Joshua/The Trial of Joe Black (Deliberations 3)

Joshua was starting to think that he wasn't cut out for this whole jury thing. He could see both sides of the argument now. First their forewoman Daisy would talk about an issue, and while it was pretty obvious that she had strong feelings against Black, she still made some good arguments. After hearing that, Joshua would think that they had no choice but to convict Black and sentence him to unending oblivion in that bubble. But then somebody else would step up and give some entirely convincing arguments to the contrary, and Joshua would see that they certainly could not let the Tower keep this man out of society. Was Joshua being too suggestible? Was he just going with whatever point of view he'd heard last? Or was there really no good answer to this question of guilt?

"Simms made an excellent point. We don't really know much about this case at all. All we have to go on is innuendo and hints that there's something important going on. But no one deigned to tell us exactly what that is. Most of what each juror has to go on seems to be simply their own gut feelings about the case, and not any sort of scientific procedure."

Well, what did he feel in his gut? Joshua decided that he felt both sides were right. And wrong. And completely irrelevant. "This whole thing is like taking a true or false test with one question that asks 'Is there a God?' when the only answers are 'maybe' or 'I think so' or even 'I don't know.' The answer completely depends on each person's individual feelings. There's no way we can answer this question with the information we have. So what does that mean for this case?"

"It means that we're going to have to decide what happens to Black more or less based on our gut feelings, because we have to make some decision, and that's all we've got."