Behind every facet of the plot in The Runaway Jury is the tension between influence and free will. This tension is at the heart of the trial itself, which seeks to determine who bears responsibility for the harmful health effects of smoking: the people who choose to smoke or the companies that influence that choice through multi-million-dollar ad campaigns and deliberately addictive products. At numerous points in the novel, both jurors and lawyers argue over whether smoking is an individual choice or the product of systemic manipulation. 

Faced with a lawsuit threatening to hold them accountable for this systemic manipulation, the Big Four tobacco companies seek to influence the jury just as they have influenced the public. As head of a secretive dark money organization called The Fund, Rankin Fitch performs illegal surveillance, bribery, and blackmail to obtain the desired verdict, calling into question the degree to which any juror’s vote represents their individual will as opposed to the clandestine will of The Fund. Once the jurors are selected, the illegal activities ramp up. Nicholas and Marlee know that in past tobacco trials, Fitch and his employees have utilized bribery to obtain their desired verdicts, as the narrator notes, “Though there was no way to prove it, Nicholas was certain Rankin Fitch was the phantom behind the payoffs. And he knew Fitch would quickly go to work on his new set of friends” (55). Nicholas is certain that the previous juries were wrongfully influenced and predicts, correctly, that Fitch will utilize the same techniques for outside manipulation again.

Nicholas, however, has his own plans for influencing the jurors from the inside. Instead of approaching them with bribes, he seeks to build relationships with his fellow jurors. For example, when Henry Vu is finally allowed to eat with the other jurors, “Nicholas, of course, [] befriend[s] him immediately. He [i]s determined that Henry Vu w[ill] sit with the chosen twelve, and be present when the deliberations began” (330). Grisham’s use of the term “chosen twelve” illustrates the influence that Nicholas has over the jury, as he is the one selecting who stays and who gets removed. While Fitch attempts to wield hard power on the jurors, coercing them via bribery or threats of false imprisonment, Nicholas utilizes soft power, befriending his fellow jurors to influence them to vote with him.

Nicholas also assumes that all his fellow jurors are being targeted by Fitch, so, like the jury consultants, Nicholas watches the jurors:

He sometimes loitered in the hallway as the guests were arriving for the personal visits, and he sometimes loitered there as they left. He eavesdropped on the gossip in the jury room. He listened to three conversations at once during the daily walks around town after lunch. He took notes on every person in the courtroom, even had nicknames and code names for them all (383-84).

Faced with an opposition determined to influence the jury in favor of the tobacco companies, Nicholas does not become an advocate for free will but instead seeks to influence the jury as effectively as his opponents do. He performs the same level of surveillance as Fitch and his operatives, helping his fellow jurors avoid Fitch’s schemes while trapping them in schemes of his own. He views himself as morally superior to Fitch because he seeks to take down the tobacco industry, but he uses similar, albeit less emotionally damaging, techniques. He doesn’t convince people that the FBI will send them to prison, like Fitch does to Hoppy, but he does poison Herman to get him off the jury. Most importantly, by befriending his fellow jurors while hiding his true motives, he calls into question the degree to which their choices are truly their own.