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The twelve angry men analytical essay
The twelve angry men analytical essay
The twelve angry men analytical essay
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Twelve Angry Men
In the story "Twelve Angry Men", Reginald Rose shows how making one's own
decisions is one very important aspect in life. He also showed that one's decisions should not be impeded by stereotypes. I believe that the jury reached the right verdict because the witnesses were disproven along with all of the evidence.
The first reason is that the witnesses were proven to be wrong. For example,
there was an el train passing by the old man's window at the time of the murder. He
couldn't have been able to hear the murder taking place. The old man was not as much of
a reliable source as he was originally thought to be. In addition, the woman that lived
across the street from the boy did not wear her glasses to bed the night of the murder.
She couldn't have been able to know for a fact that the boy was the real murderer. The
woman's testimony is not strong enough to condemn the boy to death. With the two key
witnesses having been discredited, the case against the boy was very weak.
The other reason is that the evidence was proven to be not as significant as it was once thought to be. For example, Juror Eight bought a knife exactly like the one used in the murder. The original knife was not as special or unique as it was portrayed to be in the trial. Any person could have bought a knife just like the original one and used it to murder the father. Furthermore, Juror Two said that he thought that the stab wound was too high up for the boy to have inflicted. Someone taller than the boy must have committed the murder. With the new ideas that are being brought up by the jurors, the boy seems to become a less likely suspect.
Lizzie should have heard the murders since she claimed to be downstairs and both of the murders occurred upstairs.Now
In paragraph 3 and 4 the narrator explains, “ And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it. . . I did this seven long night-every night just at midnight. ” This shows that he was a calculated killer because of the time he took to watch the man before killing him. It shows how the narrator thought it through. Also shows how he was going to have to study the old man's sleeping behaviors in order to have to kill him.
...ing other than a slight sickness. She did everything without thinking.” This last sentence is key, “She did everything without thinking.” This displays that she wasn't thinking at the time of the murder and had no intention to commit murder. Due to the trauma, she could not “think straight”. Thus proving her inability for mind-body coordination.
...already had a predetermined verdict. They were automatically determined to be guilty, even though there was a lot of evidence that they were innocent including one of the victims (Ruby Bates) eventually defending the Boys. Besides all the problems this case revealed, it also showed that there was good in society. Facing the possibility of death, Samuel Leibowitz still defended the Boys as much as he could. The second judge that presided over the case actually followed the law and prevented any harm from coming to the Boys.
knew full well that what she was doing was wrong. She knew that if she buried
But once the accusations started, she couldn’t back out for fear that her name would be ruined even more. She was just as scared as the other girls involved, but had to hide it behind the lies and cunning actions because she had no one to turn to in her time of need. She felt power, and like she had a place in life for once, when the other girls followed her and her decisions.
The crowded courtroom was absolutely silent as the 12 all white and all men took their seats at the jury box. Chief Justice Albert Mason, one of the presiding judges in the murder case, asked Charles I. Richards, the foreman, to rise. Mr. Richards was asked to read the verdict. “Not guilty”, replied the foreman. Even though the circumstantial and physical evidence pointed to Lizzie Borden guilty of killing her step-mother and father, the all-male jury, men of some financial means, could not fathom that a woman who is well bred and a Sunday school teacher could possibly commit such a heinous crime (Linder 7).
In this single moment of clarity, he is convinced that the old man is distorting the truth. He says “... He was dragging his left leg and trying to hide it because he was ashamed. I think I know him better than anyone here. This is a quiet, frightened, insignificant old man who has been nothing all his life, who has never had recognition… This is very important. It would be so hard for him to recede into the background…”(page 36) Sharing this argument, juror number nine shifts the direction of the discussion. No longer is he speaking about facts and evidence, but about an emotional connection to an old man who wants to feel important for once in his life. Although he is just assuming this based off of context clues, he manages to affect the other jurors. He manages to question the validity of the old man's testimony by connecting with him at a personal level, and for the most part it's
forced to drive around and was raped so she should have known who it was.
This shows that she is filling guilty of the incident and thoughts of the crime keep
The architect was an intelligent and caring man and his first vote of “not guilty” proves this. The other eleven men automatically just assumed the boy was guilty of killing his father but the architect thought long and hard about the fate of the boy and decided that he couldn’t live with himself if he decided the boy was guilty and the boy was actually innocent. The other jurors were aggravated that the architect chose differently because most of them were just ready to leave and the only way they could do that was if all the men agreed on the same verdict. The architect just didn’t think that the investigation took much thought and that it was conducted fairly. “What if the two eye witnesses were wrong” was his main point for why he chose “not guilty”. The architect’s initial
“The victims were enjoying the scenery, Doe explains, “the night was warm and beautiful with their dreams ahead of them as big as the stars of that night until the flashlight quickly approached them.” Mike Mageau was attacked in a similar fashion as the first murder: shot once they responded to the killer’s demands of leaving the car; in fact Doe states, “Mageau was certain the man was a police officer, which was the reason he opened the window...to show his ID.” After the shooting an anonymous person contacted the police department, and “He,” Doe explains, “identified himself as being responsible for killing the previous victims, Faraday and Jensen.” However, this one was different since Mageau was alive, though left in critical condition, progress to the investigation could have been substantial enough to identify the killer. Nonetheless, as claimed by Doe, “Progress really was not made” due to the amount of blurred and ambiguous information the police received, which ended up wasting five weeks without making any
... believed in the innocence of the young man and convinced the others to view the evidence and examine the true events that occurred. He struggled with the other jurors because he became the deviant one in the group, not willing to follow along with the rest. His reasoning and his need to examine things prevailed because one by one, the jurors started to see his perspective and they voted not guilty. Some jurors were not convinced, no matter how much evidence was there, especially Juror #3. His issues with his son affected his decision-making but in the end, he only examined the evidence and concluded that the young man was not guilty.
warning her earlier. In fact, her mother does not have any right for blaming Tess for
The film 12 Angry Men consisted of twelve members of the jury who tried to solve a murder trial case. Trapped in a room, all men put their heads together by communicating and listening to each other. Each juror voted unanimously and in order for them to make a decision every juror had to agree to the same thing. However, out of all the jurors (Henry Fonda) the architect had a different perspective. Just when all eleven jurors had agreed that the boy was guilty the architect stood up and said the boy was not guilty. The case was about a lady who had given her testimony in court swearing she saw the little boy kill his own father. One boy's fate is on one man’s hand. As the architect tried to prove his point towards the others, the old juror