In 12 angry men the kid did it, ms word, final

In 12 Angry Men The Kid Did It

By Robert Kossack, J.D.

The Movie The original 1957 black and white version of 12 Angry Men should be required viewing for every first year law student. It is a four star movie1 with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 100% 2 and an IMDb rating of 8.9/10.3 The American Bar Association ranked 12 Angry Men second on its list of 25 Greatest Legal Movies.4 Similarly, the American Film Institute ranked 12 Angry Men second on its list of Top 10 Courtroom Dramas.5 Both times 12 Angry Men was beaten out by To Kill a Mockingbird 6which ranks first on both lists. The American Film Institute=s 10th Anniversary Edition of its List of 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time ranks To Kill a Mockingbird as the 25th greatest American film and 12 Angry Men as the 87th greatest American film.7 After a screening of 12 Angry Men at the Fordham University School of Law, Supreme Court Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor, who had selected the film for viewing, told the audience her seeing 12 Angry Men sold her Aon the right path@ solidifying her interest in pursuing a legal career, and Justice Sotomayor said watching 12 Angry Men Acontinued to ring the cords@ within her.

However, Justice Sotomayor also referred to Twelve Angry Men as being Afar from reality@ and of containing Aan awful lot of speculation.@ As a lower court judge, Justice Sotomayor would sometimes refer to 12 Angry Men when instructing jurors how not to carry out their duty.8 12 Angry Men was the first movie directed by Sidney Lumet who went on to direct over 40 movies in his lifetime including The Pawn Broker (1964), Fail-Safe (1964), The Anderson Tapes (1971), Serpico (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Dog Day Afternoon

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Leonard Martin http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1000013-12_angry_men/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050083/ http://www.abajournal.com/gallery/top25movies/88 http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=9http:// www.afi.com/10top10/moviedetail.aspx?id=53690&thumb=1 http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_25_greatest_legal_movies/ http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=9 http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx Kirk Semple, New York Times, October 17, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/nyregion/18sonia.html?_r=0

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(1975), Network (1976), and The Verdict (1982).9 The Verdict ranks tenth on the ABA=s list of 25 Greatest Legal Movies and fourth on AFI=s list of Top 10 Courtroom Dramas.10 Lumet=s movie Network is his highest ranking film on AFI=s 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, and it is considered the 64th greatest movie ever made in America.11 12 Angry Men received Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing of Adapted Screenplay, but lost all three Oscars to The Bridge on the River Kwai,12 which ranks 36th on AFI=s List of 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time.13 The Setting 12 Angry Men was made at a time when it was not unusual for everyone on a jury in the New York County Supreme Court14 to be a man. There is a separate door to a women=s bathroom in the jury room, but no woman is on the jury. In 1957, there was a different mindset. Crimes were committed by men, solved by men, and tried by men. The jurors were allowed to smoke in the jury room. One juror smokes a pipe. Five smoke cigarettes. Six ashtrays are placed on the jury table. Some banter takes place between some of the jurors in the adjacent men=s bathroom.

It was a hot, muggy day, and for most the movie no one can figure out how to turn on a fan at the end of the jury room until it begins to rain, and they have to close the windows and turn on the lights.

The twelve jurors have been asked by the prosecutor to convict a young man of murder.

The movie audience does not see the trial. It does not hear the closing arguments. The evidence against the accused is learned piecemeal as the jurors argue the case among themselves and strive to reach a unanimous verdict. After the brief courtroom scene where the judge is reading the last of the jury instructions, about 94 percent of the movie takes place in the jury room, 4 percent of the movie takes place in the bathroom, and 2 percent of the movie consists of opening scenes inside the courthouse and at the end of the movie when McCardle asks Davis his name and introduces himself on the rain soaked courthouse landing. The audience sees the judge telling the jury their verdict must be unanimous, the death penalty is mandatory, and the court will not entertain a recommendation for mercy.15 9 10

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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001486/ http://www.abajournal.com/gallery/top25movies/96 http://www.afi.com/10top10/category.aspx?cat=9 http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Directing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Adapted_Screenplay http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx

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Pictured in the film is the front of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, New York City, where the Supreme Court, Criminal Branch, New York County, is located. It is the New York County trial court for felony criminal cases.

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The movie audience learns the profession of ten out of twelve jurors when over the course of the movie they introduce themselves or answer a question about what they do. In real life, the jurors would know each other quite well before they begin their deliberations. Being a juror is a lot of hurry up and wait. During the waiting periods, jurors can talk to each other about anything other than the case. During the trial, which in this case took six days, the judge will often want to hear arguments outside the jury=s presence. That means more waiting in the jury room, and more time for the jurors to talk with one another. At the beginning of voir dire, the jurors are always asked what they do, where they work and, if they are married, what their spouse does and where their spouse works. By the time trial begins, every member of the jury knows what every other member of the jury does for a living, and if they are retired, what they use to do. Now days, the voir dire in death penalty cases for those states which still have the death penalty begins with long written forms containing numerous questions which the prospective jurors are expected to answer and turn in long before they enter the courtroom.

The Henry Fonda character, Juror Number 8, who places 28th on the American Film Institute=s 100 Greatest Heroes list,16 thinks the public defender did not do a thorough enough job cross examining the prosecution=s witnesses, and if he were on trial for his life, he would have wanted his lawyer to Atear the prosecution=s witnesses to shreds or at least try to.@ Juror Number 8 felt the accused=s lawyer let too many things slip by, and if he were the accused, he would have asked for another lawyer. Juror Number 8 also felt everyone who testified against the accused was too positive about their testimony, and Anothing=s that positive.@ On their initial show of hands, eleven of the twelve jurors vote to convict the accused of murder. Juror Number 8 votes Anot guilty@ and wants to talk about the case before casting a .... .... .... ....

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Judge

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The script is as follows: To continue, you've listened to a long and complex case, murder in the first degree. Premeditated murder is the most serious charge tried in our criminal courts. You've listened to the testimony, you've had the law read to you and interpreted as it applies in this case; it's now your duty to sit down and try to separate the facts from the fancy. One man is dead, another man's life is at stake; if there's a reasonable doubt in your minds as to the guilt of the accused, a reasonable doubt, then you must bring me a verdict of "Not Guilty". If, however, there's no reasonable doubt, then you must, in good conscience, find the accused "Guilty." However you decide, your verdict must be unanimous. In the event that you find the accused "Guilty", the bench will not entertain a recommendation for mercy. The death sentence is mandatory in this case. You're faced with a grave responsibility. Thank you, gentlemen. http://www.afi.com/100years/handv.aspx

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twelfth vote which would send the boy to his death. He just wants to talk,17 and suggests they discuss the case for an hour.

Movie Manipulation Juror Number 8 is a tragic hero. He was mistaken in his selection of mission from the time he became an advocate for the accused. He is assisted in luring the audience into supporting his cause by the writers= and director=s manipulations until by the end of the movie the audience feels a sense of relief when, in actuality, they are listening to fairy tales and letting a guilty man go free.

Lumet=s camera direction increases the audience=s tension and suspense which is only relieved by Juror Number 8's ultimate success. The first third of the movie is filmed from above eye level with a wide-angle lens, and the camera often moves through the set allowing one cut to last as long as a minute. This gives the appearance of a greater distance separating the jurors and enhances the appearance of calmness and congeniality. The second third of the movie begins when the secret ballots are counted. At that time, the movie begins to be filmed at eye level. The tension slightly increases as the audience is drawn into searching for reasons to acquit the accused.

