence either. He just wants to make sure they've done their job properly, as the accused is facing a mandatory death sentence. It leaves the question of the suspect's guilt or innocence ambiguous in the end. However, because there was reasonable doubt, a verdict of "not guilty" is appropriate.^note Interestingly, while #8 is trying to get everyone else to do their job properly, he is not. Conducting your own investigation and bringing a weapon into the jury room are both serious juror misconduct. This leads to a bit of Values Dissonance between laypeople and legal professionals watching the same film/play. Towards the end of the film, Juror #3 becomes this for the other side, after all the other jurors have decided there's enough doubt that they can't justify a guilty verdict.
  • The film has been remade several times and even has foreign adaptations. The Chinese adaptation is specifically framed as a Western-style mock trial, as China doesn't have jury trials (at least not even close to what the US has), and the film ends with the moral that the Chinese system (read: flagrant classism and bribery) is better. The Russian adaptation is pretty faithful, except it ignores one crucial difference in jurisprudence: in Russian jury trials, a jury only has to deliver a unanimous verdict during the first 3 hours of deliberation. After that, a majority verdict is sufficient, so if at least 7 jurors still voted guilty, that would have been the verdict.
• Jury Duty is pretty much the same thing, played for laughs.
• In the film, Suspect, a juror not only holds onto the notion that the murder suspect is innocent, but he also passes information to the defense attorney, then meets with her in person and helps her with her case, actions that would likely get her disbarred in real life. Lampshaded and discussed in the film, with the trial judge warning her about this after seeing the pair near each other, but he has no proof.
• How the movie Ernest Goes to Jail starts out. A henchman of bank robber Felix Nash realizes that one of the jurors at his murder trial, Ernest P. Worrell, looks exactly like his boss. He arranges for the jurors to visit the prison where the crime was committed, after which Nash knocks out Ernest and changes places. After that, Nash insists on finding his henchman innocent, keeping the henchman from getting his sentence upped to life, and then Nash walks out of the courthouse a free man, leaving Ernest in jail to serve out Nash's sentence (of death).
• In the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple film Murder Most Foul, Miss Marple is the only juror who believes a suspect is innocent and causes a hung jury. She then goes to examine the case herself.
• A non-courtroom example in The Internship. Lyle is taking a stand for the heroes by defending their awkward internship application against the other members of the council who wanted them out immediately.
• Downplayed in Runaway Jury: the rogue juror's task was simply to make the other jurors follow their own predilections rather than actively changing their minds.
• In the early Alfred Hitchcock whodunnit Murder!, the jury at Diana Baring's murder trial initially includes seven "guilty" votes, three "not guilty", and two undecided. However, the two undecided jurors and two of the "not guilty" voters are almost immediately persuaded to vote for conviction, so that the rest of the deliberation embodies the "rogue juror" setup as the lone holdout, Sir John Menier, tries to explain why he doesn't think the evidence against Diana adds up. But as he is unable to do so convincingly, he is ultimately browbeaten into voting "guilty".

Literature

• One of The Dresden Files's short stories sees Harry Dresden (very grudgingly) sitting on the jury for a homicide trial. The other eleven jurors are convinced the defendant is guilty, but Harry quickly figures out that the "victim" was actually a vampire and the defendant killed him in defense of an innocent girl. Harry ends up rescuing the girl from another vampire who is holding her captive to prevent her from testifying in the defendant's defense, then refuses to give a guilty verdict, leading to a hung jury. Upon finding out that the girl the defendant saved was found, the prosecutor decides to drop the charges.
• This happens offscreen at the beginning of the Lord Peter Wimsey novel Strong Poison; Lord Peter's associate Miss Climpson is the jury holdout in the murder trial of Harriet Vane. This leads to a hung jury and a retrial, allowing Peter — who has fallen instantly in love with Harriet — time to find the evidence to clear her.
• Pavel Young's court-martial in the Honor Harrington novel Field of Dishonor has White Haven (the senior admiral of the panel) accuse half of the members of acting like this for political reasons, at which point the lowest ranking officer there turns around and accuses him right back. Eventually, one of the dissenting admirals negotiates a political compromise and agrees to vote with White Haven (breaking the deadlock 4-2) to convict on the lesser charges, provided they remain hung on the capital ones, resulting in Young's dishonorable discharge and setting the stage for the second half of the book. The other two never change their votes. Though since it's a military tribunal, the simple majority is enough.
• In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch's beliefs and Scout's actions caused one of the jurors to greatly lengthen the process of the trial of a black man that Atticus was defending. The man was eventually found guilty because the rogue had no chance of convincing the other jurors of changing their minds (though Atticus believed if he'd gotten another of the rogue juror's group into it, the jury would have been deadlocked). It is reasonable to assume that the rogue may have gotten death threats.

