Kelesoglu 1

Adrian Keleolu 594

9B English
Mr Smith
4 May 2015
Justice: one of the biggest pillars of society. But what does it mean? The answer
changes from person to person; nobody can give an absolutely correct definition of justice. In
spite of this fact, people have been trying to have a 100% just society -unfortunately, this is
impossible. Not only because the concept itself is vague, but also because the ones who are
carrying it out are imperfect. In Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose focuses on this:
imperfection. The most important theme in Twelve Angry Men is that judicial system is
imperfect because people are not perfect.
Nobody can have a perfect memory -people have a hard time remembering even their
last meal. Unfortunately, one of the most important aspects of a case is the eyewitness, where
the testimonies are based on memory, and well, their testimonies mean a lot. Despite this
importance, the fact that one can never be 100% sure of any memory is very often forgotten.
Our brains have a reconstructive memory, which means that the brain fills out the missing
details, by itself, with the bits of information from other memories, so eyewitnesses are very
likely to be wrong. For instance, the old mans testimony is not very trustworthy, because
given his old age - or his possible memories of voices coming from upstairs -, he might have
assumed that the male voice belonged to the boy who lived there. This doesnt indicate that
he is doing this on purpose; its purely unconscious. He cant be sure of remembering
something correctly. In fact, nobody can be sure of the accuracy of any memory.
The notion that even the jurors (at least one of them) arent sure if the boys guilty or
not is emphasized a lot in the play. Their task is to look at the evidence and the testimonies
and reach a verdict; however, some of them are blinded by their prejudice and personal

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conflicts: they simply cant be objective. For example, Juror 3 insists that the boy is guilty
because of his issues with his son. Similarly, Juror 10 doesnt want to believe that the boy
might be innocent. He is extremely biased towards people from the slums. The jurors are also
arguing about reasonable doubt, which is what saved the boy from death.
This, even though its a very important part of the judicial system, is a vague term; its
meaning differs from person to person. It doesnt have an exact definition or at least a
satisfying one, so it is a very controversial concept. The most general definition would be
this: Reasonable doubt is the level of certainty a juror must have to find a defendant guilty of
a crime. It is an important threshold to the verdict: it can either save innocent people from
having their lives ruined by the government or let guilty people loose due to the lack of
certainty, but what is defined as a reason to be sure someones guilty differs from person to
person. This is why Juror 8 requested to go over the evidence over and over again: to prevent
any potential ruination of a possibly innocent kids life. On the other hand, it was pretty clear
to Juror 3: the boy bought the knife with which his father was killed, so it must have been
him. Since reasonable doubt obviously doesnt have clear borders, it makes the perfection of
the judicial system impossible.
The main theme in Twelve Angry Men is that peoples imperfection is the reason why
the judicial system is imperfect; since people are the root of all the factors that make the
judicial system work and maybe even justice itself, its impossible for anything imperfect
to create something perfect. Justice is a human-made concept. Even if not so, it is heavily
distorted by humans. People arent the same, so nothing they make is agreed upon
unanimously and nothing different from each other can be perfect at the same time, therefore,
people are not perfect.