This weekend I watched 12 Angry Men as a Rose event. I thought it was a good film about people’s prejudices while dealing with America’s justice system.  After the film, through our discussion, I learned that the actual process of choosing jurors is meant to weed out people who might have prejudices like the man in the film who was bent on putting the boy in jail due to his slum background. However, it is doubtful how much this process is successful. I think that in law it is almost impossible to make fully unbiased decisions in a case. While America tries to make it seem as if every case is held to the “without a reasonable doubt” mantra, I think it fails time and time again. For instance, the Trayvon Martin case to me seemed to come to a unsatisfying conclusion. I feel as if everyone doubted whether he was truly innocent. Just like in the film, there was a race factor in the court case.

I also think that the movie portrays how everyone wants to simply do what everyone else is doing, even if they truly don’t agree. Everyone was on the guilty side until it was no longer popular to be on that side. When more people were switching sides, then the guy who just wanted to go watch baseball decided to switch sides. It made me doubt whether they truly agreed with the innocent side or just were swayed by Davis’s charismatic explanation of the events of the case. I also thought the guy who turned everything into a joke demonstrated how not everyone takes these court cases seriously until it directly impacts their lives. I think this shows how Americans should not be obligated to serve jury duty. Not only does it disrupt people’s live, it makes people come to decisions that they have not fully thought out simply because they have not interest.