Live-Action TV

• Little House on the Prairie: In "Barn Burner," a black man named Joe Kagan (Moses Gunn, in a recurring role) is the lone holdout on a jury that has voted to convict racist farmer Judd Larabee for burning down Jonathan Garvey's barn. Ironically, Larabee had objected to forming a cooperative specifically because Kagan — the lone black farmer in the Walnut Grove area — would also get to enjoy the co-op's benefits, and Larabee was fingered as the suspect after Garvey confronted Larabee at his home. Kagan's instincts prove right: Andy Garvey, who had been assaulted by Larabee on the night of the barn fire, had accidentally caused the fire after leaving a burning lantern hang on a hook just outside the barn door, and the wind swept the flames into the dry tinderwood. Larabee is acquitted of barn burning (a crime that was punishable by death) ... and he shows his "gratitude" by going on a tirade about blacks. By this point, everyone is tired of his rants, and he is left to die a lonely, bitter man.
• On The Odd Couple (1970) Felix and Oscar tell the Pigeon sisters how they met during jury duty, with Felix in the rogue juror role. Though the defendant was innocent, he was, after the trial, driven to actually commit the violent assault he had been falsely accused of after being trapped in an elevator with Felix. Interestingly, Jack Klugman had played a juror in the original 12 Angry Men movie (and Jack Lemmon, who played Felix in the 1967 film version, went on to play the rogue in the 12 Angry Men (1997) remake, an odd bit of synchronicity).
• In The Dead Zone, Johnny becomes a rogue juror because he has a psychic vision of the accused being shanked in prison. Even with his powers, he's much like the original Juror No. 8 in that he doesn't know for sure the accused is innocent until further examination of the evidence.
• Monk:
  • In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty". And done deliberately by another juror — she was only there to prolong the trial until she could help another defendant escape, so she looked over the shoulder of the juror next to her and voted the opposite way. As it happened, the person next to her was Monk, the only "not guilty" vote, so she ended up voting the same way as the other ten jurors.
  • In Mr. Monk and the 12th Man, Monk deduces that the victims of a series of seemingly unrelated murders had all served on the same jury. As it tuns out, the suspect was being blackmailed by one of them. However, he didn't know which member of the jury it was, so he opted to kill everyone in the jury.
• CSI:
  • One episode of has the holdout on a jury found dead. The suspicion is that he was murdered to end the deadlock, when in truth he was stung by a bee that had flown into the jury room through an open window and died from a massive allergic reaction.
  • The arc regarding Greg's Accidental Murder of Demitrius James in the defense of a man he and a mob were beating up has Sanders trying to defend himself in court and, overall, what looked like an Open-and-Shut Case (Greg saw the crowd, he tried to scare them off with his car, James tried to attack instead, he hit him with the car because he couldn't brake in time, it's all clear) turns into a circus of accusing Greg of alleged Police Brutality, racism and even the possibility of having been a Drunk Driver during the act (thus ending with the James family forming Irrational Hatred for cops in general and Greg in specific) because of a jackass juror that wishes "all of the facts being brought to light" and won't vote until he hears them (even interrupting testimonies to question the witnesses).
• Inverted in the Veronica Mars episode "One Angry Veronica," where Veronica is forewoman of a jury and one member is the single holdout for a guilty verdict. Over the course of the episode, the jurors find additional information which does, in fact, point the finger at the defendants; eventually, there is only one holdout for not guilty, who only agrees to vote guilty because he's sure the defendants will get off on appeal.
• MacGyver used this trope in one episode. Mac goes so far as to break sequester and sneak out to the crime scene to gather evidence himself. Of course, in the real world, that would get you a sentence for contempt of court and the trial itself would be declared a mistrial, but real life never gets in the way of TV justice.
