Runaway Jury (2003)

Runaway Jury is a 2003 American drama/thriller film directed by Gary Fleder and starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and Rachel Weisz. It is an adaptation of John Grisham's novel The Runaway Jury.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, a failed day trader at a stock brokerage firm shows up at his former workplace with a semiautomatic handgun and opens fire on his former colleagues, killing himself soon after. Among the dead are Celeste Wood's husband Jacob (Dylan McDermott in a brief uncredited role). Two years later, armed with pro bono attorney Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman), Celeste Wood (Joanna Going) decides to take the weapon's manufacturer to court, on the grounds that the company's gross negligence led to her husband's death. Jury consultant Rankin Fitch and his team at work. As the trial date draws near, jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman) arrives in town. He has an incredible talent for reading people and has used it successfully many times in the past. Fitch and his team are armed with a massive network of computers and backgrounds on each of the jurors in the jury pool. Using this, they communicate with lead defense attorney Durwood Cable (Bruce Davison) in the courtroom through electronic surveillance (a highly illegal practice) as they view the jurors and hear the answers to the questions put forth to them. This technology serves to create a "nightmare of corporate arm-twisting." In the jury pool is Nicholas Easter (John Cusack), a happy-go-lucky electronic store clerk who tries to get himself excused from jury duty. The judge (Bruce McGill) decides to give Easter a lesson in civic duty and Fitch, despite having originally eliminated Easter from the list of potential jurors, tells Cable that the judge has sandbagged them, and that he must select Easter as a juror. Easter's congenial manner wins him acceptance from his fellow jurors, with the exception of Frank Hererra (Cliff Curtis), a hardened former Marine of Cuban descent who knows as well as Easter does that there is a great deal of money at stake. Hererra takes an instant dislike to Easter, which is not alleviated when Easter proposes Herman Grimes (Gerry Bamman) —- a blind man who displayed more legal knowledge than any when being selected —- as jury foreman instead of Hererra. However, there is something to Hererra's suspicion that Easter has a hidden agenda. It is soon clear that Easter does have an ulterior motive, which somehow involves his girlfriend Marlee (Rachel Weisz). The two seem to be grifters, and try to offer Fitch the verdict he wants -— for a steep price. Fitch asks for proof that they can do what they say they can do. This they try to give him in a number of different ways; for example, Marlee asks Fitch "feeling patriotic?" and the next day, as an indirect result of a suggestion of Easter's, the jury stands up and leads the entire courtroom in the Pledge of Allegiance. Though Fitch is capable of pushing various jurors' buttons with subtle threats, Easter manages to hold them together. Angered that an "amateur" may be even better at manipulating the jury than he is, Fitch orders Easter's apartment raided; Doyle (Nick Searcy), Fitch's man for such tasks, searches for something to compromise Easter. Easter returns and surprises him, but after a struggle Doyle manages to escape. Marlee retaliates by getting one of Fitch's jurors bounced. Easter, who has hidden surveillance equipment in his apartment, leaks a video of himself fighting with Doyle (whose face is away from the camera) to the judge, who orders the jury sequestered, away from Fitch's ability to blackmail them. Meanwhile, Marlee is also working on Rohr, also promising to deliver his preferred verdict (which of course is the direct opposite of what Fitch wants) for the same price. When Rohr's key witness does not show up as a result of Fitch's threat, Rohr privately confronts Fitch. Fitch tells Rohr that he cannot be beaten by him, because he doesn't have any sympathy for the people's lives he's destroyed. Now believing he cannot win the case, Rohr asks his firm's partners for access to $10 million dollars through their reserve fund. Henry Jankle (Stanley Anderson), president of the gun manufacturing firm and one of Fitch's key witnesses, stumbles badly on the stand. Fitch sends an operative, Janovich (Nestor Serrano), to kidnap Marlee and assure that they will win the case. When she resists, they fight. She stabs Janovich in the leg and escapes. She then calls Fitch and raises her price from $10 million to $15 million. Though Rohr knows his case stands little chance against the well-funded defense, he refuses to pay, going with his conscience. Before learning this, Fitch has agreed to pay off Marlee for the verdict. After Easter receives confirmation that Fitch has wired the money to a Cayman Islands bank, he asks jurors to review the facts of the case (trying to deliver a verdict for the plaintiff, Celeste), much to the chagrin of Herrera. In the meantime, Fitch sends Doyle to track down Easter's earlier history in the rural town of Gardner, Indiana, where he discovers Easter's real identity. Doyle learns that Easter's real name is Jeffrey Kerr, that he was a very talented former law student who dropped out, and that he has been tailing gun cases for some time. He also learns that Marlee's real name is Gabrielle Brant, and that she and her sister were former high school classmates of Easter's in Gardner. Doyle learns that Gabrielle's sister died in a school shooting. The town of Gardner sued the gun manufacturer that made the gun the murderer used, and the gun company hired Fitch as a consultant. When Fitch helped to win the case for the defense, the town of Gardner was bankrupted. Doyle concludes that Easter and Marlee's intent is a set-up, and he frantically calls Fitch, telling him to not wire the money, but it is too late. Marlee calls the police to report a break-in at the location of Fitch's high-tech operations, and as the police raid the building, Fitch escapes out the back. Back in the jury room, Herrera calls the lawsuit frivolous, stating that despite the hardships in his own life, he has never asked anyone for a handout. Easter draws Herrera into a rant, causing him to confess his contemptuous disregard of the law and case facts, and refusal to deliver a verdict that will make an upper-middle class woman even richer. Shocked at Herrera's outburst, the jurors agree to review the testimony once more; Herrera's tirade undermines most of the support he may have had for dismissal of the lawsuit. The gun manufacturer is found liable, with the jury awarding $110 million in general damages to Celeste Wood. Fitch, defeated, leaves the courthouse for a nearby bar. Easter (Kerr) and Marlee (Brant) confront him with a copy of the wire transfer documenting the $15 million bribe. They tell him that he is to retire immediately, or they will fax the transfer document to the IRS and other government agencies, which will likely investigate his actions. Fitch asks what they intend to do with the money, to which they say that the $15 million will benefit the shooting victims in the town of Gardner, Indiana. They leave Fitch, who shouts after them that they will never stop manipulating people for money, because if they did, they would have nothing (an obvious reference to himself). Outside the bar, Easter (Kerr) and Marlee (Brant) exchange knowing looks at a distance with Rohr. They smile at one another. Marlee tells Easter she wants to go home, which Easter agrees with.