Near the end of the movie beginning when Juror Number 4 is questioned by Juror Number 8 to see if he remembers the movies he saw four evenings prior, the camera begins to view the characters from below eye level with facial closeups which causes even greater tension. The camera returns to an overhead wide-angle view only when the jurors begin to turn their backs on the bigot, but for the final shift in votes, the shots are predominately taken from below eye level, and the scene cuts come at an exponentially faster rate for maximum stress.

With respect to the script and the acting, the movie audience is first manipulated by the judge=s tired indifference when he reads the last of the jury instructions and when the movie audience sees a close up of the accused=s young, weak, pathetic face as he watches the jury leave the courtroom to decide his fate. The audience further pulls for the accused when the jurors who most vehemently argue in favor of the accused=s guilt prove to be nut cases.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 3

Then what do you want?

Juror No. 8

I just want to talk.

Juror No. 7

What's there to talk about? Eleven of us think he's guilty. No one had to think about it twice except you.

Juror No. 10

I want to ask you something. Do you believe his story?

Juror No. 8

I don't know. Maybe I don't.

Juror No. 7

So how come you voted not guilty?

Juror No. 8

There were eleven votes for guilty. It's not easy to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.

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The first nut case is the owner of the Beck and Call Company delivery service, a bully who subconsciously hates his own kid. He considers himself a self-appointed public avenger and when accused of wanting to personally flip the electric chair=s switch says, AOn this kid, you bet!@ The bully falsely accuses the juror who lives in the slums of changing his vote, and he later insults the old juror for coming up with so many Abright ideas.@ He provokes the house painter into standing up for the weaker jurors who he is trying to intimidate with his loud, backhanded style.

At one point, he lunges at Juror Number 8 after being told he had been acting like a self-appointed public avenger and a sadist.18 The second nut case is the successful, self-absorbed, superficial, marmalade salesman who insults the juror who lives in the slums for being a Baltimore baseball fan and who insults the house painter for being a modest, blue collar worker. His only interest is getting out of the courthouse and to a baseball game between the New York Yankee=s and the Cleveland Indians, and he checks his watch 28 times during the movie. He does no=t care whether the accused is found innocent or guilty so long as he makes his ball game, and he barely cares when a wadded up paper ball he made and threw into the ceiling fan bounces off its spinning blades and hits the oldest juror in the head.

The third nut case is the disrespectful, interruptive, racist, garage owner who should have never made it past voir dire and should have been dismissed from the jury for cause. He thinks the kid is a born liar and dangerous because he is from a Puerto Rican slum.19 The garage owner thinks there needs to be a little more yelling in the jury room to keep things on track. He insults the old juror=s theory that the old man who lived downstairs from where the murder occurred embellished his testimony for the sake of attention. Finally, he launches into a bigoted diatribe until he is told, ANow sit down and don=t open your mouth again.@ The only somewhat normal juror who holds out for finding the accused guilty is the stockbroker. His reasoned arguments are logically and politely articulated and defended with courtroom demeanor, but he is not very likeable. He appears to have been successful in his profession, but he is emotionless and somewhat aloof. He was not the kind of stock trader who one would expect to risk money for a speculative gain; he would be a conservative investor interested in wealth preservation. His argument that slums breed criminals is accentuated by the bigot to the point of offending the juror who had lived in the slums all his life. The stockbroker is a bit snobby and would be far more comfortable at his weekly bridge game than he would be at a sporting event with the marmalade salesman. ....

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Following the ruckus, one of the best dialogs in the move takes place. The script is as follows,

Juror No. 3

I=m a pretty excitable guy . . . . He was just trying to bait me.

Juror No. 4

He did an excellent job.

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The term APuerto Rican@ is never mentioned in the movie but is implied by the accused=s appearance. Regardless, the accused is treated by the racist as being inferior because of his minority race and ethnicity, and the racist assumes the accused fits within various negative, disreputable, and criminal stereotypes.

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Thus, from the demeanor of the jurors who most adamantly want the accused found guilty, the audience is pushed to bond with the jurors who want the accused acquitted. The jurors who first decide to vote for acquittal all show good manners, speak in reasonable tones, respect their duty as jurors, and are likeable because they care about other people.

The Case A son stands accused of murdering his father. The accused is only eighteen years old.

He lived in an upstairs ghetto apartment with his father, presumably on the second floor where an elevated train line passed a few feet from their apartment=s windows. The accused son may look frail and innocent, but he had a dangerous criminal record for mugging and for being Apicked up twice for knife fighting.@ At the time, the drinking age in New York was eighteen, and the voting age was 21. The accused is being tried as an adult. In New York, the condemned at the time were executed in the electric chair.20 At one point Juror Number 3 blurts out, AWe=re trying to put a guilty man in the chair where he belongs.@ 21 .... .... .... .... .... ....

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New York was the first state to execute a person in the electric chair when William Kemmler was executed on August 6, 1869. This was the first use of the electric chair in the world, and it did not go well. Two attempts were necessary, and when it was over, the smell of burnt clothing and charred flesh filled the room as smoke was observed coming from Kemmler=s head. A later autopsy revealed that the electrode attached to his back had burned through to his spine. On August 15, 1963, Eddie Lee Mays was the last person executed in New York, also in the electric chair. Even if convicted in a retrial, it is doubtful the accused would have been put to death. New York abandoned the death penalty in June, 2004, after the New York Court of Appeals found the death penalty unconstitutional in the case of People v. LaValle, 3 N.Y.3d 88 (2004).

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 3

We=re trying to put a guilty man in the chair. **** What's the matter with you guys? You all know he's guilty! He's got to burn! He'll slip through our fingers.

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The prosecution=s case is that at 8:00 pm the father and his son had an argument during which time the father, who stood seven inches taller than his son,22 hit the son twice.23 The son then ran angrily out of the apartment and went directly to a local junk shop where he purchased a switchblade knife.24 At 8:45 pm, the son met with some of his friends in front of a tavern at which time he showed them the switchblade knife. At 9:45 pm, the son left his friends and arrived home at 10:00 pm.25 .... ....

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 2 23

The boy was five feet seven inches tall. His father was six two. That's a difference of seven inches.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 6

Juror No. 8

. . . . that testimony from those people across the hall from the kid's apartment, that was very powerful. Didn't they say something about a fight, an argument, between the old man and his son around about seven o'clock that night? I could be wrong but...

B It was eight o'clock, not seven. They heard an argument. Then they heard the father hit the boy twice. Finally they saw the boy run, angry, out of the house.

**** Juror No. 4

The boy admitted leaving the house at eight o'clock at night after being slapped by his father.

Juror No. 6

No, he didn't say "slapped." He said "punched." There's a difference.

Juror No. 4

After being hit several times by his father.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

. . . He went directly to a local junk shop where he bought one of those . . .

Juror No. 5

Switch knives.

Juror No. 4

B Switchblade knives.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

He met some friends of his in front of a tavern about 8.45. . . . .

**** He talked with his friends for an hour, leaving them at 9.45. During this time, they saw the switch knife. . . .They identified the death weapon in court as that very same knife . . .

He arrived home at about ten o'clock.

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The switchblade knife the son purchased had an unusual, carved handle and blade.26 The keeper of the shop where the son purchased the knife testified he had never previously seen a knife like it.

A 75-year-old man in an apartment directly beneath the apartment shared by the son and his father27 testified that at 12:10 am he heard loud noises which sounded like a fight, then heard the son yell at his father, AI=m gonna kill ya.@ The old man testified a second later he heard a body hit the floor which caused him to go to his door, which he said took him fifteen seconds, and look out his door just in time to see the boy run down the stairs and out of the apartments. The old man then called the police.28 A woman who had known the son all his life, lived across the street, and her open window was right opposite the window to the boy=s room across the elevated train tracks.29 She testified that about ten minutes after midnight she turned and looked out her window, through the windows of the last two cars of a passing elevated train, and into the son=s room where she saw the boy raise his arm over his head and stab down into his father's chest.30 26

The knife is identified in a trivia post on the IMDb website as an Italian stiletto switchblade with a Filipino-style Kriss blade.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 3 28

The old man lived downstairs under the room where the killing took place . . . .

