Jurors Case

In everyday life it can be seen that judgements and perspectives are established based, to a certain extent, on fact and logic but are also influenced, inevitably by one's own past experiences and personal traits. The ability of jurors to deliver justice rests on these judgements and consequently, on the extent to which their personalities sway their ideals of justice. Certain jurors demonstrate an apparent incapacity to discuss the dealing of justice on reasonable grounds due to the extreme prejudices with which they are affiliated with, whereas various other jurors such as the 4th and 8th jurors seem more willing to analyse the evidence presented, with more logic and without pre-established principle and belief on the guilty status of the defendant. However, one may also attain the view that no one person is unbiased, and that those who are prejudiced simply have their own perception of justice rather than none at all.

Twelve Angry Men portrays intense social and racial prejudices as integral elements of the personalities of several jurors particularly the 3rd and 10th juror. Racism is a dominant form of bigotry and serves as the basis of many of their arguments. It is established from the beginning of the play that a large number of the jurors possess substantial prejudices as many of them are prepared to convict the defendant without any further analysis of the case. The facts of the case are seen to be "coloured by the personalities of those who present them" demonstrated when discussing the defendant's ability to kill his father, the 10th juror plainly states his view as "They think different. They act different. Well, for instance, they don't need any big excuse to kill someone". It can be seen that due to the impact of these severe prejudices, these jurors have an inability to focus on the serving of justice and instead produce arguments which are irrational and emotive, and are fixated on their intractable view of a homogenous group of people who are as pointed out by the 10th juror to be "violent", "vicious" and "ignorant".

In contrast, Reginald Rose also produces a number of jurors who's judgements and perspectives seem to be relatively unaffected by any such existing personal prejudices. The 8th juror employs the use of nothing more than reason, logic and concrete evidence to sway the judgements of the fellow jurors and yet he succeeds in planting a reasonable doubt in each of their minds. He recreates the testimonial and material evidence presented in court and instead of manipulating them to work in his favour through the use of past experiences, he simply analyses each of them and identifies certain flaws which are significant enough to question the overall validity of each piece of evidence. Thereby, his views are much more supported, reasonable, grounded and easier to agree with. He understood that "it's very hard to keep personal