Twelve Angry Men Essay Research Paper In

Twelve Angry Men Essay, Research Paper

In the story “Twelve Angry Men”, Reginald Rose shows how making one’s own

decisions is one very important aspect in life. He also showed that one’s decisions should

not be impeded by stereotypes. I believe that the jury reached the right verdict because

the witnesses were disproven along with all of the evidence.

The first reason is that the witnesses were proven to be wrong. For example,

there was an el train passing by the old man’s window at the time of the murder. He

couldn’t have been able to hear the murder taking place. The old man was not as much of

a reliable source as he was originally thought to be. In addition, the woman that lived

across the street from the boy did not wear her glasses to bed the night of the murder.

She couldn’t have been able to know for a fact that the boy was the real murderer. The

woman’s testimony is not strong enough to condemn the boy to death. With the two key

witnesses having been discredited, the case against the boy was very weak.

The other reason is that the evidence was proven to be not as significant as it was

once thought to be. For example, Juror Eight bought a knife exactly like the one used in

the murder. The original knife was not as special or unique as it was portrayed to be in

the trial. Any person could have bought a knife just like the original one and used it to

murder the father. Furthermore, Juror Two said that he thought that the stab wound was

too high up for the boy to have inflicted. Someone taller than the boy must have

committed the murder. With the new ideas that are being brought up by the jurors, the

boy seems to become a less likely suspect. As the deliberation goes on, the “hard

evidence” against the boy seems to loose its integrity.

With the evidence down the drain and the witnesses without any truely sound

testimony, the jury had no choice but to vote not guilty in my opinion. The knife wasn’t

one of a kind, the old man couldn’t have heard the murder, and the woman could have

seen the murder taking place. There was no case against the boy.

Ryan Rush