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 3

At 10 minutes after 12 on the night of the killing, he heard loud noises. Said it sounded like a fight. And he heard the kid yell out "I'm gonna kill ya." A second later, he heard a body hit the floor. Ran to the door, opened it up, saw the kid run down the stairs and out of the house. Called the police.

**** Juror No. 8 29

I'd like to know if an old man who drags one foot >cause he had a stroke can get from his bedroom to his front door in 15 seconds.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 10

She's known the kid all his life. His window is opposite hers across the el tracks.

**** Juror No. 7

The lady across the street looked right in the open window and saw the stabbing.

Juror No. 4

Her bed was next to the window, and she could look out and see directly into the boy's room across the street.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 10

Here's a woman who's lying in bed. She can't sleep. She's dyin' with the heat. She looks out the window, and right across the street she sees the kid stick the knife into his father.

The time is 12:10 on the nose.

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The elevated train was empty, its lights were out, and it was just being moved downtown.

Under such conditions one could see through the elevated train and observe what was happening on the other side.31 The distance between the woman in her apartment and where the father was stabbed was 60 feet.32 After witnessing the murder, the woman screamed and called the police.33 When the police arrived at the apartment the son shared with his father, they found the father dead with the murder weapon, a switchblade knife, stabbed four inches downward into his chest.34 The coroner set the time of death around midnight.35 The shopkeeper and the son=s

**** Juror no. 7

The lady across the street looked right in the open window and saw the stabbing.

**** Juror No. 8

The woman across the street swore positively she looked out of the window and saw the killing through the last two cars of a passing el train B the last two cars.

**** Juror No. 4

. . . . the woman across the street, who actually saw the murder committed. **** . . . . she described the stabbing by saying she saw the boy raise his arm over his head and stab down into the father's chest. . . . She said she went to bed about eleven o'clock that night. . . . She tossed and turned for over an hour. Finally, she turned toward the window at about 10 minutes after 12, and as she looked out, she saw the killing through the windows of a passing el train. . . . she got a good look at the boy in the act of stabbing his father.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 10

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 11 33

She had to be able to identify a person 60 feet away . . .

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 11 34

This el train had no passengers on it. It was just being moved downtown. The lights were out, and they proved in court that at night you can look through the windows and see what's happening on the other side B they proved it.

The woman across the street testified that the moment after she saw the killing, that is, a moment after the train went by, she screamed, and then went to telephone the police.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 3

He stabbed his own father four inches into the chest.

****

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friends identified the murder weapon as the knife the son had purchased and had shown to his friends just hours before the killing.36 The son came back to the apartment at 3:10 am and was arrested by the police in the apartment=s hallway.37 At the time of the son=s interrogation by the police in the kitchen, his father was lying dead in his bedroom.38 During his interrogation, the son said he came back to the apartment at 10:00 pm, but left again at 11:30 pm and went to the movies.39 The interrogation of

Juror No. 3

What about the switch knife they found in the old man's chest?

Juror No. 2

There was this whole business about the stab wound and how it was made B the downward angle of it, you know?

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 3 36

The coroner fixed the time of death around midnight.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

. . . . This wasn't an ordinary knife. It had a very unusual carved handle and blade. The storekeeper who sold it to him said it was the only one of its kind he had ever had in stock. . . . He met some friends of his in front of a tavern at about 8.45. . . . He talked with his friends for an hour, leaving them at 9:45. During this time, they saw the switch knife. . . .

They identified the death weapon in court as that very same knife.

**** Juror No. 4 37

Take a look at this knife. It's a very unusual knife. I've never seen one like it. Neither had the storekeeper who sold it to the boy.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

He claims that he went to a movie at about 11:30, returning home at 3:10 to find his father dead and himself arrested.

**** Juror No. 11 38

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 8 39

He came back home. . . . at three o'clock or so, and he was captured by two detectives in the hallway of his house.

According to the police testimony, the boy was questioned in the kitchen, while the body of his father was lying in the bedroom.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

He arrived home at about ten o'clock. ****

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the accused was conducted within one hour of when he said he left the movies to come home, but the accused could not remember the names of the movies he had just seen or who starred in them.40 Pursuant to an investigation, no one at the apartments saw the accused leave the apartments at 11:30 pm, and no one at the movies saw the accused go in or out of the theater.41 The Jurors Juror Number 1, the appointed foreman of the jury, is played by Martin Balsam. Some of Balsam=s other film roles were as Detective Arbogast in Psycho, Police Chief Mark Dutton in Cape Fear, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel in Tora! Tora! Tora!, scam artist, snake water salesman Mr. Merriweather in Little Big Man, and Washington Post Managing Editor Howard Simons in All the President=s Men. Juror Number 1 works as an assistant high school football coach at the Andrew J. McCorckle High School in Queens. He wears a tie on a pull over, short sleeve shirt, and he smokes cigarettes. As the jury foreman, he abandons keeping order and is regulated to the counter of votes and the deliverer of exhibits to and from the bailiff and other members of the jury.

Juror Number 1's only contribution to the jury=s deliberations is his confirmation that the woman who witnessed the murder from across the street had marks on her nose from wearing glasses as he wonders out load what those marks are called. They are called Aeyeglass nose pad indentations.@ Juror Number 2 is a bank teller played by John Fiedler. Some of Fiedler=s other film roles were as lawyer J. Noble Daggett in True Grit and voice overs for Piglet in three Winnie the Pooh movies. Fiedler played Chief Hengist in the Star Trek episode AWolf in the Fold,@ and He claims that he went to a movie at about 11:30, returning home at 3:10 to find his father dead and himself arrested. **** Juror No. 11

He came back home . . . at three o'clock or so, and he was captured by two detectives in the hallway of his house.

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The accused=s right to be notified of his right to have counsel present during all questioning before his statements could be used against him was not established until nine years later. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 88 S.Ct. 1962, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

He claimed he was at the movies during the time of the killing, and yet one hour later he couldn=t remember the names of the films he saw or who played in them. **** And no one saw him going in or out of the theater. **** No one in the house saw him go out at 11:30. No one at the theater identified him. He couldn't even remember the names of the pictures he saw.

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Mr. Peterson, one of the regular patients on The Bob Newhart Show television series. Fiedler was the youngest actor on the jury being 32 years old when 12 Angry Men was released.

Juror Number 2 is a meek person and is fascinated by the trial process and his first time on a jury. He smokes a pipe and at one point says with some excitement to the jury foreman, ALooks like we=ll be here for dinner, huh?@ His only contribution to the jury=s deliberations is his questioning how the young man could have stabbed down into his father=s chest when his father stood seven inches taller than him. Juror Number 3 demonstrates to Juror Number 2 and the other jurors how it would be done.

Juror Number 2 had two obvious misconceptions. The first is his initial inclination the defendant was guilty supported by the fact that Anobody proved otherwise.@ Juror Number 8 tells Juror Number 2, AThe burden of proof is on the prosecution. The defendant doesn=t even have to open his mouth. That=s in the Constitution.@ 42 Juror Number 2 later claims he knew the Constitution did not require the defendant to prove anything or even take the stand. His second misconception is when he holds Juror Number 3 to his prior, reactionary statement, AYou can throw out all the other evidence, the woman saw him do it!@ Juror Number 3 is a delivery business owner played by Lee J. Cobb. Some of Cobb=s other film roles were as union mob boss Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront, Doctor Curtis Luther in Three Faces of Eve, New York City Detective Lieutenant McElroy in Coogan=s Bluff, and Lieutenant William F. Kinderman in The Exorcist. Cobb received second billing in Twelve Angry Men. Cobb died at age 64 of a heart attack and lived a shorter life than any other actor on the jury.

