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Juror's Duty In 12 Angry Men

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In the court system, jurors are tasked with the duty to conduct a fair verdict based on the testimony given and additional evidence shown. Some may forget this responsibility and use their prejudices that affect the juror's decision on the defendant's future. As a result, the accused may be falsely convicted and lose the majority of their life. The play 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose shows three perfect examples of prejudices during jury duty such as colorism, classism, and ageism. In the play, Juror #3 quickly shows his bias with colorism against the defendant being dark-skinned. On page 11, it states “The man is a dangerous killer. You could see it”. This clearly shows how Juror #3 is accusing the defendant of being a killer based on his dark skin appearance. This juror did the opposite of rendering a fair decision as he judges it based on an individual's skin color, not on a testimony.
Furthermore, Juror #4 uses classism against the defendant as he believes being raised in poorer neighborhoods determines the type of person you are to society. On Page 18, it states “He was born in a slum. Slums are breeding grounds for criminals. I know it. So do you. It's no secret. Children from slum backgrounds are potential menaces to society.” This quote illustrates how Juror #4 uses his prejudice of classism to go against the accused instead of evaluating …show more content…

On page 13, it states “We heard the facts, didn’t we? Now you're not going to tell us that we're supposed to believe that kid, knowing what he is. Listen, I've lived among ‘em all my life. You can't believe a word they say. I mean they’re born liars.” This juror believes the defendant's testimony is completely inaccurate because he is just a kid, and kids lie all the time. This is once again decided by prejudice and not regarding the actual testimony. Age does not prove whether a defendant is innocent or

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439 Words | 2 Pages

Juror 10 categorizes those who live in the slum with statements such as “ They don’t need any real big reason to kill someone, either. You know, they get drunk, and bang, someone’s lying in the gutter…most of them, it’s like they have no feelings”. He makes strong generalized statements classifying all kids who are born in an environment where there is violence and poverty as criminals, although they may hold no criminal record. It is this bias that leads him to believe that this kid has definitely murdered his

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279 Words | 2 Pages

In the drama “12 Angry Men” by Reginald Rose, Juror 10 has a big impact on the play by finally bringing the 10 other jurors together, and having prejudiced views against people from the slums even though he is from the slums. Juror 10 has a big impact on the play by finally bringing most of the jurors to the same conclusion for the first time. In the play it says, “Well you don’t know about them? Listen to me! What are you doing?

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They don’t know what truth is” (Ross 59). When Juror 10 says these things we can see how his prejudice affects his ability to discover the truth. Many of the other jurors show no real sign of bias when discussing the innocence or guiltiness of the kid. For example, near the end of the play Juror 4 states, “I still believe the boy is guilty of murder. I’ll tell you why.

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507 Words | 3 Pages

Juror #3’s son affected how he saw the facts of the case due to their relationship. Juror #’s son left his father and he sees it as his son's fault. “... When he was fifteen he hit me in the face. … I haven't seen in three years.

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569 Words | 3 Pages

In the play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, we can see that prejudice gets in the way of truth. Many of the jurors that participated have let prejudice get in their way to see the truth and look at the real situation and facts, for example, Juror Three, who “is a very strong, very forceful, extremely opinionated man within whom can be detected a streak of sadism… is intolerant of opinions other than his own, and accustomed to forcing his wishes upon others.” He has a son that he identifies as a “tough guy”, which is one of the descriptions of the 19-year-old accused, Juror Three let the image of his own son be reflected on the boy and made him think unfairly. Getting to the bottom of a complex issue takes time and effort. At the beginning of the play, most jury members wanted to get over the case and go home as early as they could, but one of the jury members, Juror Eight, who was sure the boy was not guilty, took many hours to question the evidence and the case and murder itself, but he was not the only one as other jury members also spoke about what they thought in the past options, fairly quick, it was almost six in the evening and Juror Six wanted to leave to go to his family, it may have been more of an excuse to leave, but the jurors did not let him leave because they had gone far enough to decide where the trial was going