• In one episode of Quincy, M.E., the titular character found himself on a jury in an apparently open and shut murder case and proceeded to annoy everyone by continually asking questions about the evidence (and deducing the real killer, of course). This also doubles as an Actor Allusion — Jack Klugman (Quincy) starred as Juror #5 in the 1957 movie version of 12 Angry Men.
• Parodied in 3rd Rock from the Sun ("11 Angry Men and a Dick"), where Dick meets the guy briefly in the courthouse lobby and likes the guy before finding out he's the defendant in the case he's serving on. It's obvious he's guilty, but Dick goes out of his way to invent completely incredible reasons he might be innocent.
  "Well, Foster SAID he didn't do it. Are you calling him — AND his attorney — a liar?!"
• Also inverted in an episode of 7th Heaven, in which one of the main characters of the show persuades a reluctant jury to accept the testimony of the police and find the defendant guilty.
• Edith did it in All in the Family, even reusing an argument from the film: when one racist juror says "those people" are born liars, Edith asks why she believes a key prosecution witness who is the same race as the defendant, to big applause from the audience.
• In Family Matters, Steve and Carl wind up on the same jury. Steve believes the defendant to be innocent; Carl and the other jurors are sure the guy is guilty, as his face shows up clearly in security camera footage. Steve proceeds to prove his case by taking a blow-up of a frame of footage in which the real criminal's face is seen in a reflection; the defendant's face had been edited in, but he hadn't reckoned on someone checking that closely.
• Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation goes rogue as a member of a beauty contest judging panel. She wants to give the award to a talented girl who does a lot of charity work, while everyone else wants to give it to a super-hot giggling moron. (Never mind that, um, it's a beauty contest.)
• On Happy Days, Fonzie uses his knowledge of motorcycles to prove the defendant's innocence to Howard and the other jurors. This episode has racism as a central point of the plot. At the end, the grateful defendant who was found not guilty (a black man) hugs the racist juror when he thanks him for serving on the jury.
• Done in Malcolm in the Middle. After viciously calling for the conviction of a teenage thief, Lois realizes that she was projecting her feelings about her eldest son on the defendant and resigns, but not until she's convinced everyone else and wasted an insane amount of time. It's made worse by the fact that everybody had already agreed on guilty to get out early, she just forced them into a deadlock so that they had to think about it with due respect.
• An episode of Charmed has Phoebe do this after her magical power (seeing visions of the past or future) reveals that the defendant is actually innocent of the murder in question. Unable to convince the other jurors by normal means, she summons the victim's spirit to tell them the real culprit, and then gives the others Laser-Guided Amnesia after the trial.
• Played fairly straight in The Andy Griffith Show when Aunt Bea is a holdout for a not guilty verdict but is completely inarticulate about why. She merely keeps insisting that she doesn't think the accused is guilty and winds up hanging the jury. As the court is preparing for another trial, Sheriff Taylor discovers that the real perpetrator was watching the trial from the gallery, and arrests him.
• The Single Guy used actual clips from the movie at one point.
• Subverted in Peep Show, in which Jez starts dating the defendant and convinces the fellow jury members that she is innocent, but after discovering that she actually gets into fights for fun, he decides he doesn't want to go out with her anymore and convinces them back to the guilty verdict... Double subverted in fact in that the defendant really is innocent of that specific crime, but has committed several more along the same lines and got away with it.
  Jez: Justice has been served... well, not actual justice. But what I wanted to happen. Which is pretty much the same thing.
  • Also lampshaded:
    Jez: I'm in Twelve Angry Men! I'm the only one who's not angry. I'm horny.
• Done on The Good Wife where a trial was hung due to one crazy cat lady juror deciding the defendant was innocent and refusing to vote otherwise.