Juror Number 3 is a hard charging, abrasive bully. He operates the Beck & Call Company messenger service and has 37 men working for him after he, Astarted with nothin=.@ He claims he has no personal feelings about the case, but he is deeply affected by his relationship with his own son. When his son was nine years old, he saw him run away from a fight and vowed to make a man out of him if he had to Abreak him in two trying.@ When his son reached sixteen years old, they had a fight, and his son hit him in the jaw. At the time of the trial, his son was 22 years old, and Juror Number 3 has not seen him since he turned twenty. During the course of the movie, Juror Number 3 can be heard saying, AI would like to slap those tough kids down before they start making trouble. * * * * It=s these kids now days or whatever they are? * * * * Rotten kids, you work your heart out.@ Juror Number 3 is the last hold out to change his vote.

After hijacking the floor from the meek bank teller, Juror Number 3 gets ready to rattle off facts but never gets past the testimony of Athe old man who lived under the room where the killing took place.@ As related by Juror Number 3, the old man=s testimony was that at ten minutes past midnight he heard loud noises which sounded like a fight, he heard the kid yell 42

The presumption of innocence follows from the English common law. It is not explicitly stated in the Constitution but has been held to be inferred from the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The presumption of innocence became the law of the land with the United States Supreme Court=s holding in Coffin v.

United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895), wherein the Supreme Court held, AThe principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.@

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out AI=m gonna kill ya,@ one second later he heard a body hit the floor, he went43 to his apartment=s front door, opened the door, Asaw the kid running down the stairs and out the house,@ and then called the police who found the kid=s father dead with a knife in his chest.

Juror Number 3 also reminds the other jurors that the coroner fixed the time of death at around midnight. Later, Juror Number 3 proves one can yell, AI=ll kill you!@ without really meaning it when Juror Number 8 bates him into a verbal assault. The discussion of whether someone really means AI=m gonna kill you@ when they yell it is wholly irrelevant since the victim was, in fact, dead, but it made for a good irony later on in the movie.

Juror Number 4 is a stockbroker played by E.G. Marshall. Some of Marshal=s other film roles were as prosecuting attorney Lieutenant Commander John Challee in The Caine Mutiny, Colonel Rufus S. Bratton in Tora, Tora, Tora, and Attorney General John N. Mitchell in Nixon.

On the television series The Defenders, Marshal played criminal defense attorney Lawrence Preston who accepted controversial cases such as complex civil rights cases, including defending Neo-Nazis= freedom of speech, if the need arose. Marshall also played neurosurgeon David Craig in the television series The Bold Ones.

Juror Number 4 never sweats, calmly reads his copy of the Wall Street Journal during breaks in the deliberations, and smokes cigarettes. Juror Number 4 best represents the prosecution=s case to the rest of the jury. He recounts certain of the accused=s admissions, specifically that he left the apartment at 8:00 pm after he was hit twice by his father and then went directly to a junk shop where he bought a switchblade knife. Juror Number 4 points out that the knife had an unusual carved handle and blade which the shopkeeper had never previously seen, that the accused admitted he met up with his friends in front of a tavern at 8:45 pm and left his friends an hour later, that during this time the accused=s friends saw the switchblade knife the accused had just purchased, and that the shopkeeper and the boy=s friends identified the murder weapon as the knife the accused had purchased and shown to his friends on the evening of the murder.

According to Juror Number 4, the accused=s version of the events is that after leaving his friends, he then went home but left again at 11:30 pm and went to the movies. Between then and when he returned home at 3:10 am, the accused testified the knife fell through a hole in his pocket.

Juror Number 4 argues the boy=s alibi is flimsy because when questioned by the police that evening, the accused could not remember the names of the movies he saw or who starred in them.

Further, no one remembered seeing him leave the apartments at 11:30 pm, and no one at the movies remembered seeing him go in or out of the theater. Juror Number 4 argued, Ainstead of leaving his apartment at 11:30 pm and going to the movies, the boy stayed home, had another fight with his father, stabbed him to death, and left the house at ten minutes after twelve; he even remembered to wipe the knife clean of fingerprints.@ Juror Number 4 also argued that even

43

There is considerable argument over whether the old man who lived downstairs used the word Aran@ when he described himself going from his bed to the door. Juror Number 4, who liked to compromise the testimony, claimed the old man said he Awent@ to his front door. Most jurors thought they heard the word Aran.@ Juror Number 3 and Juror Number 7 used the word Aran.@ Since the old man had a stroke the year prior to the incident, he dragged his left foot, and he was observed at the time of the trial, three months after the murder, to move very slowly.

13

though it was possible that someone else murdered the boy=s father with an exactly similar knife, it was not very probable B an important fact the movie audience and the jurors tend to forget.

Later on, Juror Number 4 suggests the accused did not hear the woman who witnessed the murder scream or, alternatively, that screams were so common in the neighborhood, the woman=s scream went unnoticed.

When confronted by Juror Number 8 with the accused=s court testimony, Juror Number 4 admitted the accused knew the names of the movies and who starred in them when asked by his attorney at trial, but he pointed out that his attorney could have found out that information, and the accused had time to memorize the names of the movies and who starred in them during the three months between the time of his arrest and the time he went to trial.44 Juror Number 8 then argued that at the time of the police interrogation, the boy was under great emotional distress since he was interrogated in the kitchen while his father lay dead in the bedroom. Juror Number 8 then pressed Juror Number 4 to recount the names and stars of the last movies he attended, Juror Number 4 finally sweated and admitted that even though he was not subjected to great emotional distress, he could not remember the name of the second B rated movie he saw five nights previous or the name of the unknown, pretty actress who starred in it.45 Juror Number 5, a man of unknown occupation, is played by Jack Klugman. Klugman is known for his work with Tony Randall when they stared in The Odd Couple on Broadway and later in the television series by the same name. Klugman is also known for having played Dr. Quincy, a Los Angeles County Coroner=s Office forensic pathologist who in the television series Quency detected and solved a murder a week despite the fumblings of the police. Klugman also played numerous roles in multiple television shows including four episodes of The Twilight Zone. Klugman lived to be 90 years old which was longer than any other actor on the jury. He was also the last surviving juror when he passed away on December 24, 2012.

Juror Number 5 had lived in slums all his life. When asked by Juror Number 7 whether he was a Yankees fan, he tells Juror Number 7, ANo, Baltimore.@ Juror Number 7 then calls Juror Number 5 ABaltimore@ for the remainder of the movie with an air of disdain and superiority

44

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 8

- He remembered them correctly in court.

Juror No. 4

Yes. His lawyer took great pains to bring that out. He had three months to the day of the trial in which to memorize them. It's not difficult for a lawyer to find out what played on a particular night.

45

Juror Number 8 says he Asat there in court for six days listening while the evidence built up.@ The jury is deliberating on a Friday evening based on Juror Number 8's questions to Juror Number 4 about what he did on previous evenings. Therefore, trial started the previous Friday morning. During Juror Number 8's questioning of Juror Number 4 in an effort to show that ordinary people can forget names of movies or the names of who starred in them, the audience learns Juror Number 4 is so devoted to his work, that he left for work after court on Wednesday evening and worked at his office until 8:30 pm before going home, and that in court on Tuesday he might not have been entirely up to snuff because on Monday night he went out to the movies and saw a double feature.

