Stella and Cal Hulic take a commuter flight from the Gulfport Airport to Atlanta, Georgia, before catching a flight to Miami, Florida. Marlee follows them the entire way. When the Hulics check into their hotel, Marlee calls their room. Cal answers, and Marlee tells him that men from the tobacco companies are following and watching Stella. Cal is disturbed, but Marlee calls a second time to tell them not to call the police, as the men are technically not breaking the law. Stella spends the rest of her weekend hiding out in her hotel room.

Listing Foods flies Lonnie Shaver to Charlotte on a private jet. The men he met in his office give him a tour of their corporate office and introduce him to George Teaker, the CEO of SuperHouse, the grocery chain owned by Listing Foods that is taking over Lonnie’s store. After a nice lunch, they take Lonnie to the country club. Lonnie promises himself that he’ll leave if he’s the only Black person there, but when they meet up with Teaker, he’s with two other Black executives who work in Listing Foods. Lonnie enjoys his time eating, drinking, and talking with them. The next day, he meets with Teaker and a lawyer named Taunton to sign his new employment contract. Teaker and the lawyer bring up the trial, telling Lonnie that this trial could have a big impact on Listing Foods and its success as a company, given that Listing Foods makes a lot of money from tobacco. They ask Lonnie if he understands, hinting that he needs to side against the plaintiff, and Lonnie agrees.

The mood in the jury room is less upbeat as everyone returns from their weekends. Nicholas begins speaking with Angel Weese, one of the only two Black women on the jury along with Loreen, but he wants to see how Stella’s trip to Miami went. He asks Angel to smoke with him, pretending that he’s smoking only for the duration of the trial. Nicholas smokes outside with Angel, Stella, Jerry, and a juror whom the others have secretly nicknamed “Poodle.” Nicholas claims that he was followed over the weekend by men from the tobacco companies. Stella looks shaken, and Poodle and Jerry think that Nicholas should tell the judge. Nicholas says that he won’t tell the judge and watches as Stella silently decides that she won’t tell Harkin, either.

The jury sits for another day of Kilvan’s testimony. Rohr is still shaken by the message he received from Marlee. Fitch, however, thinks that this could be the easiest verdict yet, as Lonnie is now in Listing Foods’ pocket. He also thinks he has the opportunity to purchase the verdict from Marlee.

As Kilvan’s testimony continues, Nicholas sends a note to Harkin requesting an urgent meeting during lunch. In Harkin’s chambers, Nicholas tells Harkin that Stella was followed in Miami, claiming to have overheard Stella discussing it. He also tells Harkin that Frank is attempting to sway people to his opinion that they should rule against the defendant. Finally, Nicholas takes out a VHS and shows Harkin via VCR the video of Doyle breaking into Nicholas’s apartment, claiming that he has cameras in his apartment because he was robbed and beaten a few years prior. Harkin recognizes Doyle as the man in the courtroom.

Fitch receives another call from Marlee, who tells him that she knows Doyle broke into Nicholas’s apartment and that Harkin knows, too. She warns him that Harkin plans to arrest Doyle, so Fitch should send Doyle away. Fitch sends Doyle to Chicago, Illinois, and kicks himself for being careless.

Harkin pauses the afternoon testimony to send the jurors back to the jury room and meet privately with both sides of the case. Once the spectators leave, Harkin reveals what Nicholas told him about Stella being followed and about the break-in. Harkin brings Stella in and asks her about being followed, and Stella breaks down in tears as she describes hiding in her hotel room after receiving phone calls from a young woman and finding out that her husband was followed at the beach by a Cuban man with a camera. Harkin dismisses Stella and replaces her with an alternate juror named Phillip Savelle, whom neither side knows much about.

Harkin then calls Nicholas in to show the break-in video. When Stella and Nicholas return to the jury room, Harkin tells both sides that they must either declare a mistrial or sequester the jury. After much argument, both sides agree to the sequestration. The jurors will return home to gather their things before staying in an unnamed hotel for the duration of the trial.

Fitch realizes that he never sent anyone to Miami and that the young woman who called Stella must have been Marlee, who likely also hired the fake cameraman to tail Cal Hulic.

The night before sequestration begins, Nicholas, Jerry, and Poodle (whose real name is revealed to be Sylvia) go to a casino to drink and gamble and celebrate their last night of freedom. Jerry and Poodle have a flirtatious relationship, as Poodle is twice divorced and Jerry’s marriage is crumbling. Nicholas and Poodle arrive first, and Nicholas attempts to get information about her private life. When Jerry gets there, they briefly discuss the possibility of being followed before setting in to watch the Packers game.