  • In the episode 'Blue Ribbon Panel', protagonist Alicia Florrick becomes this when she suspects that police are covering up what really happened in a shooting. She wins over other members of the panel... only for the chain of evidence to lead back to her husband, the State's Attorney, forcing her to recuse herself.
• In Early Edition, Gary tries to avoid getting on a jury because of his ability to get tomorrow's newspaper; however, he ends up on the jury anyway. He finds out that the man everyone believes is guilty has been framed (and hangs himself after the guilty verdict) and tries to prove his innocence, to everyone else's annoyance.
• Subverted in one episode of Murder, She Wrote, Jessica is forewoman in a murder trial and is the sole juror to think a certain way, but rather than all of them being certain but her being certain the opposite way, nine of the other jurors want to find the man innocent and two think he's guilty. But she's undecided, and rather than declare a mistrial asks them to take some time to review the facts. In an additional subversion the jury acquits, because while the defendant did commit murder (disguised as an accident), he is not guilty of the murder he's on trial for, and convicting would've allowed the real killer to go free.
• Newhart: In "Twelve Annoyed Men and Women", Dick and George have tickets to a New England Patriots game. Dick is the foreman of a jury that has trouble agreeing, and he may miss the game.
• Doogie Howser, M.D. had "Eleven Angry People...and Vinnie", where in a take on 12 Angry Men, the defendant is a young man accused of assaulting his employer. Vinnie's not convinced of his guilt.
• On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rob is the lone holdout in the trial of an attractive woman. Naturally, Laura isn't happy when she hears about this.
• On Crossing Jordan, the rogue juror is Jordan (in quite possibly the most unrealistic trial of this type ever; just for starters, Jordan is already acquainted with the prosecutor). No one is surprised.
• In the TV movie We The Jury, it is actually an inversion, as one juror is convinced that the defendant is guilty and convinces the other jurors as well.
• An episode of Hancock's Half Hour, called "12 Angry Men", in which both Tony Hancock and Sid James were on the jury. Sid tries to stall things because he finds out they're getting paid by the day, while Tony simply thinks the accused has a nice face and doesn't want to believe he was guilty.
  • And a remake starring Paul Merton.
• On the episode "Samson, He Denied Her" of The Nanny, Fran and C.C. are called for jury duty, and Maxwell hopes it'll take Fran's mind off the fact that he had recently told her he loved her and then took it back. In the trial, the defendant is a housekeeper who is accused of assaulting her boss with a pair of scissors to chop off all his hair, but the trial also reveals that she did it because her boss told her she loved her and then took it back. This prompts Fran to immediately sympathize with the defendant and insist she's not guilty, even after the defendant blurted out a confession on the witness stand. Fran proceeds to drive the other jurors crazy because she refuses to vote guilty.
• One episode of the live-action Batman (1966) show had Batman (for some unexplained reason — he might know a lot about the law, but he never took the bar exam, nor does he work for the D.A.'s office) acting as the prosecutor in a trial against Joker and Catwoman. The whole jury voted not guilty despite the evidence, at which point Robin realized that Joker's lawyer had managed to get the entire jury filled with ex-henchmen of the two criminals. Batman and Robin beat up the crooks, and the trial gets redone. This ignores the fact that both sides of a judicial case are supposed to be screening the jury to ensure that the jurors aren't prejudiced before the trial even begins, and a provable close association with the defendants is an automatic disqualification.
• Inverted in the B-plot of the two-part Cheers episode "Never Love a Goalie", in which Diane serves on a jury in an assault case filed by a woman against her husband, and Diane is the only one convinced of the defendant's guilt, to the exasperation of the other jurors. Ultimately, the woman drops the charges and the deliberations are ended prematurely, but when the woman and her husband visit Cheers at the end of the episode, Diane manages to provoke the husband into threatening his wife, thereby demonstrating his guilt in front of witnesses.
