12 Angry Men - Criminal Law - Lecture Notes, Study notes of Criminal Law

Download 12 Angry Men - Criminal Law - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Criminal Law in PDF only on Docsity! 12 Angry Men Introduction (1997) (TV) Made for cable television remake of the 1957 classic about eleven jurors quick to condemn a Latino youth on trial for murdering his father before reviewing the evidence. Juror #8 holds out with a verdict of not guilty, thus setting the stage for arguments and reasons why or why not the boy may be guilty. The camera is essentially locked in the enclosed room with the deliberating jurors for most of the film. The film is basically shot in real-time in an actual jury room. Plot Outline: Essentially the plot is that a teenage boy from a deprived background is accused of killing his father. Initially all jurors bar one thinks the boy may not be guilty. A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to persuade the others that there is a reasonable doubt. He convinces the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court. The film examines how the workings of the judicial process can be disastrous The Twelve Jurors: A summary of the anonymous characters helps to flesh out their characters and backgrounds. Character development is mainly through dialogue. There is no narration, no prior action or flashbacks, no sub titles, explaining the character of the players. Solely their own words and those of other jurors reflecting on them establish the personalities of the jurors. Courtney B. Vance .... Foreman Ossie Davis .... Juror #2 older black gentleman George C. Scott .... Juror #3 angry older man in suspenders Armin Mueller-Stahl .... Juror #4 stock broker with German accent Dorian Harewood .... Juror #5 younger black man from the slums James Gandolfini .... Juror #6 wearing white t-shirt Tony Danza .... Juror #7 younger baseball fan Jack Lemmon .... Juror #8 older white man Hume Cronyn .... Juror #9 old man with cane Mykelti Williamson .... Juror #10 Muslim black man that seems ill Edward James Olmos .... Juror #11 European watchmaker William L. Petersen .... Juror #12 ad agent A Puerto Rican youth is on trial for murder, accused of knifing his father to death. The twelve jurors retire to the jury room, having been admonished that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Eleven of the jurors vote for conviction, each for reasons of his own. The sole holdout is Juror #8.As juror #8 persuades the weary jurors to re-examine the evidence, we learn the back story of each man. Juror #3, a bullying self-made man, has estranged himself from his own son. Juror #7 has an ingrained mistrust of foreigners; so, to a lesser extent, does Juror #6. Jurors #10 and #11, so certain of the infallibility of the Law, assume that if the boy was arrested, he must be guilty. Juror #4 is an advocate of dispassionate deductive reasoning. Juror #5, like the defendant a product of "the streets," hopes that his guilty vote will distance himself from his past. Juror #12, an advertising man, doesn't understand anything that he can't package and market. And Jurors #1, #2, and #9, are anxious not to make waves, "go with the flow." The excruciatingly hot day drags into an even hotter night; still, Juror #8 chips away at the guilty verdict, insisting that his fellow jurors bear in mind those words "reasonable doubt." The judge has instructed the jury that they must return a unanimous Docsity.com verdict. The boy's life rests in their hands...as time passes the complexity of the jurors' personalities is unveiled, including bigotry and prejudice "12 Angry Men" reveals the little things that can influence a verdict and exposes the flaws in the trial by jury process. This is a powerful and thought provoking 12 Angry Men is the gripping, penetrating, and engrossing examination of a diverse group of twelve jurors who are uncomfortably brought together to deliberate after hearing the 'facts' in a seemingly open-and-shut murder trial case. They retire to a jury room to do their civic duty and serve up a just verdict for the indigent minority defendant (with a criminal record) whose life is in the balance. The film is a powerful indictment, denouncement and expose of the trial by jury system. The frightened, teenaged defendant is on trial, as well as the jury and the judicial system with its purported sense of infallibility, fairness and lack of bias. The jury of twelve 'angry men,' entrusted with the power to send an uneducated, teenaged Puerto Rican, tenement-dwelling boy to the electric chair for killing his father with a switchblade knife, are literally locked into a small, claustrophobic rectangular room on a stifling hot summer day until they come up with a unanimous decision - either guilty or not guilty. The compelling, provocative film examines the twelve men's deep-seated personal prejudices, perceptual biases and weaknesses, indifference, anger, personalities, unreliable judgments, cultural differences, ignorance and fears, that threaten to taint their decision-making abilities, cause them to ignore the real issues in the case, and potentially lead them to a miscarriage of justice. The judge states the important criteria for judgment regarding "reasonable doubt," as the camera pans across the serious faces of the jury members. She admonishes them that it is a case involving the serious charge of pre-meditated murder with a mandatory death sentence upon a guilty verdict, and now it is the jury's duty to "separate the facts from the fancy" because "one man is dead" and "another man's life is at stake." If there's a reasonable doubt in your minds as to the guilt of the accused, a reasonable doubt, then you must bring me a verdict of not guilty. If however, there is no reasonable doubt, then you must in good conscience find the accused guilty. However you decide, your verdict must be unanimous. In the event that you find the accused guilty, the bench will not entertain a recommendation for mercy. The death sentence is mandatory in this case. You are faced with a grave responsibility. Thank you, gentlemen. As the jury leaves the box and retires to the jury room to deliberate, the camera presents a side-view and then a lingering, silent close-up of the innocent-faced, frightened, despondent slum boy defendant with round, sad brown eyes. [His ethnicity, whether he's Puerto Rican or Hispanic, is unspecified.] Fortunately, one brave dissenting juror votes 'not guilty' at the start of the deliberations because of his reasonable doubt. Persistently and persuasively, he forces the other men to slowly reconsider and review the shaky case (and eyewitness testimony) against the endangered defendant. He also chastises the system for giving the unfortunate defendant an inept 'court-appointed' public defense lawyer who "resented being appointed" - a case with "no money, no glory, not even much chance of winning" - and who inadequately cross-examined the witnesses. Heated discussions, the formation of alliances, the Docsity.com