Twelve Angry Men

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Twelve Angry Men

The jury in a trial is selected to examine certain facts and determine truth based only upon the evidence presented to them in court. It is assumed that the jurors will judge fairly and without any personal bias. In spite of this assumption people will be people and in some cases, logic and emotion will collide. An excellent example that shows precisely what I’m talking about is in the movie Twelve Angry Men. Twelve men who initially are strangers to each other have the fate of a young boy resting in the palm of their hands. In the beginning everyone is convinced he is guilty except one who has one reasonable doubt in his mind. The single man on his own was able to convince each of them by using logic to examine the testimony of each witness. After a few hours of reasoning the jurors were eventually won over allowing the facts to overcome their personal issues. During the arguments in the jury room the issues of race, age, social class, personal experience and stereo types are discussed a number of times. I presume it is because those are the personal issues that people have and sometimes that is what they base their judgment on. When you are in a jury you have the responsibility of setting all of that aside. Through the reasoning of the not-guilty voters the guilty voters are slowly realizing that despite their passed and personal reasons they have to take into consideration the more important actual events that occurred. Part of the problem the jurors are...

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