• Subverted in an episode of the Marlo Thomas-starring sitcom That Girl (entitled "Eleven Angry Men and That Girl", although not all of the other jurors are male), in which Thomas' character, Ann Marie, is the lone member of a jury convinced that a man accused of striking his wife with an ashtray is innocent. When a male juror makes a pass at her and she slaps him, she realizes that the wife's injuries are on the wrong side of her face for a strike by her right-handed husband. The subversion comes when the husband is acquitted and begins arguing with his wife anew... and grabs a nearby ashtray and hits her across the face backhanded, thereby explaining the anomaly that had persuaded Ann, and the other jurors, to acquit him.
• In Shameless (UK), Frank Gallagher becomes one when he discovers he can claim extra benefits as long as he is on jury service. From that point onward, he tries to drag the deliberation out for as long as possible, continually reversing his opinion whenever he cleverly convinces everyone to see things his way.
• Played by Castle in a case where a juror is poisoned; he's killed before deliberations start, but it's revealed that he managed to get himself placed on the jury in the first place in order so that he could act as one of these. Specifically, he knows that the defendant didn't commit the crime because his brother was with the person who did at the time, but while he doesn't want to throw his brother to the wolves he can't in good conscience let an innocent man go to jail for it.
• On Republic of Doyle, Jake serves on a jury in the trial of a woman accused of killing her husband. He is the only one who believes her to be innocent and resorts to his regular antics to stall the deliberations and conduct his own investigation. The judge lets him get away with a lot because the courthouse is being renovated and there is a massive backlog of cases, so he does not want to declare a mistrial and have another trial. However, he finally throws Jake off the jury when presented with definite evidence of misconduct: Jake stole the judge's cell phone to make a call while sequestered. In the end, it turns out it was actually a suicide and the jury foreman was also a rogue juror who was trying to get a publishing deal.
• Las Vegas: Ed Deline, a casino security expert, plays this role in "Tainted Love". He's called for jury duty, but before the deliberation by the jury even begins, he already openly notes many discrepancies in the prosecution's case (for which he is almost held in contempt of court), and even investigates the case himself during his off-time (note that doing this — even by so much as looking up the legal definitions of the charges — is illegal). He discovers that the suspect is innocent, but the judge orders him not to use any of the new evidence that he obtained in his judgment. So instead he proves to the other jurors that the guy is innocent by noting that he is left-handed, while the real perpetrator would have to be right-handed to commit the crime the way the photos show. He tells his wife the reason why he went out of his way to help the kid; when Ed was a teenager, he was caught stealing hubcaps. Even though he actually committed the crime, a single juror simply refused to find him guilty because he wanted to give Ed a second chance.
• Though it's never actually shown onscreen, several episodes of the various Law & Order incarnations mention this as having happened with the jury in the case of the week. In at least one case, it turned out that this was because the juror had been bribed.
• In McBride: The Chameleon Murder, the pilot for a series of murder mystery movies broadcast on The Hallmark Channel, the titular McBride, an ex-cop turned defense attorney, is the sole dissenting voice for acquittal for a woman charged for murder. After a mistrial, when the DA pledges to retry the case, McBride offers to represent the defendant pro-bono, his only reasoning, "I don't like seeing people railroaded."
• Subverted in an episode of Bones where Brennan's the rogue: she convinces the rest of the jury the defendant is not guilty, but then discovers he not only murdered his wife, but his best friend as well (a witness in the case), and she must then prove him guilty of this new murder along with the rest of the team. Of note: when the forewoman asked who thought the defendant was guilty, Brennan raised her hand. She then went on to point out that what they believed didn't matter, as the verdict must rely on what they could prove. She held out for "not guilty" because she felt the prosecution hadn't reached the burden of proof necessary to convict, not because she necessarily thought the defendant was innocent.
