12 Angry Men

PLEASE RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING BELOW, DO NOT SUMMARIZE!

In 12 Angry Men, the film begins with the judge saying now it’s your duty to separate the facts from the fancy. I connect this to the lecture because since its an adversarial system the judge remains neutral. He does not get too involved in the investigation and is passive. There is a debate among the jurors over the boy’s innocence where some of the jurors abide strictly by the facts at first. Interestingly the first vote is 11 to 1 where the majority of the men voted guilty because of the facts. The 11 men’s approach made me think of a quality that the inquisitorial system has where the facts/truth is more favored than the protection of the boy’s rights. The boy’s life is on the line and so we see that the adversarial system comes to play as one juror votes not guilty because of unreasonable doubt. Through the debate, I can see the jurors’ different relationships with the criminal justice system based on their beliefs, symbols, and norms they uphold. For instance, juror sympathizes with the boy and his upbringing. As opposed to juror 10 who makes a disturbing comment and even believes that kids who were brought up from the slums are criminals. I think our adversarial system works in favor of those who can afford the best lawyers and not for people like the kid who grew up in poverty. The kid’s lawyer did not do the best job of defending the client. The scene that caught my attention the most is when juror 8 criticizes the kid’s choice in the lawyer because he says he would have wanted a better one if his life was on the line. In my opinion, one thing the juror failed to acknowledge was that he is privileged and is not part of the same organization as the kid. What’s not taken into consideration is that the kid’s lawyer could have been a pro bono attorney who does not specialize in that field. Also throughout the film, I notice there is a lot of use of the word them by juror 10 and his values (legal culture) are far different from the rest of the men at the end of the film. Overall, I think that there is no perfect system because the adversarial allows wealthy people to win the combat and the inquisitorial system gives the state too much power. If the country had followed the inquisitorial system, I wonder if the boy would have been found guilty and killed based on the “truth” of the witnesses.

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