14

because Baltimore had no good baseball player on its team.46 Juror Number 5 was the first juror to point out that the old man in the apartment below could not have gotten out of his bed and run to his front door in 15 seconds. Juror Number 5 improperly influences the jury and engages in juror misconduct when he serves as a knife fighting expert claiming his expertise comes from having seen knife fights in the slums where he had lived all his life.

Juror Number 6 is a house painter played by Edward Binns. Some of Binns=s other film roles were as police Captain Juncket in North by Northwest, B-53 pilot Colonel Grady in Fail-Safe, Senator Burkette in Judgment at Nuremberg (which ranks tenth on the AFI list of Top 10 Courtroom Dramas and twelfth on the ABA top 25), Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith in Patton, and Bishop Brophy in The Verdict.

Juror Number 6 stands up for Juror Number 5 and Juror Number 9 when they are being bullied by Juror Number 3. He talks about himself as just being a working man. At one point in the movie, Juror Number 7 appears to mock Juror Number 6 saying he was earning $3.00 a day, his daily jury pay,47 Juror Number 7 makes the statement as if Juror Number 6 should be grateful for .... ....

46

The conflict between Juror Number 5 and Juror Number 7 based on Juror Number 7 judging Juror Number 5 based on the fortunes of his favorite baseball team offers another protagonist/antagonist subplot. The script is as follows: Juror No. 7

Are you a Yankee fan?

Juror No. 5

No, Baltimore.

Juror No. 7

Baltimore? That's like being hit in the head with a crowbar once a day. I mean, who=ve they got? Who have they got besides good grounds keepers?

**** Juror No. 5

Lawyers aren't infallible.

Juror No. 7

Baltimore, please.

**** Juror No. 5

Hold it.

Juror No. 7

And the Baltimore rooter is heard from again B and pop-ups are fallin' for base hits.

47

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 6

Why don't you stop making smart remarks?

Juror No. 7

My friend, for your three dollars a day, you have to listen to everything.

15

making that amount. As a painter, Juror Number 6 would live a modest lifestyle.48 He was most poorly dressed man on the jury and one of two jurors not wearing a tie.

Juror Number 6 initially contributes to the jury deliberations by examining the accused=s motive as evidenced by the testimony of Athose people across the hall@ who heard, Asomething about a fight, an argument, between the old man and his son.@ Juror Number 8 finishes Juror Number 6's thought by saying, AIt was eight o'clock. They heard an argument. Then they heard the father hit the boy twice. Finally they saw the boy run angry out of the house.@ According to Juror Number 4, the accused admitted being hit Aseveral times.@ According to Juror Number 6, the accused testified that during the 8:00 scuffle he was Apunched@ by his father.49 Juror Number 7 is a salesman played by Jack Warden. Some of Warden=s other film roles were as Yeoman 1st Class Mueller in Run Silent, Run Deep, wealthy husband Lester Karpf in Shampoo, football trainer Max Corkle in Heaven Can Wait, local Washington Post news editor Harry M. Rosenfeld in All the President=s Men, and suicide prone Judge Mickey Morrissey in The Verdict. Warden also played private detective Harry Fox in the television series Crazy Like a Fox. Juror Number 7 sells marmalade for a living, and his sales techniques consist of laughs, drinks, jokes, tricks, and hitting them Awhere they live.@ Juror Number 7 smokes cigarettes and likes to use them in his tricks. He=s too sporty for a tie and wears an expensive pull over shirt, a flashy sports jacket, and a matching hat. In the bathroom, he brags to Juror Number 8 that he "made $27,000 last year selling marmalade." 50 Juror Number 7 is shallow and self absorbed and only cares about whether he will miss a baseball game which starts at 8:00 pm. When it begins to pour rain, he=s confident they have the infield covered. Juror Number 11 accuses him of not caring about the boy=s life because there are two baseball tickets burning a hole in his pocket.

Juror Number 7 contributes to the deliberations by rattling off the defendant=s prior criminal record which includes throwing a rock at the teacher when he was ten years old, stealing a car when he was fifteen years old for which he was sent to reform school and, apparently, between 48

The New York minimum wage in 1957 was $1.00 per hour. A union painter would earn more than twice that amount. In 2015 dollars, Juror Number 6 would earn $16,000 annually at minimum wage or at least $32,000 annually if he was union. Side jobs might account for extra income. The federal poverty level in 2015 as per HealthCare.gov is $11,770 for an individual and $24,250 for a family of four. Juror Number 6 never spoke of his having a wife or family.

49

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

The boy admitted leaving the house at eight o'clock at night after being slapped several times by his father.

Juror No. 6

No, he didn=t say "slapped," he said, "punched". There's a difference between a slap and a punch.

Juror No. 4

After being hit several times by his father.

50

Accounting for inflation, $27,000 in 1956, the year before 12 Angry Men was released, is worth $236,564.32 in 2015 dollars.

16

the age of fifteen and the age of eighteen, being arrested for a mugging and being picked up twice for knife fighting. Juror Number 7 said, Athey say he=s real good with a knife.@ Juror Number 7 also opined the odds someone else stabbed the boy=s father with an exactly similar knife were a million to one, a statistic no juror disputes, but which every juror and member of the audience seem to forget.

Juror Number 8 is an architect played by Henry Fonda. Henry Fonda co-produced 12 Angry Men with Reginald Rose, the author of the original play Twelve Angry Men,51 and Fonda received top billing. He is the casts= most accomplished actor, and some of his other film roles were as Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln, share cropper Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday in Fort Apache, Lieutenant Douglas A. Roberts in Mister Roberts, ex-lawman Morgan Hickman in The Tin Star, Brig. Gen Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. in The Longest Day, grizzled buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart in How the West Was Won, the President of the United States in Fail-Save, evil bad guy Frank in the spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in In Harm's Way and again in Midway, and fish-obsessed Norman Thayer Jr. in On Golden Pond for which he won an Oscar for best actor.

The hero of the story, Juror Number 8 smokes cigarettes with the best of them. He is the only juror who votes not guilty during the initial hand count to determine the accused=s fate. He says he does not know whether the accused is guilty but simply wants to talk. He is described by Juror Number 3 as Athe leader of the cause.@ At the end of the movie when Juror Number 9 asks him his name, Juror Number 8 says his name is Davis. Juror Number 8 recites testimony which must have come from the accused=s own mouth during trial; to wit, that the accused was born in the slums, that he spent a year and a half in an orphanage when his father was in prison for forgery, that his father beat him regularly with his fists, and that the police threw him down half a flight of stairs when he was arrested.

Juror Number 8 improperly influences the jury and engages in juror misconduct by sneaking into the jury room a knife exactly similar to the one used to kill the boy=s father. Juror Number 8 Atestifies@ that he purchased the duplicate knife at a pawn shop two blocks from the boy=s house. He then argues that it=s possible someone else killed the boy=s father with an exactly similar knife and then, following the lead set by Juror Number 4, commits a misdemeanor by vandalizing public property, namely the jury table which by the end of the movie has received two stab holes in its otherwise pristine table top.52 Juror Number 8 commits additional juror misconduct by orchestrating an experiment to see how long it would take the old man downstairs to travel from his bed to his apartment=s front door and whether he could do so in fifteen seconds.

At one point Juror Number 10 asks Juror Number 8, AWhat do you think that trial cost?@ Juror Number 8 may very well find out the exact cost of the trial before his court experience is over.

Juror Number 9, the old man on the jury, is played by Joseph Sweeney. Some of Sweeney=s other film roles were as Edward M. Schultz in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and as 51

The name of the play and the television play is Twelve Angry Men as it spells out the number 12 as opposed to the name of the movie which is 12 Angry Men. 52

At least the table top should have been pristine. There are a number of other stab marks in the table top caused from multiple takes of the same movie scene.

