英文介紹：

　　A teenaged Hispanic boy has just been tried for the murder of his father, and the case is now in the hands of the jury.. A guilty verdict will send the boy to the electric chair.

　　The case looks, on the surface, cut and dried, but one juror (Henry Fonda), despite his own feeling that the defendant is probably guilty, feels that the facts, at very least, merit a cursory review, before the jury hands in a guilty verdict. His insistence on a brief examination of the case seems to rub many on the jury the wrong way, as they continue to see the matter as open and shut.

　　Fascinatingly, in examination of the testimony and facts of the case, the experiences, personalities, attributes, limitations, and biases of the individual jurors weave in and out of the deliberation process, at times to its benefit and at times to its detriment.

　　To the benefit of the deliberation process, 1) the very elderly juror (Joseph Sweeney) is the only one that can see a possible motive explaining why an elderly witness may have misled the court in his tetimony, 2) the one fellow (Jack Klugman) who grew up in a rough neighborhood, where he witnessed numerous knife fights, is the only one who sees a problem in assuming that the defendant made the stab wound found, and 3) the juror who had done contract work by the elevated subway (Ed Binns) was the only one in a position to question what one of the witnesses might or might not have heard.

　　To the detriment of the deliberation process, 1) one juror (Ed Begley) is so consumed by his personal prejudices that he sees value in ridding the streets of the Hispanic defendant whether or not he is guilty, and 2) another juror (Lee J. Cobb) is unopen to reason because he has been physically harmed by his teenaged son, and, consequently, views each and every teenaged boy, including the defendant, as capable of patricide.

　　The number of obstacles on the path to honest assessment of the facts is a constant threat to the deliberation process. Will this jury come together to find a verdict of either "guilty" or "not guilty" or will it be a hung jury (a jury that cannot reach a unanimous decision, and must retire from the case without declaring a verdict)? Watching how this matter is resolved is a riveting study in the nature, and utimate beauty, of the trial by jury process.

　　簡 介

　　一個在平民窟中長大的男孩被指控謀殺生父，旁觀者和兇器均以呈堂鐵證如山。擔任此案陪審團的12個人要與案件結案前在陪審團休息室里討論案情，并要一直通過討論結果，才能正式結案。

　　十二個人各有自己的職業也生活，他們當中有巧舌如簧的廣告商、仗義執言的工程師、毫無見地的富家子、歧視平民的新貴族、性情暴躁的老警察、精明冷靜的銀行家、只趕時間的推銷員。每個人都有自己思考和說話的方式，但是除了亨利·方達扮演的工程師之外，其余的人都對這個案子不屑一顧，在還未進行討論之前就早早認定男孩就是殺人兇手。最終通過了各種不同人生觀的沖突，各種思維方式的較量，所有的陪審團員都負責任地投出了自己神圣的一票。