Following the guilty verdict brought against Tom Robinson,
Jem believed that juries should be done away with.
"Tom's jury sho' made up its mind in a hurry,"
Jem murmered.
But Atticus
disagreed and decided to set him straight. Atticus explained that it was "an inevitable
verdict," one that usually takes an all-white male jury just a few minutes to decide.
But Tom's jury took "a few hours." Atticus revealed that there was a single juror who
held out in Tom's favor and, incredibly to Jem, it was a member of the Old Sarum
crowd--a Cunningham, probably one of the same men who had come to the jail with the
intention of lynching Tom. "On a hunch," Atticus had decided to not strike him from the
jury, and though the man eventually succumbed to the pressure from the other jurors, he
held out for several hours; had there been two Cunninghams, said Atticus, "we'd've had a
hung jury."
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