17

the Reverend in The Fastest Gun Alive, and Sweeney kept busy acting in numerous television shows including twelve performances the year he died in 1963 at age 79. When 12 Angry Men was filmed, Sweeney was 73 years old.

Juror Number 9 is assumed to be retired. The audience never learns his prior profession, but he comes to court in a suit, white dress shirt, and conservative tie. He offers Juror Number 8 support because he respects Juror Number 8's motives. At the end of the movie, he asks Juror Number 8 what his name is, and when Juror Number 8 tells him his name is Davis, Juror Number 9 says his name is McCardle.

Juror Number 9 says the old man in the apartment below never had any previous recognition and might have made himself believe he saw the boy running down the stairs because he needed to be Aquoted just once.@ The jury never discusses any evidence supporting Juror Number 9's contention the old man had been a nothing all his life. The old man downstairs could have been a World War I hero for all that is known. Juror Number 9 makes a big issue out of the old man coming to court with a split under the shoulder of his jacket and for dragging his left foot and "trying to hide it because he was ashamed.@ Juror Number 9 describes the old man downstairs as frightened and insignificant. The garage owner was not the only juror with some preconceived notions of whether one=s socioeconomic status affects their credibility, but Juror Number 9 will not directly call the old man downstairs a liar.

Juror Number 9 was the only juror to notice and remember that the woman who witnessed the murder from her window across the street had eyeglass nose pad indentations which she kept rubbing during her testimony. The woman did not wear any glasses in court, but Juror Number 4 confirms the impressions could only be made by eyeglasses. Juror Number 9 said the woman was 45 years old and making a desperate effort to look 35 for her first public appearance suggesting she, as Jury Number 3 put it, Adidn=t wear 'em out of the house so people'd think she's gorgeous.@ Juror Number 10 is a garage owner played by Ed Begley. Begley plays the second oldest man on the jury. He was 56 years old when 12 Angry Men was released in 1957, but he looks at least ten years older. Begley received third billing in Twelve Angry Men. Some of Begley=s other film roles were as William Briggs in Patterns, Anthony Demmet in Lone Star, and Captain Wilson of the Cooper Hanging party in Hang >Em High. Surprisingly, in consideration of his angry-old-white-man voice with which he speaks in 12 Angry Men, Begley played the part of Charlie Chan on the radio from 1944 to 1945 in N.B.C.=s The Adventures of Charlie Chan.

Juror Number 10 is the jury bigot. He has three garages he is afraid are Agoing to pot@ while the jury wastes time deliberating. He tries to remind the other jurors what their Adealing with@ who Alet those kids run wild,@ while their violence is a Anormal state of affairs,@ which Amaybe . . . serves them right@ and, later, Athere=s not a one of them that is any good.@ Juror Number 10 contributes to the jury deliberations by summarizing the testimony of the woman across the street and how the prosecution proved she could have seen the murder through the cars of the moving elevated train because it was empty, and its lights were off. He described the woman as having known the kid all her life, an important fact with respect to how easily she could have recognized the accused, and he said on the night of the killing, the woman was unable

18

to sleep and was dying of heat before she turned and looked out the window in time to see the boy stab his father with a knife in a downward motion.

Juror Number 11 is a watchmaker played by George Voskovec. Voskovec was born in Bohemia, presently part of the Czech Republic, and he became a naturalized United States citizen in 1955. Voskovec=s anti-fascist theater work led to the closure of the Liberated Theater after the Munich Agreement in 1938. His stared as Dr. Gerard Finney in Somewhere in Time.

Juror Number 11 appears to have recently immigrated from Europe. He understands the sensitivity of Juror Number 5 to Jury Number 10 describing those who come from slums as Areal trash.@ He contributes to the jury deliberations by questioning why the accused would come back to the apartment at 3:10 am if he had just killed his father three hours earlier, especially since the accused should have heard the scream from the woman who saw the murder from across the street.

He says he cannot understand why the accused would come back and risk being captured by the police. In response to the suggestion the accused at first left in a panic but came back for the knife which he knew could be identified as the one he had just purchased, Juror Number 11 points out the accused had the presence of mind to wipe the knife free of fingerprints. Justice Sotomayor was especially moved by Juror Number 11's speech about how they were notified to come down and judge a person they had never known and had nothing to lose or gain by their decision, and that is what makes America strong.53 Juror Number 12 is an advertising executive played by Robert Webber who considers himself lucky to have been assigned to a murder case which kept his interest because it had Ano real dead spots.@ Some of Webber=s other film roles were as General Denton in The Dirty Dozen, Dixon in The Great White Hope, Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher in Midway, and Colonel Clay Thornbush in Private Benjamin. Weber was the handsome, sharp dresser, and was the second youngest member of the jury at age 33. Weber died from Lou Gehrig's disease at age 64 having outlived Lee J. Cobb by only five months.

Juror Number 12 is more interested in appearance than substance. Naturally he smokes cigarettes which was practically a requirement for being an advertising executive in the 1950's.

He measured the worth of the trial by its entertainment value and admired the prosecutor for his Areal drive,@ but he showed little interest in taking a closer look at the facts beyond the arguments made by the prosecutor. Juror Number 12 is caught making a drawing of a box of Rice Pops, a cereal he was advertising for which he authored the slogan, AThe breakfast with the built in bounce.@ Juror Number 12 was scolded by Juror Number 8 for playing tic-tac-toe with Juror

53

Kirk Semple, New York Times, October 17, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/nyregion/18sonia.html?_r=0

The script is as follows: Juror No. 11

This fighting . . . That's not why we are here, to fight. We have a responsibility. This, I have always thought, is a remarkable thing about democracy. . . . That we are notified by mail to come down to this place to decide on the guilt or innocence of a man we . . . have never heard of before. We have nothing to gain or lose . . . by our verdict. This is one of the reasons why we are strong. We should not make it a . . . personal thing.

19

Number 3 instead of paying attention to the deliberations when Juror Number 8 snatched the paper they had been writing on, crumpled it up, and said, AThis isn=t a game!@ Juror Number 12 likes to preface a proposed idea with a humorous expression but then does not follow it up with any constructive idea. The jury is particularly amused when he says he has a few ideas and Alet=s put it out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up,@ but he fails to follow through with any idea after he entertains the group with his ad man expression. He is all sizzle and little steak, but to his credit he shows more reliance on the witnesses accurately recounting facts, honoring the oath and testifying truthfully. After changing his vote twice and being accused of Abouncin= back and forth like a tennis ball,@ Juror Number 12 votes not guilty when the concerns of the remaining jurors= pressing for a guilty verdict are finally all addressed. On his own, Juror Number 12 would have found himself challenged to craft a decision in what was a Apretty complicated business@ with Aso much evidence to weigh.@ The Jury Misunderstood the Meaning of the Term AReasonable Doubt@ 12 Angry Men would not be much of a movie if all the jurors did not one by one change their votes until the accused was eventually acquitted. For the twelve jurors in the movie, the definition of reasonable doubt becomes one of near absolute certainty. Never does the jury examine the jury instructions which should have accompanied them to the jury room. Most of the usual stock jury instructions are ignored.

