CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 4 - Episode 11 - Eleven Angry Jurors

Written by Josh Berman & Andrew Lipsitz
Directed by Matt Earl Beesley

When a juror in a murder case, Chris Gibbons, is found dead in a jury deliberation room, Grissom and the team need look no further than his 11 counterparts. The jury had been sequestered for almost three weeks, making for frayed nerves and short fuses, but did Gibbons get annoying enough for one of his fellow jurors to murder him? “Twelve strangers in a room with no exit,” Grissom muses. “In the words of Sartre, hell is other people.”

At first glance, it appears that Gibbons dies from blunt force trauma. The CSIs also note he had a severe allergy to penicillin, and Grissom spots a single blonde hair on Gibbons’ neck. He also determines from the last vote the jury took that there were 11 “guilty” verdicts, and one “not guilty,” which may prove to be motive.

The owner of the blonde hair, dancer Lana Davis, admits that she came on to Gibbons, nuzzling him and hoping to persuade him to change his vote, which explains the hair transfer. Apparently, the other jurors all had concrete reasons to dislike Gibbons, and they are honest about their feelings. It soon becomes clear that the penicillin allergy – and the medic alert bracelet that Gibbons wore – may be the key to finding their murderer. “Everyone hated him,” Sara says, “and everyone knew how to kill him.”

 Meanwhile, Nick reopens a missing person investigation when the missing woman’s sister comes forward with new information. It’s been four years, but Faye Minden says that she kept quiet out of fear of what her brother-in-law might do to her. Now Faye says she can no longer remain silent, and out of duty to her sister, claims she knows for certain that Rita didn’t disappear. Instead, she insists that Rita’s husband Aaron set his wife on fire and then dumped her ashes when she came home early from a business trip and discovered him with another woman. And how does she know this? Faye is the “other woman.”

At the time of this investigation, Nick was a Level 2 CSI, and Grissom made the decision to close the case based on the physical evidence. But now Nick must check out Faye Minden’s story to see if she’s telling the truth, and to determine whether or not Nick deferred to Grissom, going against his own un-Grissomlike instinct for the human element in the case.