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12 Angry Men Weaknesses

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12 Angry Men is an interesting story that centers on a persuasive man who was able to convince a group of jurors that a defendant with a lot of evidence against him was actually innocent of the crime for which he was charged. I was impressed by his ability to influence a large group who felt so strongly that the boy was guilty. Going against the majority opinion by an individual person requires great charisma. In the play 12 Angry Men, Reginald Rose shows us the value of reasonable doubt in order to protect the rights of the defendant as well as the weakness of juror bias, combined with the pressure of the voting system in order to show us the justice system should work in the fairest way possible.
One strength of the justice system that is …show more content…

One weakness in the justice system is the prejudices and biases of some of the jurors. Juror 3’s anger towards his son makes him biased against the defendant so he tries to block out the possibility of the defendant being innocent. We see this in the play when the text states “I haven't seen him in three years. Rotten kid! I hate tough kids! You work your heart out. . . .” This proves that he sees the defendant as just another “rotten kid” who disrespects his father. The use of the word rotten shows that Juror 3 has already made up his mind about the defendant and is unlikely to change it, which is a major problem in a trial where a juror is supposed to view both sides fairly. These biases in juror 3 lead to him being the last one to vote not guilty which shows how it affects the justice system. Juror 3 also made a fool of himself by getting very emotional which wasn’t that relevant to the …show more content…

Even though there are jurors that you cannot persuade easily there are some lazy jurors like juror 7 who doesn’t take anything seriously and votes with the majority opinion. We see this when juror 7 randomly changes his vote for no reason or evidence. We know that he changed his vote to the majority opinion because at the beginning of the play he said “I think the guy's guilty. You couldn't change my mind if you talked for a hundred years.” Then all of a sudden he changed his vote to non-guilty when everyone else did. Right after he changed his vote to nonguilty, the other jurors in the room question him on why he changed his vote and they get mad at him for voting towards the majority opinion. Juror 7 may have done this because we know has Yankees tickets for later in the day and he just wants to leave. He rarely talked in the jury room and the only times he did was when he was talking about the Yankees and

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