Herman Grimes’s wife calls the judge to ask to be allowed to join sequestration, given that Herman is blind and relies on her for care. Harkin agrees to let Mrs. Grimes stay in the motel with Herman, but she cannot speak to any other jurors or watch any more of the trial. Lonnie does a week’s worth of work in a single night before calling Teaker and letting him know about the sequestration. Teaker reiterates how important the verdict is to Listing Foods, and Lonnie promises to do what he can. Meanwhile, lead defense attorney Cable confronts Fitch, criticizing him for interrupting the trial with his surveillance. Fitch truthfully denies being involved in the surveillance of Stella and lies, saying that he was not involved in the break-in at Nicholas’s apartment.

The jurors arrive at the jury room with their bags, and Nicholas is angry when Lou Dell and a deputy demand to search their bags. Nicholas whips the other jurors into a fury about the indignity of having their bags searched. The jurors lock themselves in the jury room and go on strike. Harkin goes to the room and speaks with the jury. He agrees to forgo the bag searches, and then Nicholas and the others negotiate for two conjugal visits a week instead of one.

The jurors return to hear Kilvan’s cross-examination by Cable. On Wall Street, Pynex’s stock begins to dip and fluctuate as the news of Stella’s dismissal and the break-in at Nicholas’s apartment travels north. The stock rises when news of the jury strike hits.

Fitch wants to sway juror Rikki Coleman. As a healthy 30-year-old, married with two kids, Rikki seems likely to oppose the tobacco companies’ interests. Fitch pulls her medical files by using his contacts in Rikki’s doctor’s malpractice insurance company, forcing the doctor to give him the files or face losing his malpractice coverage. Though her initial medical records show nothing of note, Fitch manages to find records from a clinic in the town where Rikki went to college that show that she had an abortion when she was 20—an abortion that Fitch bets Rikki’s husband knows nothing about.

The 14 jurors and alternates take a bus to the Siesta Inn located 30 minutes outside of Biloxi. Each juror gets their own room, as do Lou Dell and the deputy, Willis. The rooms have no phones, TVs, or mini-bars. One room at the end of the wing has been turned into what the jurors call “the party room,” a room that has a dining table for the jurors to eat in. Though Nicholas initially keeps the mood light, the next morning, the jurors are upset that they have no TV, no beer, no newspapers, no access to call home, no gym to work out in, etc. Nicholas demands that they riot and speak to Harkin before they agree to go to court again. Harkin is frustrated but decides to go see the jury.

Marlee calls Fitch three times. The first two times, she simply tells one of Fitch’s associates that the jury is unhappy and then predicts what Nicholas will be wearing. The third time, she demands to speak to Fitch personally and asks him to meet her in a hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, that night. Fitch agrees.

Harkin arrives at the motel alongside Rohr and Cable. When he speaks to the jury, he agrees to give them beer, TVs if they promise not to watch the local news, unrestricted access to the phone, newspapers censored by the front desk, and transport to church services, though he cannot likely give them access to a gym. Harkin asks the jury to promise no more strikes, but Nicholas will not agree.

In the courtroom, Rohr calls to the stand Dr. James Ueuker, a researcher studying how the tar in cigarettes causes cancer. However, Rohr cuts Ueuker’s testimony short after the jury consultants note that the jurors, especially the women, seem upset by Ueuker’s animal experimentation.

Jumper, one of the courtroom deputies, is bribed by Fitch’s men to accompany Fitch to New Orleans. By the time they reach New Orleans, Jumper has decided to work for Fitch. Fitch waits for Marlee at the restaurant with his men surrounding them at various tables. Marlee arrives and talks with Fitch. He asks her numerous questions, which she fails to answer. She establishes that she knows Nicholas well and that he is the ringleader of the jury. Fitch tries to talk about money and payment for a verdict, but Marlee declines. She does tell him that Nicholas has started smoking since the start of the trial. When she leaves, Fitch sends two men in a car to trail her, but Marlee calls the police and states that two men in a car are stalking her. When she stops to get gas, the police arrest Fitch’s men for stalking.

Nicholas and Jerry sneak past the deputy on duty to take a taxi out to a casino and bar nearby. While Jerry gets drunk, makes bets, and flirts with a married woman, Nicholas secretly meets Marlee. They kiss and share their information before Nicholas collects Jerry.

Rohr knows that the jury is tired of hearing about statistics and science from doctors. For his next witness, he calls Lawrence Krigler, a man who used to work for Pynex for 30 years before leaving in the midst of a lawsuit that settled out of court. Krigler managed to develop a tobacco leaf titled Raleigh 4 that had a third of the nicotine of regular tobacco. Pynex, however, buried Krigler’s discovery because they already knew that nicotine was addictive from a previous study and wanted to exploit its addictive properties to boost sales. Krigler describes the existence of a memo he found addressed to another tobacco company president who died in 1942, illustrating that the memo existed before 1942.

