Runaway Jury is a feature film released by Twentieth Century Fox Pictures, directed by Gary Fred and starring John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and Rachel Vichy, released in the United States on October 17, 2003.
Based on John Grisham's novel of the same name, the film tells the story of Nick, one of the jurors, and Mary, one of the jurors, who controlled the voting results of 12 jurors in a shooting trial that shocked the country.
plot
The invincibility barrister, Blue Gold Finch (Gene Hackman), was hired to take over a civil lawsuit, and many people did not understand why Blue Gold, who had always cherished his reputation, was willing to be the lead counsel in this case, after all, in the eyes of the outside world, this case has no way to retreat for the defendant, an arms dealer, and it is only a matter of time before it is lost.
The cause of the incident is very simple, a man was shot by a gunman in his office, his wife filed a lawsuit with the district court, she felt that the murderer was unforgivable, but the provider of the murder weapon was as heinous as the cruel culprit, for the safety of others, to avoid the death of anyone because of the abuse of the gun, the widow of the victim decided to attack the arms dealer, and the claim shocked the United States.
The unfortunate experience of the victims and this case of sudden social problems attracted the attention of the public and won the solidarity of many people, and New Orleans became the focus of attention of the whole United States for a time. The urgent need to solve the problem of gun proliferation has made many social groups and people want to take this opportunity to completely solve this stubborn disease. In the face of the huge pressure of public opinion, arms suppliers do not want to sit still, which is also the key to the needs of arms companies and blue gold. In order to win the case, Blue Gold will stop at nothing, so he decided to start from the root, and the goal is to decide the jury that is the key to closing the case.
Lan Jin knew that no matter how self-justified the court statements were, it would be difficult to impress the jurors' established way of thinking, so it was better to hit the nail on the head, understand the details of each person, and essentially bribe these people. In a local abandoned warehouse, Blue Gold and his team of lawyers form an analysis team that needs to grasp everything about the jurors and analyze their reactions to the various stakes in order to take down all the mental and material defenses in one fell swoop at the beginning of the trial, but the problem arises, and one of the jurors, Nick Easter (John Cusack), has mysterious actions, has little past record, and the only clue is that he has a girlfriend named Mary (Rachel Witz). What is surprising is that this trivial detail will eventually shake up the seemingly solid but fragile legal system.
At the same time, the plaintiff also invites Wen Dao Ruhr (Dustin Hoffman), a lawyer who has always been humble and upright, and has a southern aristocratic temperament, to defend him, and a contest between conscience and money is about to begin, where human greed for material desires, inner blame, and corruption are hidden, and the ending of the film is very Hollywood - justice triumphs over evil.
Analysis of legal issues in the film
The jury system refers to a system in which a specific number of citizens with the right to vote participate in deciding whether to prosecute a suspect and whether he is guilty. U.S. law imposes an obligation on every adult U.S. citizen to act as a juror. However, people under the age of 21, who do not live in the country, who do not know English, who have hearing defects, and who have previous convictions are not eligible to act as jurors.
concerning
The U.S. jury system
On the surface, it seems that U.S. citizens over the age of eighteen can be jurors within the jurisdiction of the court where the crime occurred, but in reality it is not so simple.
The first is that persons concerned with the case, including those associated with the plaintiff or defendant, shall not be selected. When a jury is selected in the primary, the judge, in order to be impartial so that the jury can truly represent the people in the most universal sense, his choice is randomly selected from the polling list or telephone number book of the election station. In the once sensational Simpson case, the jury primary selected a total of three hundred and four candidates, because after the primary election, there was another rigorous screening, mainly to eliminate some candidates with psychological tendencies due to the environment and experience, and to avoid possible unfair judgments.
In addition to judge review, juror candidates are subject to scrutiny by defence counsel and prosecutors, who have veto power over juror candidates. In addition, both teams have only veto power, and any selected juror must be approved by both parties.
All that was needed in the end was 12 jurors and 12 alternate jurors. Throughout, alternate jurors participate in court proceedings with regular jurors. Whenever a juror leaves for any reason, there is a candidate on top. Once all the candidates have been exhausted and anyone has to withdraw, the trial may fail due to the insufficient number of juries, and everything will have to start all over again.
In ordinary cases, jurors are usually able to go home. But if the case causes a stir, they must be isolated. In this way, the whole information they receive is evidence that is allowed to be presented in court, and the judgment is not affected by the speculation and illegitimate evidence of the press. Since jurors were sworn in, they have been able to know far less information than the general public. What they are allowed to know is limited to what the judge determines can be allowed to be heard and seen. Jurors are not allowed to read newspapers, they are not allowed to watch television news, so they know nothing about what happens outside the courtroom, such as press conferences held by defense lawyers, statements by the victims' families, and so on.
