Writing exercises - Essay Example

is the gripping, intense, and engrossing analysis of diverse group of jurors who are uncomfortably assembled together to deliberate after hearing some facts from an apparently open-and-shut murder trial. They leave to a jury room for civic duty and pass a just verdict for indigent minority defendant whose life is at crossroad. The jury of the twelve angry men, delegated the power to take an uneducated, teenaged and tenement-dwelling boy to electric chair for murdering his dad with a switchblade knife, literally locked themselves in a small, enclosed rectangular room on a boiling hot summer day and made a unanimous decision.

The compelling, provocative film reveals the deep-seated, perceptual biases and weaknesses, personal prejudices, indifference, anger, cultural differences, personalities, unreliable judgments, ignorance and fears of the twelve men, which threaten to skew their decision-making abilities hence causing them to ignore real issues of the case, and make unjust actions. The jury room was characterized with heated discussions, the frequent re-assessment and changing of opinions, the formation of alliances, votes and certainties, and the re-consideration of personal experiences, outbursts and insults.

Nonetheless, one brave rebellious juror was not part of the plot to cause miscarriage of justice at the commencement of the deliberations due to his reasonable doubt. Determinedly and persuasively, he urged the other eleven men to slowly rethink and review the wobbly case (and eyewitness testimony) concerning the endangered defendant. He further chastises the system for granting the unfortunate offender an incompetent court-appointed defense lawyer who “felt bitter about being appointed” - a case with “no glory, no money or much chance of winning” - and who inefficiently cross-examined the witnesses.

The claims of juror No.8 was an example of ethical virtue. This film clearly shows the eleven jurors did not ethically deliberate and they could not