An Analytical Essay: The Role Of Bias In The Courtroom

During the time Reginald Rose wrote the play Twelve Angry Men America was not an equal place for all people. A democracy is founded on the ideology that all Americans should be given a fair trial in court before being declared guilty. The twelve jurors in the play come from various backgrounds but initially, all but one vote in favor of the boy’s unforgivable sentence; while two other jurors lift two strong social stigmas and overcome their bias. One juror decided to stand up and take the time out for proper reasoning that resulted in teaching the others two jurors a lesson. Final verdicts should be made on justifiable grounds or the foundation of America’s society could be left at risk for collapse. Justifiable final verdicts are skewed

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

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.

In the video "How Statistics Fool Juries," Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly attempts to demonstrate through a number of examples how statistics, when viewed in a common manner, can be misunderstood and how this can have legal repercussions. Through a number of thought experiments, Donnelly provides the audience with examples of how seemingly simple statistics can be misinterpreted and how many more variables must be taken into account when calculating chance. Primarily he exposes the audience to the concept of relative difference, or the difference in likelihood between two possibilities in the same scenario. He then goes on to explain that without an understanding of this concept, many juries misunderstand statistics used in trials and very often convict people based on this faulty understanding.

The ideas discussed in this article show some extremely important parts of the judicatory in the state of Kansas. There are some advantages and disadvantages of this system of the judicatory. The article says that the “jury service is one of the most valuable public services that a citizen has an opportunity to perform”, but I think it is not. The United States has many precious public services such as voting, which shows the participation of the citizens to build their destinations in the society. In this article, the author says that “the performance of jury service is the fulfillment of a most important civil obligation”, and I agree because in this way the citizens can express how much their country is important for them,

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.

Throughout the text, negative racial prejudices hinder the success of justice, thus denying truth in the judicial system. Due to the defendant being hispanic, and from the slums, negative racial prejudices become prevalent in the juror’s opinions, which ultimately leads to injustice, as the truth is denied and ignored. The negative racial prejudices are depicted throughout the play multiple times, especially by Juror 10, who is revealed to be an open racist who believes that the 16 year old defendant should be sent to the electric chair due to his hispanic nationality. Within the play, Juror 10 states “They’re violent, they’re vicious, they’re ignorant, and they will cut us up. That’s their intent” when referring to the hispanic ‘race’. The direct dialogue conveyed within Juror 10’s statement allows the

"Twelve Angry Men", a play about a trial in which a teenager is being accused guilty in the murder of his own father while his case is being reviewed by the jurors. Throughout the play Reginald Rose, the author, shows us that not every trial that is held is actually always a fair trial. This play that was written is a good example of a trial being treated unfair by the jurors, although at the end the case was fairly brought to a decision. In this play most of the men are being unfair and vote guilty towards the kid, but one stands up for him and fights the case, the author does a great job in showing that cases are not always fair by describing each juror. Throughout the play there are good details that show the unfairness of most of the jurors and how they rushed most of the time and just tried to get over it.

The criminal trial process is an interesting process that takes place in Courtrooms all across the United States and throughout the globe. This study intends to set out the various steps in the criminal trial process in the American justice system. A trial is described as a "legal forum for resolving individual disputes, and in the case of a criminal charge, it is a means for establishing whether an accused person is legally guilty of an offense. The trial process varies with respect to whether the matter at issue is civil in nature or criminal. In either case, a jury acts as a fact-finding body for the court in assessing information and evidence that is presented by the respective parties in a case. A judge presides over the court and addresses all the legal issues that arise during the trial. A judge also instructs the jury how to apply the facts to the laws that will govern in a given case." (3rd Judicial District, 2012)

A Florida woman by the name Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez was given to the authority’s that this woman had abducted her child, Which Casey was lying. Casey had ruined this women reputation by lying on her and a lawsuit would be filed. In December of 2008 a Utility worker found Skeletal remains in a wooded area near the Anthony home. The remains were announced public on every news channel and that the remains were Caylee Anthony. Prosecutors went to announce that they will seek the death penalty for Casey. Is there

Including from their own lives each juror has gone through a point in time were even they were stereotyped by the world. The jury has been convinced that the boy has been severely stereotyped through the whole case and court. The 3rd juror let the case come into his own life and he made his own opinion on the boy without even paying attention to detail, he reflected his own life in his argument with stereotypes (72). The lives of the jurors have all been affected by the acts of stereotyping and see the effects of it that can have on someone. A boy that at the beginning almost lost his life due to the people just looking at him was saved by the fact that the jury looked past all that.

The New York Times bestseller book titled Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case examines the O.J. Simpson criminal trial of the mid-1990s. The author, Alan M. Dershowitz, relates the Simpson case to the broad functions and perspectives of the American criminal justice system as a whole. A Harvard law school teacher at the time and one of the most renowned legal minds in the country, Dershowitz served as one of O.J. Simpson’s twelve defense lawyers during the trial. Dershowitz utilizes the Simpson case to illustrate how today’s criminal justice system operates and relates it to the misperceptions of the public. Many outside spectators of the case firmly believed that Simpson committed the

The Selection and Role of a Jury in a Criminal Trial This assignment focuses on how a jury is selected and its role in a

The legal responsibilities of the jury demonstrate the second topic area in the AP Government Course, Political Beliefs and Behaviors. As seen in the film, many jurors misunderstand their legal duties, and some simply do not understand the concept of “unreasonable doubt.” For example, the seventh juror is more concerned about the baseball game than thoroughly sorting through the evidence. Additionally, two jurors play a game of tic tac toe, treating the defendant’s life like a game. They trust the circumstantial evidence because it confirms their bigoted attitudes.

The jury that is chosen for the case all come from very different pasts, and most of them have completely different morals and values. The clash of these different views and discussing the case reveal past experiences and prejudices that some of the men have. The dynamic between past experience and prejudices fuels their arguments, but they are challenged throughout the play. Some of them had prejudices against people who live in the slums and prejudices against teenagers.