12 Angry Men – Movie Analysis
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Throughout my life I have been presented with opinionated questions to answer and a lot of the times I found it difficult to answer them without asking around a bit. Looking back on that I believe that is it impossible to remain truly impartial. You may start off with your own idea but one everyone else around you starts presenting their ides you may begin to change your mind. If it is something that someone believes in there is a good chance that they will have a convincing argument to back up their statement. Due to these kinds of things they may sway your mind and alter your judgment therefore you are no longer truly impartial.
In my opinion jurors cannot carry out their duty without bringing their own personal prejudices and misconceptions into the jury room with them. Whether or not people realize it everyone lets what they believe influence their decision-making. For example if someone is racist outside of the courthouse what makes him or her think that they wont be racist inside the courtroom? In the beginning of the case I too found the young boy to be guilty, however by the end of the film a few of the jurors had made several good points that countered him being guilty. If I was the third juror I would have started out with a guilty vote but by the end I would have change my vote as well to not guilty due to reasonable doubt.
In the film it seemed as though some of the jurors did not understand the concept of reasonable doubt. The vote started off at 11 “guilty” to 1 “not guilty”. Those men that voted guilty were in an uproar that one man had voted not guilty and could not understand why. However that one man was able to provide enough evidence as to ways the young boy could be innocent and he changed a few other jurors minds as well. There were many great points made in the juror room as to how the young boy could be innocent. For instance someone else in the apartment building said that they heard the boy scream he was going to kill his father then heard a thud on the floor. However a woman from an apartment from across the tracks said she watched him kill his father just as the train was passing. If the train was passing it would have been very loud and the man from the same apartment building would not have been able to hear the young boy yell. This proves that the witnesses are not reliable. Another example is that they said the knife used to kill the father was a one of a kind knife that no one else owned when come to find out one of the jurors has the same exact knife, quite a coincidence. The arguing went on and eventually together the jurors were able to come up with enough contradictions to the story that the vote became once again 11 to 2 but this time it was 11 “not guilty” and 1 “guilty”. Eventually they were able to conclude the meeting and rule the boy to be not guilty.
Yes, I would volunteer as a juror in a criminal case in which a persons