How Does 12 Angry Men Show Prejudice Obscures the Truth? Essay

Similarly ,In Twelve Angry Men Juror 8 is a smart and moral juror who is willing to stand against all the other jurors for what he thinks is right. He is the main protagonist who believes a boy accused with murdering his father deserves a discussion prior to a guilty verdict. Although all the other jurors initially voted guilty, juror 8 believed that the jurors should not “send a boy off to die without talking about it first”(Juror 8, 12). Throughout the play Juror 8 combats the pressure from the other Jurors to just vote guilty and manages to convince his fellow Jurors one by one that there in fact is “reasonable doubt”(Judge, 6) and convinces them to arrive at a “not guilty”(Juror 3, 72) verdict. Reginald Rose extols Juror 8’s pursuit of justice through his success. Not only did Juror 8 stand by his principles and have the courage to stand against all the other Jurors, he also had the wits to convince his fellow jurors to change their verdict. Through these actions Juror 8 brings justice to the courts of New York city saving the life of a young boy.

Reginald Rose’s ‘Twelve Angry Men’ is a play which displays the twelve individual jurors’ characteristics through the deliberation of a first degree murder case. Out of the twelve jurors, the 8th Juror shows an outstanding heroism exists in his individual bravery and truthfulness. At the start, the 8th Juror stands alone with his opposing view of the case to the other eleven jurors. Furthermore, he is depicted as a juror who definitely understands the jury system and defends it from the jurors who do not know it fully. At the end, he eventually successes to persuade the eleven other jurors and achieves a unanimous verdict, showing his

Juror 3 was basing his failed relationship with his son on the accused boy. The reason that he had such a bad relationship with his son is because when the boy was young, he ran away from a fight and Juror 3 said: “I’m going to make a man out of you or I’m going to bust you up into little pieces trying”. Later on, when his son was older, they got into a fight and Juror 3 hasn’t seen him since. This experience probably left him the impression that all kids take their loved ones for granted, and that they deserve severe punishments. Juror 3 is not the type to provide the sharpest evidence or information, but he is very determined to prove that the accused really did murder the victim. Juror 8 practically gives nothing away about his real life, probably because he did not want to add his own prejudices to the case. Juror 3 gave both his ill-mannered personality and bigotry away in the play.

Juror #8 questions a lot of the evidence presented in court; he uses reasoning to question the motives of the witnesses that are put on stand. Most of the jurors who claim to be making their votes on facts, are not open to listening to Juror #8’s approach to reason and reviewing the so-called facts of the case. Throughout the discussion, emotions arise mostly in anger and frustrations. This plays a positive role in the decision-making, because it opens the door to more questions and self-reflections for the jurors to really think about voting on the life of a young man without their own personal feelings getting in the way. For example, he uses many rhetorical questions which are expressions of doubt such as “You don't believe the boy. How come you believe the women?” By appending to the sentence: “She is one of ‘them’ too, isn't she”, Juror #8 successfully raise the doubt through his question. During the course of the debate within the jury room Juror #8 summarizes the evidence presented and the conclusions drawn by his fellow jurors, by asking questions like, what do we know

This demonstrates why Juror Eight is constantly personified as the passionate, and a dependable juror in this play. Although, he is not that confident that the defendant is innocent but he acknowledges that he is not sure and he feels like it is unfair for the defendant if the jurors do not give him a reasonable attempt. Juror Eight recognizes that the defendant has had hard times at his early ages, and he stands up for him because he understands him. Juror Eight represents a good stranger/juror who is standing up for the weaker

This excerpt Twelve Angry Men is written by Reginald Rose. Three character traits that I picked to explain how Juror Three acts is prideful, aggressive, and stubborn. I chose prideful because he thinks he knows that the boy killed his dad. I chose aggressive because he says that the kid needs to burn. And I chose stubborn because he’s showing determination not to change his

I want to hear more. The vote in ten to two,” (Rose 25). As you can see, Juror #8 changes his vote to “Not Guilty”, even though he thinks it's wrong, but it’s for the right reason because he is giving his support to Juror #9, who feels strongly about the defendant being innocent even though there was a murder. This shows that Juror #8 cares about justice and is willing to stand up against a crowd to do what he thinks is right. At the end of the deliberation, the vote is 11 for not guilty and 1 for guilty, and Juror #3 stand alone. The 8th and 4th Jurors both make a short and final plea, and the 3rd Juror finally concedes, saying, Alright, Not Guilty,” (Rose 63). Furthermore, Juror #3 strongly believes that the defendant is guilty, but he has to vote not guilty, because it is the right decision even though he believes it is wrong. Juror #3 votes not guilty because even though he thinks the decision is wrong, because it is not easy to send off a boy to die when the vote is 11 guilty and 1 guilty. This shows that Juror #3 is doing something right and voting ¨Not Guilty¨ which was against his wishes. In conclusion, Juror #3 and #8 both make conscious decisions supporting what is right even though, in someway, they thought the defendant was guilty.

