A Case of Twelve Angry Men

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Inductive or Deductive Reasoning Name:Inductive Instructor’s Name: Wilson University: john Tyler Date: 4/11/2014 Inductive Reasoning: A Case of Twelve Angry Men Twelve Angry Men is a movie that out rightly uses inductive reasoning to judge whether or not a Puerto Rican boy is guilty or not of killing his father with a switch blade. The judge in this case gave instructions to the jury to treat the case as a pre-meditated murder which deserved a mandatory death sentence. Just like any other lawful cases, the judge emphasized on the fact that the boy is innocent until proven guilty. The aspect of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ forms the basis for argument in the Twelve Angry Men. While in the jury room a vote was conducted to determine what people thought of the boy –guilty or not guilty. It turned out that out of twelve people only one (the architect) thought the boy was not guilty. Inductive reasoning seems to have been the basis of their decisions as many evidences rose. One of the evidence presented is where an old man living down stairs claimed to have heard the boy shouting ‘I will kill you.’ it was also after these words that he heard a thud which forced him to rush to the stairway. The man also insists that he saw the boy running downstairs after the commotion. A woman also claimed to have witnessed the boy stab his own father in the midst of a passing train. Although the woman claims that he saw the boy, a member of the jury thinks that the woman needed her glasses to vividly see this which was not the case at that time. This aspect nullifies her testimony hence can be categorized as unreliable. According to the jury’s analysis, a passing train is noisy – that’s no hidden fact! This leads the jury to probe whether the old man really heard the boy shouting. This also nullifies the old man’s allegations since it is not clear

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