Basic Trope: One of the members of a jury deliberating a criminal case is the holdout to the consensus decision, and must convince the other members to agree with their point of view.
- Straight: Alice is the only member of the jury to believe that the defendant in a murder case is innocent, and must persuade the other members of the jury to acquit him through her arguments.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is so convinced of the defendant's innocence that she conducts her own secret investigation into the crime.
- Alice is so convinced of the defendant's innocence that she makes the other jurors change their decision at gunpoint.
- Alice is so convinced that some facts are not right that she fires off questions to the witnesses right in the middle of their testimony, overruling the fact that only lawyers can ask, and refuses to vote until they are answered.
- The defendant is being tried for twelve different criminal charges, and each juror is the rouge on one of the charges: Alice thinks the defendant is guilty of all charges but Charge 1, Bob thinks the defendant is guilty of all charges except Charge 2, and so on.
- Alice is so driven to be the "rogue juror" that after she manages to convince everybody to switch to "not guilty", she switches to "guilty".
- Downplayed: The defendant has already been found guilty of murder, Alice is the only one who believes that he does not deserve to die, but instead deserves life in prison.
- Justified:
- Alice is a vigilante who has been conducting her own investigation into the murder and has discovered evidence that the defendant has been framed by the true murderer.
- Alice is secretly having an affair with the defendant and was with him at the time of the murder, thus knowing that he didn't do it.
- Alice has been bribed or threatened by the defendant to ensure a not-guilty verdict.
- The other members of the jury are voting 'guilty' without fully considering the evidence, either due to prejudice, being easily swayed or bullied, or some trivial, flippant reason. Alice, a believer in the system, and the only one to actually take things seriously, is holding out to get them to actually consider the evidence and do their job.
- Inverted:
- The other members of the jury must persuade Alice to agree with their point of view.
- Alice is the lone juror who believes the defendant is guilty, and must persuade the others to convict.
- Common Nonsense Jury: Everybody in the jury votes Bob guilty because they are too stupid to even think of thinking it over.
- Subverted: It turns out the defendant really is guilty.
- Double Subverted: But not of that particular crime.
- Parodied:
- Alice's reasons for holding out are either ridiculously trivial or purely out of her own naked self-interest (ex. a free stay in a five-star hotel).
- Alice has to convince all the other jurors that the defendant is not guilty of jaywalking.
- What Alice uses to convince the other jurors to vote "not guilty" are silly things like having a chance to get a book deal or appealing to their perversions.
- Zig Zagged: Alice manages to convince the other members of the jury that he's innocent, but they manage to convince her that he's guilty, meaning they must keeping going through the whole argument.
- Averted: Alice agrees with the consensus from the start.
- Enforced: "Wasn't 12 Angry Men a great movie? We should do an episode like that!"
- Lampshaded: "There's always one holdout, isn't there?"
- Invoked: "I'm voting against the consensus because if nothing else, we should play Devil's Advocate and discuss this matter seriously before we make our final decision — a man's life is at stake."note
- Exploited: Evulz tampers things so Alice will be part of the jury, knowing that she will deadlock it one way or another.
- Defied:
- "I'm not going to be the one voice fighting the majority; I'm voting with everyone else."
- The other eleven people in the jury call the deliberations deadlocked the moment the Rogue Juror starts arguing. The court is forced to declare a mistrial and get other twelve poor bastards to deal with this mess.
- Implied: After the judge sends the jury to deliberate, he says that it should be an open-and-shut case. Time Skip to "People Vs. Bill, Day Three" inside of the jury room and eleven jurors are giving Alice a Death Glare.
- Discussed:
- "Being the holdout in these kind of situations is never a great way to make friends."
- "Alice, you're not Henry Fonda, you’re not Jack Lemmon, you’re not even José María Rodero. You are not the savior who rode into the courtroom to turn the case around. You know what you are? You're Jane Kaczmarek in that episode of Malcolm in the Middle in which she drove the whole courtroom crazy before she figured out she is the juror with the displaced aggression for their son. Vote whatever you wish to vote, but for Pete's sake, don't turn it into another of your private little wars!"
- Conversed: "That character has some pretty good arguing skills, considering how he completely demolished eleven other people."
- Deconstructed: The conflict between the jurors represents an inherent flaw in the system; it is reliant on clashing and contradictory personalities trying to reach a consensus, several of whom may either be biased or have no interest in or understanding of the matter at hand, thus leading them to make their decisions for flawed, trivial, or wrong reasons and risking incorrect judgments being made.
- Reconstructed: However, despite this, sometimes the system really does work the way it should; and conflict is not automatically a bad thing, as it forces people to consider other perspectives that they might not otherwise adopt without prompting.
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