• Unusually done with Blue Bloods in the fourth season episode "Justice Done" when Danny Regan, a detective, is the sole holdout for a "not guilty" verdict in a murder trial because he notes how flimsy some of the evidence is and how bad the eyewitness testimony was. When he is identified as the Commissioner's son and how he should follow his father's policy on tough justice by another juror, the trial is tossed and the other investigating detectives are none too happy with this. So it becomes Danny's case to solve.
• Played for laughs in an episode of Minder where Arthur Daley finds himself serving on a jury, on a fairly minor criminal matter. He is initially the sole holdout, but eventually turns the rest of the jury to his point of view. Eventually, the only holdout for guilty is a little old lady. However, she then drops a single piece of information that swings everyone back to guilty and Arthur has no choice but to follow.
• A 2015 episode of Inside Amy Schumer parodies 12 Angry Men virtually shot for shot, with the jurors deliberating over whether Schumer is "hot enough to be on television". In The Stinger, Amy reminds the judge she was actually on trial for vehicular manslaughter.
• Person of Interest. In "Guilty", the latest number is a juror, so Team Machine assume this trope is in play. The Machine arranges for Harold Finch to be on the jury, and Zoe Morgan spends a lot of time rehearsing him on how to sway a jury towards guilty, only to have an Oh, Crap! moment when the juror immediately agrees with this verdict. So then Harold has to become the rogue juror, stalling for time until Team Machine can find out what's really going on.
• Implied on The Sopranos when Uncle Junior is on trial. Some of June's associates find one of the jurors (buying candy for his son, no less) and gently inform him that they know where he lives. In the next episode, the jury is hung with a single holdout, leading to a mistrial — and that poor juror is hated by all the others.
• On Perfect Strangers, Balki is of course this, much to the frustration of the other jurors, including Larry. While his reasons for believing the man innocent seem foolish, his refusal to back down forces the others to review the evidence in order to convince him. With this, they eventually realize that he's right.
• An episode of 227 had an identical plot, only Sandra was the holdout with Mary being among the annoyed fellow jurors. However, Sandra's doubts were much more logical, and after sharing them with Mary, the latter realized that she had a point. They eventually acquitted the man, who turned out to be innocent.
• Claire Greene was this in an episode of Promised Land (1996), wanting to acquit a young woman charged with criminally negligent homicide (her son had wandered out into the street while she was asleep and been hit by a car). With every argument she made, she managed to convince other jurors of the woman's innocence. Unusually for this trope, she turned out to be wrong—only after the trial did she learn that the woman had been arrested for child endangerment three times prior to this incident and that contrary to the image she'd presented in court, she'd returned to the irresponsible behavior that led to her son's death and was now jeopardizing her daughter.
• For the People: When Judge Byrne is called for jury duty and gets selected (the defense lawyer didn't even pay attention to his responses) he's delighted at the idea of seeing the criminal justice system from another angle. He soon becomes the lone holdout when the rest of the jury votes "guilty" though. After his attempt to explain why the prosecution didn't prove the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he gets them to understand even so. They come around to his view and acquit. Unlike in most examples, he admits that most likely the defendant is guilty, but since the prosecution didn't prove it, he should go free.
• An episode of JAG had Bud fill this role in an episode. With the twist that after it was over, Harm (who'd been the defense attorney for the case) told him that he thought the defendant really was guilty.

