The Old Man Is Guilty In Reginald Rose's 12 Angry Men

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In the play 12 Angry Men, Reginald Rose describes the trial of a young man who is accused of killing his father. A jury must decide whether to reach a guilty verdict and sentence the nineteen-year-old defendant to death. A lot of evidence proves this teenager is guilty, including the claims of an old man who testified against the boy. However, throughout the play, the twelve jurors thoroughly analyze the evidence of the old man and look at the different aspects and points of view, and eventually, reasonable doubt comes into play, and the boy is proven not guilty. At the beginning of their deliberations, the jurors believe the boy is guilty, due to the old man’s testimony, among others. This old man lived in the same apartment building, on the second floor, right beneath the room where the murder took place. He testifies in court that he heard loud noises in the …show more content…

Juror Eight points out that the noise coming from the elevated train passing in front of the house probably covered up any noise from the upstairs apartment: “The old man would have had to hear the boy say, ‘I’m going to kill you’, while the front of the el [train] was roaring past his nose. It’s not possible that he could have heard it” (54). Furthermore, this old man walks with a pair of canes. For him to get out of bed, get his canes and walk fifty-five feet to the front door in under fifteen seconds and witness the boy running out of the house appears unreasonable. In fact, after recreating the scene in the jury room and realizing it didn’t seem possibly for the old man to walk that far is such a short amount of time, Juror Eight believes “that the old man was trying to get out the door, heard someone racing down the stairs, and assumed that it was the boy” (57). So once the jurors look over the evidence and analyze it more carefully, they change their verdict to

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