At one point the bigoted garage owner tells the mousy bank teller, AYou=re like all the rest. You think too much and get all mixed up.@ To some extent that describes why the jury ultimately found the accused innocent. The watchmaker at one point tells the marmalade salesman, AMaybe you don't fully understand the term >reasonable doubt?=@ when the misunderstanding of the legal definition of Areasonable doubt@ was actually possessed by those jurors who wanted to acquit the accused. Those who wanted to convict understood the definition of "reasonable doubt" much better. The jurors voting for acquittal all interpreted beyond a reasonable doubt to mean without any doubt whatsoever or as the architect said, ANo jury can declare a man guilty unless it=s sure.@ Ain=t nothing for sure, but the jurors and the audience are convinced that for a fact to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that fact must be proven with absolute certainty. Any degree of improbability, whether it be a million to one or ten billion to one, that the accused is innocent apparently makes no difference to the jury so long as his innocence is theoretically possible. The present New York Courts= pattern jury instruction defining reasonable doubt states in pertinent part, . . . . the law does not require the People to prove a defendant guilty beyond all possible doubt. On the other hand, it is not sufficient to prove that the defendant is probably guilty. In a criminal case, the proof of guilt must be stronger than that.

It must be beyond a reasonable doubt.

A reasonable doubt is an honest doubt of the defendant's guilt for which a reason exists based upon the nature and quality of the evidence. It is an actual doubt, not an imaginary doubt. It is a doubt that a reasonable person, acting in a matter of this importance, would be likely to entertain because of the evidence that was presented or because of the lack of convincing evidence.

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Proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you so firmly convinced of the defendant's guilt that you have no reasonable doubt of the existence of any element of the crime or of the defendant's identity as the person who committed the crime.

A reasonable doubt is not a one in a million chance because one chance in a million of a normal person suffering death will not cause a normal person to alter their lifestyle. For example, if one drives or rides in a car 100 miles, they have more than one chance in a million of being killed in a fatal car accident. Staying alive is a supreme matter of importance, but odds of one chance in a million of getting in a fatal car accident are not enough to deter normal people from driving or being driven in a car 100 miles because one in a million chance of being in a fatal accident it is not a degree of danger which causes the average person to alter their lifestyle. Normal people do not doubt they will arrive alive after traveling 100 miles in a motor vehicle, and although having a statistical basis, the doubt one will not arrive alive is merely a theoretical, imaginary consideration because of the excessive improbability death will occur during the next 100 miles traveled in a motor vehicle.

The jury accepts the odds are one in a million that someone other than the accused committed the murder with a switchblade knife exactly similar to the switchblade knife the accused purchased four hours before the murder. Those odds are insufficient to create a reasonable doubt of the accused=s guilt. One chance in a million is only sufficient to create a theoretical chance and an imaginary, unreasonable doubt. The accused=s opportunity and motive, the physical and other circumstantial evidence, the testimony of the two eyewitnesses, and the extremely high probability the accused lied about his alibi, multiplies to astronomical levels the odds the son murdered his father. In seeking votes of not guilty, Juror Number 8 talks about remote possibilities, not reasonable probabilities.

The Jury Ignores the Concept of Opportunity The jury talks about motive but ignores the concept of opportunity. The accused was the only person who had a reasonable opportunity to commit the murder. The accused is under no obligation to prove someone else had an opportunity to commit the murder since the burden of proof regarding all elements of the crime is born by the People, but if there was any evidence of a forced entry into the apartment, the public defender54 would have brought it out, and it would have been discussed at length by the Ableeding hearts@ on the jury because such evidence would be exculpatory to the accused and help point the blame to someone who did not have a key to the apartment.

Other than the accused, no one else was shown during the trial to have had an opportunity to enter the father and son=s apartment without leaving evidence of a forced entry. Looking for evidence of a forced entry would routinely be the subject of an initial police homicide investigation. Whoever murdered the accused=s father either had a key to the apartment or was 54

Juror Number 8 said the accused=s lawyer was court appointed so, technically, he did not need work for the Public Defender=s Office; he could have been in private practice. This article will refer to the accused=s attorney as the public defender.

21

known to the father and granted entry into the apartment in the slums shortly after midnight. The woman testified her bed was by her window and she could look out of it while lying down and Asee directly into the boy=s room across the street.@ The woman saw the murder take place in the boy=s bedroom, not the living room, so if the murder was committed by someone who entered the apartment without any evidence of having made a forced entry, and that same person then improbably knifed the father in the boy=s bedroom. The theoretical alternative suspect would have needed the opportunity to murder the father in the boy's bedroom. The boy=s bedroom is the room where it was more likely the father would have confronted his son.

If the apartment were the murder took place is exactly the same as the apartment below, the apartment where the murder took place had a chain lock. If the father answered the door at midnight, which has a low probability of happening, he would have had a high probably of first securing the chain lock which an unknown assailant would have needed to break open. That leaves only the accused son, who either had a key to the apartment or would have been let into the apartment by his father, as the only person who had a reasonable opportunity to kill his father at 12:10 am in his bedroom.

Who else would have had an opportunity to kill the father? The population of New York City in 1957 was about 7,800,000 people. Of those people in New York City, how many of them knew the father was alive, much less where he lived? Of those people in New York City who knew where the father lived, how many would walk a slum neighborhood at midnight and be able to enter the apartment without leaving any evidence of a forced entry? Of those people who lived in New York City, who knew where the father lived, who could enter the apartment without leaving evidence of a forced entry, how many of them would end up knifing the father in the boy=s bedroom? The answer is no one but the son, but for the sake of argument, suppose the odds someone else had an opportunity to knife the father in the boy=s bedroom was one chance in one hundred thousand.

What then was the chance someone else with an opportunity to knife the father in the boy's bedroom also happened to knife the father with a brand new switchblade knife exactly similar to the knife the son purchased four hours earlier. According to the law of probabilities the odds have to be multiplied meaning 1 chance in 100,000, the odds associated with the opportunity, is multiplied by 1 chance in 1,000,000, the odds associated with the assailant using an exactly similar knife, and the product is 1 chance in 100,000,000,000, or one chance in one hundred billion that someone other than the son had an opportunity to knife the father in the son=s bedroom and the knife was exactly similar to the knife the son purchased. The population of New York City would have needed be almost thirteen thousand times greater than it was in 1957 before one could expect there to be an alternative suspect who had the right opportunity and the right knife.

Another way to think about it is to assume there was at most a subset of 20 people who could be suspected of the father=s murder because they knew the father or the son and might have wanted to do one or both of them harm. This is purely a liberal assumption since no person or persons were suggested by the public defender as alternative suspects. Each of those 20 people would have 1 chance in 100,000,000,000 of being the murderer. Since there are only 20 suspects, the chance any one of those suspects committed the murder is the addition of each of their individual probabilities, which only sums to 1 chance in 5,000,000,000 that anyone among the whole group of 20 hypothetical suspects committed the murder. The person who has 22

4,999,999,999 chances out of 5,000,000,000 of actually being the murderer is the son since the jury knows he had the opportunity to knife his father in his bedroom, and the jury knows the son bought a knife exactly similar to the murder weapon. The son had a 99.99999998 percent chance of being the killer based on the knife and opportunity evidence alone55 which is proof of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Evidence of Motive The prosecution is not required to prove motive as motive is not an element of the crime.

Planning and deliberation are elements of first degree murder, but not the actual motive.

Someone can plan and deliberate without any discernible motive. However, by the son=s own admission, he was abused by his father for a lifetime and slugged several times by his father four hours before the murder. The jury failed to consider the motive of the accused was also evidenced by the actions he took immediately following his 8:00 pm beating. His reaction was to angrily leave the apartment and immediately go to the local junk shop and buy a switchblade knife.

The accused had no obligation to present evidence other people had a motive to murder his father, but there is evidence of what the motive was not. Looking for evidence of robbery is routinely the subject of any initial police homicide investigation. The jury did not discuss any evidence the accused=s father was robbed or that anything of value was taken from the apartment.

