Twelve Angry Men

Book Critique: Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose and David Mamet The criminal justice system of the United States, when first framed through the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, was a revolutionary breakthrough in contemporary peace-keeping. For fear of becoming like their former governing nation - wherein unreasonable trials were held in such a way that numerous individuals accused of criminal acts were not offered a opportunity to demonstrate their innocence or, in some cases, a trial by jury – the framers of the Constitution created a justice system based on the preservation of the rights of the accused, as well as ascertaining an un-biased truth and dealing justice. This brief explanation on the foundation of the U.S. Criminal justice
The characters – who remain nameless except for their numbers – seem to have representatives from all spectrums of society. Such characters include: a sports-fanatic football coach, a former street-urchin, a Swiss-German immigrant, a doctor, an advertising agent, a self-made businessman, a bigot, and a level-headed representative of the “everyday American” to name a few. Eleven members of this diverse group of people, all with their own agenda (such as tickets to a ball game, or the desire to escape the un-air-conditioned room), immediately establish their biased, objective view of the accused youth by casting a “guilty” vote during the preliminary vote process. Only the level-headedness and determination to not condemn a youth so easily led one man to cast a not-guilty vote. Once the play reaches this point it relies on this one man to convince the other jurors to set aside their bias and examine the evidence before casting a guilty vote. Once again, all though the issue of bias is very likely to come up in genuine criminal trials, the use of these clashing characters is likely intended for dramatic effect. It is not the diversity of the jurors that makes the situation quite unlikely in a real criminal trial (because jurors are chosen at random from a Venire or list of randomly selected names from a Master Jury List and therefore given to diversity) but the fact that, as a rule,
At first glance, the evidence seems fairly damning to the accused: a unique murder weapon (switch-blade) that was supposedly bought by the rebellious teen, an overheard declaration- by an old man with a limp living below the duo- during a heated argument between the accused and the victim declaring that the teen would “kill him”, a poor-sighted woman who apparently saw the stabbing through a passing train, as well as a poor alibi given by the youth that he was at the movies, yet neglected to remember what was being shown. Without difficulty can one understand and justify the majority of the jury’s initial vote for a guilty verdict. But, would not taking the evidence at face value violate the founding principles of the United States criminal justice system? Condemning one to death with a casual glance at these evidences is neither about protecting the rights of the accused as a human being nor finding the truth to deal swift justice. Juror #8’s approach to the evidence is to illustrate that: On cases - in which the death penalty is the consequence – jury, as objective citizens must decide whether or not a criminal charge can be proven to be fact. If the evidence of prosecutors does not determine that no other theory is possible, then who has the right to do anything but set the