Newspaper Comics

• A 1994 Doonesbury arc dealt with the tobacco executives who claimed under oath that they did not "believe" nicotine is addictive, despite the vast amounts of evidence to the contrary. In the strip, the executives are prosecuted on perjury charges. Every member of the jury is convinced they are guilty, except for Jeremy Cavendish, who can’t decide if the executives are "monsters or idiots." The other jurors argue with him for a long time and he eventually agrees the executives are guilty. He later reveals his change of heart was motivated by his desperate need to visit the restroom.
• A 2014 Crankshaft arc had Crankshaft serving on a jury for a man charged with endangerment for recklessly burning papers in his backyard on a dry, windy day. Most of the jurors think it's open and shut — Ed believes it's exactly what any normal person would do and can't possibly be illegal.

Radio

• One episode of Adventures in Odyssey had Eugene on jury duty refusing to convict the defendant until after they discussed the evidence to be sure, much to the displeasure of everyone else who is ready to vote Guilty. The defendant is accused of breaking into a house and robbing its safe but claims that he only broke into the house to be admitted into a gang and they framed him for the robbery. Upon the reexamining the evidence, it is discovered that the victim's safe in question is one made to used in businesses and offices, which require more time to break into, time the defendant didn't have. As a result ten members of the jury change their vote to Not Guilty, leaving another juror becoming the lone Guilty vote. The new lone juror, in his argument for a guilty verdict, reveals that used to be the defendant's coach on a soccer team, and that he had issues with the defendant's behavior at the time. This naturally causes a mistrial, as the juror lied about not knowing the defendant before the trial, as saying otherwise would have immediately disqualified him.

Theatre

• Done before the Trope Maker by Ladies of the Jury (play in 1929, filmed in 1932 and 1937).
• Danganronpa: The Stage adds a new rule to the Deadly Game where if the correct culprit is voted by the majority of students, anyone makes an incorrect vote will get executed alongside the culprit. This rule allows the stage show to wrap up in less cases than the game does, while still maintaining the same survivors.
  • In the second case, as in the game, Taka refuses to believe Mondo is guilty due to their brotherly bond. As such, Taka doesn’t vote for Mondo, and ends up executed alongside him.
  • To save time, the third case is skipped, meaning that Hifumi and Celeste make it to what was originally the fourth case, where the latter of the two attacks Sakura before her suicide, in order to sow confusion among the survivors, and give herself a chance to win as the blackened. Celeste and Hifumi both vote for Celeste, while the others vote Sakura as having committed suicide, which turns out to be correct, leaving Hifumi and Celeste to face execution.

Webcomics

• Subverted in the webcomic Superosity. Main character Chris (who is dating Arcadia, the defense attorney) is the only one who thinks a boy is innocent of murder. Then the defendant tells Arcadia he loves her and plans to kill Chris to get her out of the picture — turns out he is innocent of this crime, "but not thousands of other murders". Arcadia gets Chris to vote guilty for his own good, but by this time, the other jurors have changed their mind. Finally Chris appeals to the other jurors' worst instincts, such as racism and the desire to be quoted in the newspaper, to get them to change their minds back, and when he succeeds, he declares, "Yippee! The system works! Kinda!".
• Played for Laughs Super Stupor, where eleven of the jurors wanted to let an obviously guilty supervillain off for fear of their own lives. (He was on trial for eating his last jury.) A former supervillain is the rogue jury who convinces them all to stand up for what's right...but ultimately, he just did this because he's a Death Seeker himself.

