12 Angry Men Review

12 Angry Men was a movie about an all-male jury who was given the task from the judge to decide whether an 18-year-old young man was guilty of stabbing his father in the chest. The judge told the men that if they had any type of reasonable doubt, they should write a verdict of not guilty. If they weren't able to find a doubt and they whole-hardheartedly believed that the boy was guilty, they should give him that verdict but they should not do so and try to get a lower sentence for the boy because the death penalty would be mandatory as a sentence for him. The judge said the jury had a "grave responsibility." Life and death lied in the hands of the jury. The movie starts with 11 guilty votes from the jury and 1 vote of not guilty . The one juror who voted not guilty was able to show reasonable doubt to the other jurors, creating a switch from 11 guilty and 1 not guilty to an unanimous vote of not guilty.

The movie shows an example of due process of law. Due process of the law is like a guarantee that all law proceedings will be fair and that one will be given notice of the proceedings and an opportunity to be heard before a verdict is given. The due process is among the jury members. Before the majority vote of guilty is passed, Juror #8 challenges that. He votes not guilty because he is simply unsure. He points out the facts that the defendant has had a hard life. He was kicked around his whole life, born in the slums, mom died when he was 9, and his dad served a jail term for forgery. Juror #8 felt that because of his background, they should really review the case before giving a verdict of guilty. I believed that the others saw that same evidence and voted guilty because they saw the negative instead of the possible like Juror #8. The majority chose guilty because that was what they thought and they thought the boy was not only capable of doing so, but the one who committed the crime.

When Juror #8 opened the room up to reasonable doubt, the others started to put themselves in the case. They looked at the case from a new perspective. Eventually each juror changed their verdict. The idea of conformity played a major role in the movie. At first the majority of the jurors kept their vote of guilty because that was already the established consensus. No one wanted to go against the majority, but that gradually changed. The conformity was broken because Juror #8 helped the other jurors see that there were things in the case that were not adding up.

Lived experiences also played a role in the movie. After all the men changed their vote from guilty to not guilty, the one juror who was adamant about the boy being guilty changed his vote because he began to think of his own son. He began to think of the relationship that he and his son have or had, because they have not seen each other in 2 years. When the jurors went back over the evidence, they began to use some of their experiences to kind of justify amongst themselves what was right and wrong.

Throughout the whole movie, the jurors were given the task to basically decide what was right and wrong. The big question, however, is what constitutes as right and wrong? The 11 jurors believed that it was clear that the boy was guilty, but when they went around the table to explain why, a lot of them had no definite reason. As a student of the law and social science, I feel that the jury "did the right thing" by first thoroughly discussing the case before immediately coming to a conclusion of guilty. The word "right" does not necessarily mean accurate in this case. When I say that they did the "right" thing, I mean that they followed order in giving the boy a fair opportunity in comparing the "facts" to logic. This point goes back to due process. An opportunity was given for Juror #8 to plead his case of why he felt the boy might be not guilty. All the evidence was closely examined and the jury was better able to come up with a verdict, as oppose to assuming what they thought should be the verdict.

Link #1:  Insight
Link #2: Commentary