12 Angry Men

The setting is as follows: the boy is on trial for allegedly murdering his father. When the boy turned nine years old, his mother died. His father began maltreating him even more when she passed away. The boy was later trained in switch-knife fighting. Using his acquaintance with a switch-knife, he used to stab a fellow student in the army. At fifteen, he was sent to reform school. It was also during these years that he mugged a person and stole a car. All of these events in his past history have not shown his past to be very good, and most people will find it hard to accept that he didn't commit any crimes. After a couple years, when the boy was nineteen years old, there was a fateful night. He and his father had had an argument. The father punched the boy, and the boy rushed out of the tenement in a huff. After, he "snuck into the theaters" just around twelve o' clock. As a coincidence, his father was struck through the heart with a switch knife, which happened with the same knife that the boy bought from a store supposedly for "a friend." As he says, on the way home, he lost it through gap in his pocket. His father was struck in the chest with the same knife that he "lost." All of these alleged facts seem, to all but one of the juries, as made-up alibis. Meanwhile, on the other hand, his neighbor, an old man who claims to have heard the boy yell, "I'm gonna kill you!" is almost seventy-five years old. Worth mentioning in your term paper that although the old man might be half-paralyzed, slow in picking up his two canes and walking almost sixty feet, he was still fast enough to do these things in fifteen seconds just in time to see the boy run down the flight of stairs.

However, when the jurors tried to recreate the scene of the old man getting up from bed, walking slowly 60 feet, they found that the time was almost forty seconds, though the man swore it was fifteen. Why would the old man lie? The man is seventy years old. And not once in his life has he been noticed, quoted, or listened to. Now when the man witnesses a murder, he might feel that he has finally found an opportunity to be acknowledged. To make himself feel important, the old man has somewhat distorted the information he knows. Then, in addition to this convincing testimony, a woman from across the street also claimed she saw the murder. The night of the murder was hot and stuffy, so usually, no one could fall asleep easily. On the night of the murder, the woman turned toward the window at approximately 12:10 and saw the "boy" stick a knife into his father. But how are we to be sure that she was not exaggerating her witness, like the old man? The day at court, she was wearing a pear of really strong glasses, never taking them off, concluding the fact that she had a very serious nearsightedness problem. But when you go to sleep regularly, you do not put your glasses on while you are sleeping! So, the woman must have seen a blur of what happened, instead of a precise view of the murder. The facts are solid. It depends on his peers, the jurors, to find the clues that led to this murder. The clues and his history point him to guiltiness, but then again, there maybe some misunderstanding. If he is convicted, are they sending an innocent slum child to die? Or if he is acquitted, are they sending a murder out to roam on the streets unchecked? To get answers to these and other questions, order a custom essay.