During this time, jurors went to food stores to buy food, and they were followed by judicial police to ensure that they did not have contact with the outside world. Jurors are not allowed to communicate and discuss the facts of the case until the case is closed and handed over to them for decision. In short, everything is done so that they are not affected by emotions and non-evidence from all walks of life in order to uphold a fair verdict. It can be said that during this period of time, the jurors had less freedom than the suspects in the case.
There is also a lot of controversy about the jury system in the United States. It appears to be the weakest link in the U.S. judicial system. Jurors were randomly sampled, and the people who came were diverse, with different colors of race, whether they had jobs or not, and whether they were knowledgeable or cultural. In the United States, the most powerful is the legal team, why find a bunch of "laymen" to be "judges above judges"? In the United States, all those who understand and endorse this system have never thought of it as a perfect system, but they just can't find a better system than it. It's exactly what Americans sometimes joke about: If you don't compare the jury system to other countries' systems, it sucks. Jefferson, the third president of the United States, believed that the jury system played a more important role in maintaining democracy than the right to vote.
Of course, the jury system has obvious weaknesses, all "rule of law" will have the confusion of "rule of man", and the initial legislation, trial, and final judgment have the participation of "people". The jury system is designed to argue that if everything is clear and clear at a glance, the intelligence of ordinary people is enough to judge. The reason Americans insist on the jury system is because jurors are the least manipulated by anyone.
Jurors are independent of the government, of the judiciary, of any political force. Their judgment is the judgment that the general public will make under the law's provisions for jurys. They come and go as soon as they are called, and the court keeps them secret, leaving them without a psychological burden. As long as they don't want to show their faces, they can never be known for their role by the people around them. Of course, there is a basic condition for this, that is, the society is free and the ordinary people are not controlled by anything.
Classic lines
I don't sway others, I just prevent you from cheating.
———— Nick East
Film critics
The onion on the cat star | Manipulated justice
Jury judgments can easily be manipulated. As the movie says, the people who participate in the composition of the citizens' jury are ordinary people, and in the law of the United States, legal workers are not allowed to participate in the jury, which leads to the jury is not a group of gods without joy and sorrow, each of them has their own story, everyone has their own emotions, as long as this is taken advantage of, it is easy to achieve the result of being manipulated. There's a movie called "Twelve Angry Men" where a teenager is convicted of killing his stepfather, and twelve unknown people from different environments are gathered together as a jury to determine whether the teenager is guilty. At first, the evidence was overwhelming, eleven of the twelve voted to convict him, and only one voted against him, but in that era, the jury's judgment required unanimous approval, and the person who voted against it told his doubts, triggering everyone to think about his deep conscience, and finally found out the truth and saved the life of the teenager. In this film, the most mundane parts of each jury member are unearthed and elevated to the height of humanity, so getting such a result is also what we are willing to see. But after all, the movie is only a movie, in practice, using this point may be easy to be manipulated to produce a just result, but it is easier to be manipulated to get the result that a certain interest group is willing to see, which is an unavoidable reality.
Yes and no | Human purgatory
Jean Hackman and Dustin Hoffman play two major defense lawyers, the former of whom is deeply humane and understands that the temper of the jury is the truth of victory weight, while the latter, who is a defender of traditional morality and judicial justice, insists on the front and refuses to compromise. The two major acting schools add a lot to the film, acting as qualified green leaves, and their most fierce opponent scene takes place in the bathroom, and the confrontation between questioning and sophistry is filmed with great emotion, and the actor's performance is impeccable. John Cusack is the soul of the film, skilled in acting, and the classic thriller on his body is equally enviable.
One of the best lines in the film is: "Stop believing in the jokes that lawyers can dictate everything, the reality is that the jury will win the world." It is this rationality that confronts reality that gives the film a suffocatingly calm atmosphere. Without a savior who can turn the tide, and without a black-and-white boundary, a lawsuit for a claim is like a sharp blade that cuts through the fig leaf of reality and exposes the fragility of the law along with all the greed that money breeds.
laluna | Humanity and revenge in the system
It is recommended that you first understand the jury system in the United States before watching this film, such as the selection of jurors and the judgment procedure, otherwise you may not understand or feel that it is too exaggerated on the way to appreciate. Indeed in American law, the final decision is held by those jurors selected from ordinary people, so they will be very cautious when choosing lawyers on both sides, and will consider whether these people's political, religious, and moral thinking will be easy to make unfavorable decisions against their own side. Moreover, it is not uncommon for 12 strangers to be found guilty or innocent in order to be unanimously approved, and it is not uncommon for 12 strangers to be held in a hotel for several weeks for a case, so in this case, if one of them deliberately influences others for other purposes, it is indeed possible to affect the outcome of the verdict.
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