12 Angry Men Frail

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.

Twelve angry men by Reginald Rose is an intriguing play that explores the idea of personal experience affecting ones decision. Indeed Rose shows that decision-making is based on personal experiences. This is evident in the play when the 3rd Juror’s personal experience with his own son influences his decision and as a result he votes for guilty, the 9th Jurors old age becomes one of the greatest factors which influences his judgement of the boy ; when the 5th Jurors personal experience in a slum causes further doubts to form in his mind It is clear throughout the play that personal

People's bias and predispositions can affect their opinion of different circumstances and different people. This is very evident throughout the play. After the first group vote and juror 8 votes not guilty, a discussion ensues. It is there that

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

The play "Twelve Angry Men", By Reginald Rose, is a play about 12 jurors that in an

A boy may die,” and changes his vote to “not guilty” which is another instance where the boy gets a fair trial. The 12th and 7th juror find it difficult to decide on which way to vote and therefore vote “not guilty” so that the boy is not “sent off to die.” The 12th juror’s lack of a defined and consistent point of view reflects America’s post war materialism. The 4th juror believed that the defendant was guilty for most of the play but then was the 2nd last juror to change his vote and admitted that he had a “reasonable doubt.” Although the audience never finds out whether the defendant was “guilty” or “not guilty” the jurors give the “kid from the slums” an honest trial.

Inside a room where life or death decisions are made, twelve men sit with wandering thoughts. The made up minds of some jurors are to send a boy to his death without a second thought, but one other juror may change that. Inside of the play Twelve Angry Men written by Reginald Rose, Juror 8 has the persuasive evidence to change the minds of his fellow Jurors and save a boy from his execution. The other Juror’s seem like they won’t budge with their mind set on the decision of guilty, but after Juror 8 proves his thoughts on the decision of innocent, he may just be able to save a young life.

Justice is the most important theme throughout this play. It proves that truth can’t be found without a struggle. In the play there was only one juror wanting to hear all the evidence in the court case. But when more facts were found out then some of the other jurors wanted to hear the rest of it, which would determine whether the defendant was guilty or not guilty. No one really knew if the boy was guilty but or not but they figured out that he was not given a fair trial. The defence barrister didn’t care because he wasn’t getting paid enough money to care. So that’s what the jurors thought it was up to them then, to repay the boy with justice.

Almost every day, we hear about justice being served upon criminals and we, as a society, feel a sense of relief that another threat to the public has been sentenced to a term in prison, where they will no longer pose a risk to the world at large. However, there are very rare occasions where the integrity of the justice system gets skewed and people who should not have been convicted are made to serve heavy prison sentences. When word of this judicial misstep reaches the public, there is social outcry, and we begin to question the judicial system for committing such a serious faux pas.

Juror #8 is a calm and reasonable man which makes it easier for him to judge the case fairly and justly without any prejudice. Juror #8 never said he believed the defendant to be innocent he only wanted to take the role of being a juror seriously and talk about the case before a young boy is sent off to die. “I’m not trying to change your mind it’s just that we’re talking about somebody’s life here… we can’t decide in five minutes.” Because he brings no prejudice in the jury room he is able to look at the facts and carefully decide on his judgement. Juror #8 recognizes other peoples prejudice and tries not to convince them that the boy is innocent but to have them let go of that prejudice and decide based on the facts whether they truly believe the defendant is guilty or not. Rose uses both juror

Although a lot of evidence was really convincing, he tried to prove it unconvincing and use sarcasm to convince other jurors otherwise. One example of #7 using sarcasm would be this quote: "Why don't we have them run the trial over..." I think this quote clearly shows that juror #7 is trying to convince other jurors, that court's evidence proves the young man is guilty without reasonable doubt. Also to break #8's spirit he used name calling, another kind of peer pressure. I believe this is a very good example: "The boy is guilty pal, like the nose on your face." The third and last juror I picked was #8, he was not using sarcasm, nor was he muscle flexing, he was using reasonable argument, which helped him convince all the jurors that the young man was innocent. He did not try to convince anybody by screaming at him, on the contrary he tried to go over all the evidence, and he was using intelligent thinking, like trying to calculate exact times, and figure out the correct position of the switch-blade in the chest of the father. He was also trying to recreate a situation to see if indeed one of the witnesses on the stand was lying.

Since 1923, when Judge Learned Hand said that the American judicial system “has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted,” the issue of wrongful conviction has been acknowledged to man (Halstead, 1992; Huff, Rattner, Sagarin, & MacNamara, 1986). After the judge made his innocuous statements, serious study of this phenomenon began. Contrary to the statement the judge made, time and technology have revealed that an unquantifiable number of wrongfully convicted persons have served prison terms and even been executed for crimes they did not commit and some that did not even occur. Research into wrongful conviction was virtually nonexistent until Professor Edward Brochard of Yale University published his book Convicting the Innocent in 1932. This book documented 65 such cases, addressed the legal causes of miscarriage, and offered suggestions to reform. Subsequently, numerous other researchers began conducting case studies and publishing findings that affirmed that wrongful conviction represents a systematic problem within the American judicial process (Huff, 2002).

Finally, Rose uses the anominity of the jurors to prehaps allow the reader to build their own ideas around what each juror represents to them. With Juror 8’s desirable characteristics, the reader can be inclined to think of ways they can be more like Juror 8, seeing situations in a different light to what they may appear in. By looking up to Juror 8 as that role model and possibly relating to the accused boy, they can ultimately see that the only reason he lived was because of Juror 8’s open-minded approach to looking at the big picture. In the world we live in today, nothing could be scarier than the idea that justice is served wrongly, and had Juror 8 not been present on the jury and someone similar to Juror 3 who just wanted to “go home and catch the game”, or Juror 10 who generalised that “the kids who crawl outa those places are real trash” took his place, the accused boy would have had justice served wrongly against him, ending his life. The qualities Juror 8 possesses make him a hero, even when he knows that he “may be wrong”.

Reginald Rose’s ’12 Angry Men’ brings 12 jurors together in a room to decide whether a young foreign boy is guilty of killing his father. The play is interwoven with dynamic characterisation, striking symbolism and intense moments of drama. Although Rose positions Juror 8 as the hero, the strongest character is in fact Juror 4, who is an independent thinker, rational and calm even as tension begins to build. Although Juror 4 initially votes guilty, he is able to admit his fault and change his vote.

Personal prejudice and bias from the jurors affects their logical thinking and this is how Rose illustrates that truth can still be inhibited even with the use of reason. Juror 10 is depicted as one of the main antagonists throughout the play. His statement of how “they don’t need a big excuse to kill someone” when describing the boy and ‘his’ people demonstrates how Juror 10’s personal prejudice against those from the slums affects his reason and logic as he links their socioeconomic background with their behaviour. Rather than depicting the boy as an individual, Juror 10 generalises him with “those people” who are criminals which emphasises the boy’s guilt in the mind of Juror 10. In addition to Juror 10’s prejudice, Juror 3, who is the other