Not Guilty In Twelve Angry Men By Reginald Rose

In the play, Twelve angry men, by Reginald Rose, was about a trial to see if a boy was a murderer. It showed reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt is a standard of proof used in a criminal trial. A piece of evidence is the el train and the knife. The boy bought the murder weapon the night of the murder, he also showed it to three friends.

Let me set the scene for you: you’ve just been accused of a crime you didn’t commit, there’s no reliable evidence to prove you committed said crime, and yet you’re still being found guilty. While this isn’t as common today as it was in the past, it still tends to happen. Some of the most famous cases of this happening are the Salem Witch Trials and the trial of the West Memphis 3. While these are very different events we, as people, can learn many different lessons from both events. The witch trials were started and spread by fear and hysteria.

In Reginald Rose’s play Twelve Angry Men, the story dives into a jury in a conflict of choosing the verdict of a murder trial. The jury is in a hot room fueled by heated arguments and discussions on whether the young man is guilty or innocent. At the beginning of the decision process, the majority had decided that the boy was guilty of murder, but Juror #8 contested otherwise. Throughout the play, Juror #8 maintains his conformist views that altered the outcome of the court case. Furthermore, the argument set by how jurors decided the final verdict is shown in Twelve Angry Men by how they are challenged through the idea of conformity and nonconformity.

"Don 't judge a book by its cover" is a famous saying that some of us heard it before and some of us experienced it. 12 jurors were experiencing this quote when they gathered to decide whether a young boy is guilty by killing his father or not. Juror 2 stated, "Well, anyway, I think he was guilty" (6). Juror 2 represent most of us, as sometimes we judge from what we hear and not from what we see. The 12 jurors are from various backgrounds and each one has a distinctive personality.

Twelve Angry Men: Revised Logical Fallacy Essay Assignment During the discussion between the jurors, Juror #10 had made a red herring logical fallacy. In the book, the jurors talked about the boy’s unfortunate situation; they believed that they owed the boy something. In response to the jurors, Juror #10 stated, “We don’t owe him a thing. He got a fair trial, didn’t he?

“A person is innocent until proved guilty in a court of law” In the play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, an 18-year-old is on trial for the murder of his father. After many pieces of evidence, the three that are in doubt are the old man hearing “I’m going to kill you!” as well as the weapon of choice and how it was replicated, and finally the woman’s testimony. In my opinion, the boy could have been proven guilty, based on these the boy is not guilty.

“I have signed seventy-two death warrants; I am a minister of the lord, and I dare not take a life without there be proof so immaculate no slightest qualm of conscience may doubt it,” said Arthur Miller in The Crucible. The Crucible was written about the Salem Witch Trials, and the wrongful verdicts the accused were sentenced to. For a case to be proven guilty there should be no reasonable doubt the suspects have committed the crime they are being accused of, but in many cases this is not what happens. People have been found and are being found guilty for crimes they did not commit because court system is failing them. While the West Memphis Three and the Salem Witch Trials are both cases known for the justice system failing, the West Memphis

Twelve Angry Men is in many ways a love letter to the American legal justice system. We find here eleven men, swayed to conclusions by prejudices, past experience, and short-sightedness, challenged by one man who holds himself and his peers to a higher standard of justice, demanding that this marginalized member of society be given his due process. We see the jurors struggle between the two, seemingly conflicting, purposes of a jury, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. It proves, however, that the logic of the American trial-by-jury system does work.

He fills in an X and hands the pencil to NO. 12.” (12 Angry Men). He thinks the only pieces of evidence are the witnesses because they said they saw the killing even though there was flaws within their testimony. After further investigation, he agrees the boy is not guilty. Then, juror number three persuades number twelve

This is an important element when deciding who the best and worst jurors were. There were no facts as to who was right or wrong because we didn’t see the crime in question. All

The play initiates with the 8th Juror voting 'not guilty' in comparison to the rest of the jury which vote 'guilty’. This is significant because it shows each character’s stance of the overall case, therefore the different views of 8th and

Juror eight held his ground and convince the men to look over all of the evidence. Juror eight brought out the files, acted out different situations and the murder scene. The men went back and forth for hours fighting about whether or not the boy was guilt of killing his father Slowly one by one the jurors changed their mind from guilty to not guilty. All but juror three changed their mind, he was the last one standing so the vote was 11-1.

The justice system that relies on twelve individuals reaching a life-or-death decision has many complications and dangers. The play Twelve Angry Men, by Reiginald Rose, illustrates the dangers of a justice system that relies on twelve people reaching a life-or-death decision because people are biased, they think of a jury system as an inconvenience, and many people aren’t as intelligent as others. The first reason why Reiginald illustrates dangers is because people can be biased or they can stereotype the defendant. The Jurors in Twelve Angry Men relate to this because a few of them were biased and several of them stereotyped the defendant for being from the slums. The defendant in this play was a 19 year old kid from the slums.

Juror #8 is the first man to vote not guilty in the case, and they should revise their approach because there is reasonable doubt of the boy, which is the beginning of the conflict. Based on their personal ghosts and anger, impatience and prejudice, the rest of jurors is engaged in affective conflict. For example, Juror #3 has a personal feeling about the behavior of kids, and he is certain that the boy is guilty based on his own prejudice. He says, “I’ve got a kid…when he was fifteen, he hit me in the face…I haven’t seen him in three years. Rotten kid!

In the beginning of the jury room discussion, the members are preoccupied with their own life, for some it was just a duty to do anyway without understanding the depth of the case. According to the law, the vote of the jury should be twelve to nothing either way to prove the boy guilty or not guilt. The best solution was to have a preliminary vote. The discussion heated up when one of the jury voted ‘not guilty’ against the eleven.