12 Angry Men Essay

Byrdee Otero

2nd period

04/06/16

12 Angry Men Write-up

In the movie 12 angry men, many of the jurors had stereotypes about kids who grow up in the "slums" and who belong to certain minority groups. Not only did the stereotypes guide the jurors’  to make internal attributions for the boy’s behavior, but these stereotypes also led to biased interpretations of the evidence. A lot of the jurors didn’t really have a reason why they had voted guilty but because of the stereotypes that they come to believe had help them to be convinced that the boy  murdering his father because of where he lives and the stereotypes they believed the boy was capable of killing his father. They were also influenced by the other jurors because they had just assumed that he was guilty and not taking in consideration that he didn’t kill his father because there were a lot of hole in the witnesses story but they had overlooked those factors. They only made their decision based on the evidence that they were told. Because it seemed logical and they thought that it added up.  

Just as stereotypes lead to a biased way of interpreting the evidence, many of the jurors initially expected that the boy was guilty and so they only remembered details in the case that supported that expectation of how the boy is because of stereotypes that they held the boy to. They also seemed to ignore details in the case that would disconfirm their prediction. For example, the jurors didn’t notice the important details such as, the way the old man walked with a limp, the female eyewitness had marks on her eyes that were caused by prescription eyeglasses, and that the knife used to kill the father was not a special knife. the  knife could have been gotten anywhere.  They also didn’t notice that a noisy train would have made it impossible to hear the boy yell. All of these details would have disconfirmed their expectations of the boy, but they had been being overlooked just like almost every detail that had been a part of the case and convicting the boy of murder.  

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