In Reginald Rose’s play, Twelve Angry Men, Rose’s play makes an argument against the jury system in the United States. This is shown when Juror #12 changes his vote and when Juror #10 talks about his prejudice towards the defendant .

In the movie, the jury has to come to a unanimous decision on the boy’s innocence or guilt as stated by the judge in the beginning of the film and that any decision that is not unanimous will result in a hung jury where they will most likely schedule for a retrial. While most of the characters of the jury seem adamant about the eventual result of the kid and how his fate should pan out, juror number 8 decides that he is going to vote for not guilty in order to have a reasonable discussion about the trial instead of immediately sending the defendant to the chair to be executed. This is met by the initial outrage of the group at the thought of someone going against what was the norm of the group, which is very uncommon for someone to do especially in a murder trial where people tend to be very opinionated and set in stone about their ideas. This unflinching and unresolving attitude is shown throughout the movie as juror number 8 slowly and methodically uses both central and peripheral route persuasion to

Twelve Angry Men is a drama written by Reginald Rose concerning the jury of a homicide trial that was later turned into a movie. The movie shows the deliberations of a homicide trial in New York City in 19157. At the beginning of the movie eleven of the twelve jurors decided the boy on trial as being guilty. The one man, juror number eight, that did not agree that the boy was guilty felt that he needed to be sure without a doubt that the boy killed his father before sentencing him to the death penalty. Throughout the play the juror eight convinces the rest of the jury of the boy’s innocence through ethics, advocacy, and the establishment of a verbal contract.

He imagines how difficult life would’ve been having been abused from a very young age. One of the jurors is clouded by his own strained relationship with his son. Over the course of action he gets so worked up that he has an emotional outbreak. He goes through deep anger and eventually sadness. He then becomes aware of the misdirected anger and he too eventually changes his vote to not guilty.

The film 12 angry men was about twelve jurors and the case they were assign too. The case was about a teenage boy murdering his father with a knife. The jurors job was to state their beliefs about the facts of the case. In the film it showed social psychological concepts that displayed the juror’s opinions and beliefs of the case when it came to finding the defendant guilty or not guilty. The three social psychological concepts in the film I chose to write about is prejudice, informational conformity, and naïve realism.

Twelve Angry Men is a dramatic courtroom play by Reginald Rose published in 1954, which focuses on a jury of twelve men arguing the fate of a young boy, who has been accused of being a murderer. This play cleverly portrays the fact that prejudice exists in society and within every conflict. There are many sources of bigotry in this play, those being mostly character and legal conflict. Many jurors within this play fail to consider all the evidence and take it at face value, this leads to reasonable doubt, which in turn introduces controversy between characters.

First, Let's examine Juror 8’s demeanor. He appears to be a gentle, quiet and an astute man. In the initial jury vote, he is the only juror that votes ‘not guilty’ while the rest votes ‘guilty.’ Thus, he exhibits that he is a man that values justice and is willing to fight for it. His display of dubitatio is recognized when he says, “ I don’t know whether I believe it or not. Maybe I don’t.” (Lumet & Rose, 1957). He is uncertain whether the boy is innocent or guilty but merely seeks the truth. He further states that it is not easy for him to “send a boy off to die without talking about it first” (Lumet & Rose, 1957). While justifying to Juror 7 why he cast a ‘not guilty’ vote, Juror 8 utilizes pathos to sway the jurors. “Look, this boy’s been kicked around all his life. You know, living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. That’s not a very good head start,” he says (Lumet & Rose, 1957). Juror 8 points to the boy’s poor upbringing in a bid to persuade the others to reconsider discussing the case before making a hasty judgment. He also uses his moderate touch and amiable expressions to calm Juror 9 from the comments made by Juror 10. Consequently, it is apparent that Juror 8’s attitude in determining facts to the

He keeps digging deeper until things are talked out and he decides whether or not to go the other way. As shown in Figure 1, Juror 8 is a circle with a blue inside and outside to represent confidence and truth. Juror 8 is also the only man who votes not guilty when they vote the first time. When he is asked why he says: “There were eleven votes for guilty. It’s not so easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.” (12 Angry Men) Throughout the play Juror 8 explains his reasonings and gets other Jurors to vote not guilty also. Juror 9 is the first to switch over: “Thank you.(Pointing at NO. 8) This gentleman chose to stand alone against us, That’s his right. It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone, even if you believe in something very strongly. He left the verdict up to us. He gambled for support, and I gave it to him. I want to hear more. The vote is ten to two.” (12 Angry Men) Juror 8 is the only static character throughout the movie because he is the only one who doesn’t change his