I’ve always thought the kid was guilty.
Sir Rhosis
“It’s going to rain.”
It’s one of my favorite movies. I first saw it in middle school for some class, but I’ll always watch when it’s on TV.
Well, then the DA must not have done a good enough job to prove Murder 1. (If he’d gone for, say, Manslaughter, I probably would have voted guilty, even with Henry Fonda arguing for the kid. 
)
Somebody oughta nudge Bricker into writing a full legal analysis of this movie for one of his Staff Reports. . .
Sir Rhosis
The movie (well-crafted & well-acted as it is), blows the premise in the very first shot. Throughout the film, we’re supposed to believe the kid’s guilty, and slowly come around to #8’s reasoning gradually, as each and every juror slowly shifts sides.
But the first shot shows the JD in question: small, non-threatening, with big moony eyes. Of course he didn’t do it! So, right from the start, the film shows it doesn’t have the faith in its own power of persuasion so that audience members will experience what the jurors are, step by step. No, the film stacks the deck.
It’s a fine film for what it is, and surprisingly un-stagy given its setting and origins, but not even in my Top 10 for 1957–itself a fantastic year for films.