1. How does the leader emerge in this group? The appointed leader of the group is the jury foreman, but he ends up really acting as a facilitator in that he tells everyone where to sit, and when there is a call to vote, he tallies the votes. At one point, he even tries to relinquish the role as foreman. It is the architect that emerges as the real leader of the group by encouraging discussion of the facts laid out before them.
2. What bias do you observe in this group and from where does it originate? Several biases may be observed: Racial and economic being the 2 most obvious.
3. When looking at group dynamics, what is preventing this group from being effective? (Note, do not answer who is preventing the group from reaching a consensus but what is causing this). Serveral things are preventing this group from being effective, from the racial and economic biases to the desire to vote and get it over with so they can go home.
4. How did individual biases influence the group and what dynamics came into play?
5. What would help this group be more effective as an organization? If they could set aside their biases and concentrate on the facts without getting emotional.
6. Did this jury ever worked as a team for a unified purpose? I have actually served on a jury in the past. It was an assault case – a man had charged that his ex-girlfriend had beat him up in the parking lot of a bar that they both still went to. On the first day, after hearing the opening statements, I got a sense of how each side develops their arguments. I was sure that the prosecution had the case wrapped up. However, on the second day, after hearing further testimony from the defendant and the witnesses, I was no longer sure if they had a case. It was a lot of “he said”, “she said”, and a couple of witnesses contradicted each other’s statements. For example, one witness said they heard everything, another said noise in the bar was really loud because the band was playing. The plaintiff stated that the defendant threw him up onto a car and hit him, however the defendant was much smaller, and would have difficulty throwing a cat on the hood of a car. Another thing that sealed the case for me was when the defendant stated that we were all there to “teach her a lesson”. In the end, it was our job to decide who the aggressor was, and as a group, we decided it was the plaintiff, but if we could, we would charge the defendant with being dumb.
7. Do you think they accomplished the job assigned to them? Yes, I do. If it weren’t for the architect, this jury may have sent an innocent boy to prison for a crime he did not commit. Because of his ability reason, he was able to convince the others that he may not have done it. Maybe he did, but there was a “reasonable doubt”.
8. If you were a member of this jury, what role do you see yourself playing and what is your initial reaction to the defendant’s guilt or innocence? I have seen this movie several times, so I cannot remember my initial reaction to this case, but I like to believe in the goodness of people, so I would have to have some hard