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980 Words | 4 Pages

The children who come out of slum backgrounds are potential menaces to society.’ Juror 4 gives this very controversial statement. It involves presumption of the juror that might be from his personal experience or social influence. He has assumed that people born in slums are criminals but actually there are people who are not criminals. Fallacy 6: ‘The boy lied and you know it’ -

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794 Words | 4 Pages

So do you. The children who come out of slum backgrounds are potential menaces to society.” (Sergel 22). Not to mention most of the jurors take one piece of information about the defendant to piece out why the boy is guilty, they argue that because he is from a poor background that he is automatically a menace. For this reason, jurors like this have control over how they can change others'

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This process continues throughout the course of the movie, and each juror’s biases is slowly revealed. Earlier through the movie, it is already justifiable to label juror 10 as a bigoted racist as he reveals strong racist tendencies against the defendant, stating his only reason for voting guilty is the boy’s ethnicity and background. . Another interesting aspect of this 1957 film is the “reverse prejudice” portrayed by juror

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1207 Words | 5 Pages

Imagine getting that one dreaded letter in the mail, calling you to do the one thing you didn’t plan the week before your wedding, JURY DUTY. Reginald Rose wrote the play Twelve Angry Men for a television drama after he sat on a jury. The characters in this play are identified not by names but by numbers. Twelve men are confined to a deliberation room after the trial of a 19-year-old boy accused of stabbing and killing his father. Twelve Angry Men illustrates the many dangers of the jury system like, a biased jury, being left with questions, and feeling inconvenienced by jury duty.

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This argument could have been justifiable only if the juror has some proofs of the argument to be true. 3) Juror 3: i) He generalized the kids of the new generation to be bad just because he had such one experience from his son. This is Hasty Generalization fallacy. ii)

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591 Words | 3 Pages

The justice system that relies on twelve individuals reaching a life-or-death decision has many complications and dangers. The play Twelve Angry Men, by Reiginald Rose, illustrates the dangers of a justice system that relies on twelve people reaching a life-or-death decision because people are biased, they think of a jury system as an inconvenience, and many people aren’t as intelligent as others. The first reason why Reiginald illustrates dangers is because people can be biased or they can stereotype the defendant. The Jurors in Twelve Angry Men relate to this because a few of them were biased and several of them stereotyped the defendant for being from the slums. The defendant in this play was a 19 year old kid from the slums.

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664 Words | 3 Pages

That's the way they are, you know, they don’t listen.” When Juror 3 makes this statement he is showing a biased opinion on children raised in poor environments saying that the defendant is guilty because he’s in the group of children in poor environments. He also has a prejudice against the defendant because of what he wears and his color. “That man’s a dangerous killer. You could see it.”

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814 Words | 4 Pages

With selfish attitudes like this, it was unlikely that Juror 10 would be interested in the truth behind the evidence and the case itself. Hence, his racial prejudice was important in determining his vote. He believes the boy is guilty, not because the facts point to it, but because of the boy’s ethnicity. It is clear that Rose has constructed Juror 10 as a means of identifying that prejudice,

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915 Words | 4 Pages

His prejudice is clear when he says that “I’ve lived among ‘em all my life. You can’t believe a word they say” when speaking about the boy (16). Juror Ten’s prejudice causes him to disregard all of the facts that are presented to him by Juror Eight that can prove that the accused is not guilty. Juror 10 allows his prejudice to blind him of the truth. That is until he is called out by his fellow jurors.

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667 Words | 3 Pages

Stereotyping is a perception error frequently made in everyday life. In the film, there is a scene in which juror 10 states that the boy is guilty, solely based on the fact that he is from the slums (“slum kid”) and makes some implications of his race. The juror blames the child and his race instead of his environment and other external factors (fundamental attribution error). Importantly, all the jurors seemed to be from different backgrounds which is sure to have shaped their reality/view on the matter at hand, i.e. whether the boy murdered his father or not. This influence of background rang true in the case of juror number five.

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