Western Animation

• Parodied in The Simpsons: Homer Simpson votes "not guilty" just to deadlock the jury, because he's enticed by the notion of being sequestered in a free hotel room with free food, free HBO, a free swimming pool, and Free Willy. It's just coincidence that the defendant was actually innocent.
  Homer: I'm only doing what I think is right. I believe Freddy Quimby should walk out of here a free hotel.
• Viciously spoofed in Robot Chicken, with "Twelve Angry Little People" (the toys, that is), wherein the protagonist is very, very wrong...
• King of the Hill:
  • Hank Hill
    • There is an episode centered around this trope, except the trial was a focus group for the new bells-and-whistles lawnmower that would render Hank's lawnmower obsolete. Hank insists the focus group (including his neighbors and his dad) remain for the scheduled length as he convinces them that the new mower is junk.
    • In another episode, Hank is a member of the city council because he objects to the new law that makes it illegal to install normal toilets in Arlen; it turns out that one of the other councilmen owns the company that makes low-flow toilets and got the law passed. The other councilmen have never used the new toilets, but since city hall has them installed, Hank pulls a filibuster until everyone needs to go to the bathroom and realizes that they're junk.
• A memorable episode of Hey Arnold! featured this trope almost to the letter, where Eugene was on trial for pulling the fire alarm (apparently the school rules state that he can only be expelled if found guilty by a jury of his peers), and Arnold (of course) is the only one who thinks he might be innocent and successfully disproves the evidence against him. As it turns out, Eugene was framed by Curly, who, as a member of the jury, then proceeds to flip out and confess to everything, laughing maniacally all the time.
• Pepper Ann had Pepper Ann's mother on a jury trying a man for spitting on a security camera. It was actually a fairly close parody of the original Twelve Angry Men.
  Angry Juror Woman: I SPIT ON YOU!
  Lydia, smirking: You don't REALLY mean you spit on me, do you?
• In The Flintstones, Fred takes up this role in one episode, defending the Obviously Evil Mangler, and coming up with ridiculous excuses for him until finally giving up. Because Fred was the jury foreman (and thus the one to announce the verdict), guess who the Mangler goes after once he escapes...
• Inverted in one episode of American Dad!. One of Roger's personas is on trial and despite the fact that it's blatantly obvious that he did it, he uses his charm to try and Karma Houdini his way out of it. In this case, Stan Smith is the Rogue Juror, in that he sees right through Roger's act and is sick and tired of him weaseling his way out of being accountable for his actions. In the end, he gets the jury to convict, but everyone, even the judge, is sobbing like a baby.
• Family Guy: In the episode "12 and a Half Angry Men", a Whole-Plot Reference to 12 Angry Men, Mayor Adam West is on trial for murdering an aide that was planning to blackmail him, and despite Mayor West being covered in blood during a press conference and the knife used belonging to him, Brian Griffin votes not guilty. Eventually, he is able to convince everyone that Mayor West is innocent and he is exonerated. The episode's last scene reveals that West was in fact innocent and that the murder was the work of a serial killer. One that cuts the Griffins' power...
• In Dan Vs. "Jury Duty," Dan tries to get a suspect off simply because he approves of the crime in question (destroying a restaurant that never gives enough ketchup). He manages to convince most of the jury in about a minute, prompting Elise, who was also on the jury, to attack him in anger. They both get kicked off the jury, but Dan manages to prove that the guy was innocent, as the actual culprit was Dan himself.

Other

• A 1959 Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell (shown at the top of the page) depicts a lone female juror holding out while her male counterparts argue heatedly with her.

Real Life

• It's worth mentioning that Rogue Jurors, or Stealth Jurors as they're more commonly called, are not examples of this trope in real life: rather, they are individuals motivated by some personal or political agenda or another in reference to a legal case, and who actively attempt to be seated on the jury to influence the outcome in their favor.
• In real life, some trials can be forced to be retried if even one out of the twelve dissents. In some countries and American states, the court may accept a majority verdict (either 10-2 or 11-1) if the jury can't reach a unanimous verdict after a reasonable time deliberating (though in the US majority verdicts are limited to some states and usually only for minor crimes)
• In many cases in US law, a hung jury (which can result from a single dissenter) doesn't result in automatic retrial, meaning that in theory a rogue juror can result in a de facto (if not quite de jure) acquittal, since anything that isn't a conviction in the USA is legally equivalent to innocence. Then again, a hung jury also technically doesn't prevent a retrial, since a hung jury generally results in a mistrial, and thus does not fall under the constitutional restrictions against double jeopardy.
• In US jurisdictions where the sentence to be imposed also has to be determined by jury (generally only in cases where capital punishment may apply), that determination must also be unanimous. Any dissent usually means life without parole for the convicted person.
• Independent India used to have Jury trials for criminal cases until a case called Nanavati vs Maharashtra. In it, Commander K M Nanavati of the Indian Navy arrived back home from a naval deployment to catch his wife sleeping with another man. An enraged Nanavati shot his wife’s lover dead, then surrendered to the authorities. In his trial, the entire jury went rogue and acquitted Nanavati despite indisputable evidence - something which incensed the trial judge. From there on, the entire judiciary banded together and forced jury trials to be abolished, as they surmised that the Indian population couldn’t be entrusted with dispensing justice in a dispassionate manner.

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