Krigler goes on to argue that Pynex absolutely knew about the addictive properties of nicotine. Krigler left his copy of the memo in his desk, but it was stolen. He is certain that the memo exists and that Pynex knows nicotine is addictive. He testifies for three hours during the morning session. One of Fitch’s early jobs for The Fund was to track down and destroy every copy of the memo. He’s still working on it. Cable tried to prevent the admission of Krigler’s verbal description of a document he doesn’t have, but Rohr convinced Harkin to let it stand. The jury eats lunch in tense silence.

In cross-examination, Cable asks Krigler if he’s angry at Pynex or anyone who works there. He then asks Krigler about his own past smoking and Krigler’s sister who died of lung cancer after years of smoking. Krigler quit three years after promising his dying sister that he would do so, but he kept working for Pynex for a decade after he discovered how deadly cigarettes are. Cable then tries to go after Krigler to discredit him by alleging that Krigler was a bad employee. This frustrates Nicholas, who tells the other jurors that Cable is throwing mud at Krigler and insulting the jury’s intelligence.

After his testimony, Krigler is quickly spirited out of town due to previous threats from people associated with the tobacco industry.

Hoppy, juror Millie Dupree’s husband, is a struggling real-estate agent in town. Hoppy is approached by Todd Ringwald, a casino developer from Las Vegas, Nevada, who works for KLX Property Group. Ringwald tells Hoppy that people want to build an MGM Grand casino on the Gulf Coast. Ringwald wants Hoppy to work as the sole realtor on the project, offering a $400,000 commission. Ringwald convinces Hoppy to bribe Jimmy Hull Moke, a corrupt county supervisor, to get the project off the ground.

Teaker calls Lonnie at the motel, and Lonnie assures him that the verdict is still uncertain, but he is doing what he can. Teaker tells Lonnie that his new salary will be $50,000 with stock options and the potential for a $20,000 performance-based bonus. Just three years ago, Lonnie only earned $25,000 per year.

The Wall Street Journal runs another front-page story about the trial and Krigler’s testimony. Harkin calls Lou Dell to ensure that none of the jurors have access to it. Meanwhile, Hoppy considers how to bribe Jimmy Hull Moke and how to spend the commission money to support his family.

The next day of the trial, the defense attempts to appear softer after the Krigler debacle, though Nicholas sees through it and tells the other jurors that the defense is reeling while attempting to appear in control. Rohr calls Dr. Roger Bunch, the former surgeon general of the United States, to the stand to discuss the addictive and dangerous aspects of cigarettes and how the tobacco industry spends billions lobbying for their interests and misleading the public. Bunch clearly hates the tobacco industry, but despite his disdain, he connects with the jury.

Hoppy meets with Moke, who demands $100,000 in cash to push the building project through. Hoppy calls Ringwald, who agrees to pay the $100,000. Hoppy tells Moke that he’ll meet with him again on Monday.

Fitch takes a break from attending the trial to pull up the Cimmino case files from Allentown. He believes that Nicholas Easter is the same person as David Lancaster, a potential juror who was dismissed from the previous case. He also pulls the Glavine case files from Broken Arrow, believing that Nicholas is the same person as Perry Hirsch, who nearly made the jury before the plaintiff’s side passed on him. Nicholas looks identical to the other two men, and a handwriting expert confirms that the available handwriting samples are the same.

The jurors receive their conjugal visits from their spouses and romantic partners, though Nicholas, Jerry, Lonnie, and Frank spend the evening watching a John Wayne movie in the party room. Marlee calls Fitch, having located him despite the many security measures he’s taken to hide his location. Marlee tells Fitch that Jerry and Poodle (Sylvia) are sleeping together. She also tells him that Krigler was extremely convincing to the jury, but Rohr is nervous about Fitch and his resources. Fitch again tries to talk money, but Marlee refuses and hangs up. Fitch goes down to the casino and gambles.

Someone knocks on Hoppy’s door. He opens it and finds two FBI agents named Agent Nitchman and Agent Napier. Hoppy panics before letting them in. They reveal that Jimmy Hull Moke was wired after being investigated for bribery. Nitchman and Napier threaten Hoppy with prison time. In reality, Nitchman and Napier, as well as Ringwald, are retired cops who work for Fitch. Moke wasn’t wired; Ringwald planted a mike in Hoppy’s office during their initial meeting. The deal that Ringwald offered Hoppy is fake. Nitchman and Napier tell Hoppy not to call his lawyer for 24 hours, offering him what they call “a 24 hour deal.” Hoppy agrees. Meanwhile, the jurors take a day trip to New Orleans, organized by the court to keep them happy.