Facts are necessary for court. A majority ruling has come to believe one set of facts over another.

In theory, the end of a court case is interpreted as a unity – where the outcome speaks to what those involved in the case, whether they were involved directly or indirectly have decided to believe to be true.

But does majority mean total unity?

The ‘unity’ of belief through the discussion of facts does occur, but we’re still left with 3 considerations.

First, the jury must take into account both sides of any case – which would include both facts and misleading information. Perhaps this is not intentional or conscious, but misrepresentation of information does occur in court – the more high profile the case, the more this is likely.

Second is the people outside the legal roles, both participants and observers. There’s no shortage of wrongful convictions across history. The Salem Witch Trials, imprisonment or murder of coloured individuals who were convicted by biased juries based on demographic selection, and crimes were done under severe mental duress.

Third would be the lawyers and judges. Case outcomes depend partially on bias and how well an attorney can ‘convince’ a threshold number of the jury in order to better swing the outcome of the private deliberations. But they can only do this inside the confines of the judge’s perception of what they consider acceptable.

12 people decide, but no matter that decision, one side along with spectators will feel they lost – in their mind, the majority will be wrong.