The Final Verdict of 12 Angry Men On the average, about five parents are killed by their biological children in the United States every week. Matricide and patricide are both very rare events when considered in terms of the thousands of individuals arrested every year for murder. Killings of mothers and fathers each constitute about 1 percent of all homicides in the United States in which the victim-offender relationship is known. Did he do it? If he didn't, who did? Why would a young man kill his beloved father with a switchblade knife? Attention gentleman of this trial by jury, I am here to present and address to you a murder/homicide case that has previously already been put on trial with a different jury, in which it involves a teenage boy of about eighteen years old, who was accused for the killing and murder of his father by stabbing him to death. It is now our job to begin deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of an 18-year-old accused in the stabbing death of his father, where a guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence. With this intention, I will be sure to diminish all fraudulent pieces of evidence in this case and do whatever I can to prevent the result of a hung jury in this trial as we are dealing with the innocence of a young boy and his ultimate life fate. The boy on trial in Reginald Rose’s play 12 Angry Men is not guilty because, the self-acclaimed woman whose testimony as a witness seemed to be false and misleading as pertaining to the lack of truthfulness, the self-acclaimed elderly man whose testimony as a witness seemed to have an inaccurate estimated time range and period in which he witnessed and heard the boy murder his father in the same apartment building that he lived in, and the boy was a good knife-fighter so he would have stabbed upward into his father’s chest instead of downward into his father’s chest. First and foremost, the teenage boy who was on trial for the accusation and suspected murder of his father is not guilty because the woman who testified as a witness, gave a testimony that definitely seemed misleading and insufficient as the likelihood of the events that occurred in her story seemed impossible under the circumstances provided. The killing was witnessed under difficult circumstances in which it was night, and a train was passing by. The fact that she claimed to witness the murder through the windows of a passing el train late at night is completely ridiculous and obscured. The interesting part of the woman’s testimony is she swore to say that she did not wear glasses but during the testimony she had noticeable marks on her nose and such marks can only be made by glasses. People who own eye-glasses do not wear them to bed and the woman was in bed when she witnessed the killing, so she was not wearing her glasses at the time she witnessed the killing . Without her glasses she wouldn’t have seen anything, especially across to another building and through an El train that was moving relatively fast to see through when moving.. The killing was witnessed only very briefly and the lights went out immediately. Considering this, juror eight provides very valid insight that can contradict the testimony of the woman by saying, “ She testified that the murder/ took place the instant she looked out, and that the lights/ went out a split second later. She couldn’t have had time to/ put on her glasses then, Now perhaps this woman honestly/ thought she saw the boy kill his father. I say that/ she only saw a blur.” (Rose,60-61) In a like manner, another reason the boy is not guilty of the murder of his father is because the elderly man who testified as a witness and lives in the same apartment building as the boy and the father, honestly claims he heard and witnessed the murder occur in a specific short amount of time period that just seemed to be inaccurate under the circumstances. The old man said he heard the boy yell, “I’m going to kill you!” then a body hitting the ground. He rushed to the door and saw the boy running down the stairs. He said it took about 15 seconds to make it from the time he heard the body hit the floor until the boy ran down the stairs. The man was in his room, he was an old man and when he walked he would scrape his foot on the ground, so he didn’t walk very fast. Juror eight pointed all of this out and then did an experiment. He walked the same distance from the man’s room to the front door while dragging his foot. It took about forty seconds to make the distance while dragging his foot. Since there was a twenty-four to twenty-five second time differential between the old man’s testimony and the reenactment or demonstration performed by juror eight, it makes much more logical sense that it took longer than fifteen seconds for the old man to get out of bed and see the murderer running down the stairs. Notably, Juror eleven emphasises on the fact of the matter of the importance of the time difference in which the old man says he heard and witnessed the murder: “ He may have been a little bit/ off on the speed that the old cripple moved at-but twenty/ -four seconds off...well, now, you know.” (Rose,42) Not to mention, the woman said the murder happened as the last car of an El train roared by the room. How could the man hear him yell at his father then hear a body falling on the ground if the el train, which makes a tremendous amount of noise, was going by at the exact same time? In other words, the woman across the street saw the stabbing through the last two cars of the El train. The shout was heard one second before the stabbing and the El train takes ten to twelve seconds to pass a given point, such as the old man's window. So, the El train was going by at the time of the shout. The El train is really loud when it goes by and the window to the old man's apartment was open. That being the case, the old man would have heard the shout against the background of the really loud El train. We can't be certain of what we hear when there is other, loud, noises in the background. Therefore, the old man certainly couldn’t have heard the boy shout. Lastly, the boy is not guilty of stabbing his father to death because the boy was good with handling a switchblade and he would most likely have stabbed his father in the chest using a down and up technique rather than an up and down technique, which was evident in his father’s wounds from the knife being jabbed four inches deep into his chest. The boy was considered a highly-skilled knife-fighter and he admitted to buying a switchblade on the night of the murder, the same model found in his father’s dead body. However, the boy says he lost the blade on the same night before the murder. An experienced knife wielder would hold the knife under hand, not over-hand, which is what the evidence of the killing appeared to be. He would have stabbed his father with the knife from down and up, not up and down. For example, Juror five explains the proper use of a switchblade: “ Anyone who’s ever used a switch knife would never/ have stabbed downward. You don’t handle a switch knife/ that way. You use it under handed.” (Rose,56) To which Juror eight agrees by replying, “ Then he couldn’t have made the kind of wound that/ killed his father.” (Rose,56) In essence of this murder case, I have full confidence and hereby dignity to believe the boy is not guilty because of the proof beyond reasonable doubt and the thoroughly examined logical evidence that can prove the boy to be innocent. The witnesses and evidences are not conclusive enough to call him guilty, but rather enough to proclaim the boy truly innocent. The woman wasn’t wearing her glasses, the old man couldn’t make it to the door in time and wouldn’t have been able to hear the boy say or do anything to his father at the time under the difficult circumstances, and the way the killer stabbed the victim was unrealistic compared to the boy’s capabilities. Although I am usually gentle in my own manner, I am also prepared to be assertive in the search for truth and innocence in the process of determination for the young boy’s life.