It’s always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don’t really know what the truth is. I don’t suppose anybody will ever really know. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we’re just gambling on probabilities - we may be wrong. We may be trying to let a guilty man go free, I don’t know. Nobody really can. But we have a reasonable doubt, and that’s something that’s very valuable in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it’s sure.
<p>It’s the 4th of July, and to celebrate I’m starting several loads of laundry while Christina makes us pancakes, and we’re watching <em>12 Angry Men</em>. It was the most patriotic movie that I could find streaming on Netflix.</p>
<p><em>12 Angry Men</em> may not be Mel Gibson’s <em>The Patriot</em> or Will Smith’s <em>Independence Day</em>, but perhaps more than those blockbusters, it celebrates America’s ideals. I contend that you cannot watch <em>12 Angry Men</em> and not feel proud to be an American; you cannot <em>not</em> feel proud of the process — nor can you <em>not</em> get angry at the bigot in the jury pool.</p>