The murder was personal. The remaining common motives for murder are jealousy, revenge, or to hide evidence of a crime or an embarrassing fact. The accused=s motive was one of revenge, and he forthwith acted in furtherance of his revengeful motive by buying the switchblade knife.

No one else is suggested to have had a motive to kill the father.56 Evidence of his motive came directly from the lips of the accused who his misguided public defender allowed to take the stand on his own behalf. Juror Number 8 argued the accused=s father beat him regularly and used his fists. That testimony could have only come from the lips of the accused. According to the house painter, Juror Number 6, as corrected by Juror Number 8, the people across the hall said they heard the father and his son having a fight, an argument, and they heard the father hit the boy twice. When, later, the stockbroker, Juror Number 4, says the accused admitted his father slapped him several times, Juror Number 6 says, Ahe said >punched,=@ meaning the accused testified his father punched him several times before he angrily left their apartment at 8:00 pm. Juror Number 8 said that after that incident, the neighbors across the hall, Asaw the boy run angrily out of the house.@ Thus, there was sufficient commotion to cause the neighbors to open their door and look out their doorway or look out their window so they could testify to some expression of anger exhibited by the accused when he left the apartment. .... ....

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5,000,000,000 / 4,999,999,999 = 0.9999999998 = 99.99999998 %

56

In the play and teleplay Twelve Angry Men, there is discussion of other people who would have a motive to murder the accused father, but there is no such evidence presented in the movie 12 Angry Men.

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The son=s reactionary purchase of a switchblade knife, the only legitimate purpose of which is to kill, evidenced his premeditation.57 According to the stockbroker, the accused admitted going directly to a local junk shop and buying the switchblade knife. Juror Number 3 asks Juror Number 8, AWhat about this, the knife this fine upright boy admitted buying on the night of the killing? Let=s talk about it.@ Based on that statement, the accused admitted buying the murder weapon on the night of the killing, the knife which was recovered from his father=s dead body.

At the time he gave his testimony, the accused did not know there existed a duplicate knife which Juror Number 8 would purchase during the trial from a pawn shop two blocks from his apartment. If the knife had been found by the public defender=s investigator, and the public defender disclosed it and tried to introduce it into evidence in an open and honest manner, the judge might have denied its admission or any mention of it since it would have been purchased three months after the murder when the issue was whether a duplicate knife was available for purchase at the time of the murder.

The son had already told the police he had lost the knife through a hole in his pocket to account for his not having his knife when he returned home at 3:10 am. When the accused received the People=s disclosure, he learned his friends had turned on him and were going to identify his knife as the murder weapon. He would have also learned of the shopkeeper=s statement. The son needed to stick to his story that he lost his knife in the hope the jury would think someone else found his knife and used it to murder his father. The accused should have said he left his knife in his bedroom. Interestingly, no one on the jury argues that someone else found the son=s lost knife and used it to murder his father. Juror Number 8 argues someone could have stabbed the father with a similar knife. The former proposition would be more likely although still with odds greater than one in a million of actually happening.

The police must have pressured the accused=s friends to gain their testimony and told them to cooperate or else. The accused=s friends were probably like the accused, meaning they were knife-fighting, mugging, car thieves. There is no discussion of any deals being made with any of the accused=s friends, but they not only positively identified the murder weapon, they must have also been the ones who testified the accused was Areal handy with a knife.@ In addition, the accused=s friends probably gave up the name of the shopkeeper so the police could corral him into testifying in lieu of his being charged with selling an illegal switchblade knife.

The Accused=s Defense Strategy and Lame Alibi Weigh Against Him Juror Number 8 talked about how the kid was born in a slum, how his mother died when he was 9 years old, how he spent a year and a half in an orphanage when his father was in prison on a forgery charge, and how he was beaten regularly by his father who used his fists.58 All that 57

As the accused did not immediately go home from the junk shop and knife his father, the accused may have bought the knife saying to himself that the next time his father started to beat him up, he was going to use the knife for protection, but the accused never asserted self defense.

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Such information would now be reserved for the death penalty sentencing phase after the accused was already found guilty of the crime.

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information must have been established by the accused=s own testimony. In seeking sympathy, the accused also told the jury the police threw him down half a flight of stairs. In seeking to hypothetically explain his behavior, the accused established his motive and incriminated himself.

Perhaps in response to the prosecutor=s cross examination, the accused admitted after being punched several times by his father and leaving their apartment at 8:00 pm, he went straight to the junk shop and bought the switchblade knife which he then identified as the knife used in the murder.

Did the prosecutor pick up the knife during the trial and ask the accused, AHave you ever seen this switchblade knife before?@ One thing appears clear B at trial the accused identified the murder weapon as the same switchblade knife he bought immediately following his being punched several times by his father.

The legitimate reasons for the accused taking the stand were to claim his innocence and present his alibi. He testified he left his friends at 9:45 pm and arrived home at 10:00 pm but then went back out at 11:30 pm carrying the knife with him, went to the movies, and then returned home at 3:10 am to find his father dead and himself arrested. The accused also testified he lost his newly purchased switchblade knife through a hole in his pocket. According to the accused=s story, he did not discover he lost his knife until he got home because Juror Number 4 says, AWhat happened to the knife? He claims it fell through a hole in his pocket on the way to the movies, sometime between 11:30 and 3:10, and that he never saw it again. Now, there is a tale, gentlemen.@ Thus, the first time the accused supposedly noticed his knife was missing was after he arrived back at the apartment he shared with his father as if he never felt for his knife while he sat through a double feature at the movies.

The police apparently investigated the accused=s alibi and discovered no one at the apartments saw him leave at 11:30 pm, and no one at the movies saw him go in or out of the theater. Just how many people went to the late show to see what must have been a fairly obscure B rated movie59 when the late show did not begin until after 11:30 pm? The audience never learns how soon after the killing the police and the public defender=s investigators conducted their investigations of the accused=s alibi. If the teller at the movie theater was familiar with the accused, a fact not addressed in the movie, then it would be more likely the teller would recognize the accused and remember seeing him at the movies on the night of the killing.

The accused did not need to testify or prove an alibi since the burden of proof always rests with the People. The accused=s alibi is disproven by placing him at the scene of the crime by his leaving the knife behind and by the testimony of the two eyewitnesses. The truth of the accused=s alibi was made improbable because of his inability at the time of his arrest to be able to name either of the movies he had just seen and because of the public defender=s investigator=s inability to find a single witness who saw the accused leave the apartment at 11:30 pm or be at the movies. The public defender=s investigator had every incentive to find such a confirmatory witness.

Unfortunately, the audience does not know the extent the police and the public defender=s investigator searched for witnesses who could confirm the accused=s alibi.

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It is safe to assume it was an obscure B movie if the accused=s story is to be believed, and he could not remember its name or who starred in it within an hour of having sat through it.

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Juror Number 8 argues the accused was questioned by the police in the kitchen when his father lay dead in the bedroom. Jury Number 8 argues those circumstances subjected the boy to great emotional distress clouding his memory which would account for his not being able to name either of the movies he had just seen or who starred in them.

It the accused=s alibi were true, the pants he was wearing at the time of his arrest should have a hole in one of their pockets large enough for the knife to have fallen through. The boy was arrested at his and his father=s apartment and then taken directly to jail. At the jail, he would have been issued jail clothing, his street clothes would have been bagged, labeled, and placed in a storage locker, and the boy would have been issued a receipt for everything placed into storage.

At the time of his trial, the pants the boy was wearing at the time of his arrest would still be labeled and securely stored in the clothes storage locker at the jail. All the public defender needed do was serve the jail custodian with a subpoena duces tecum to bring the boy=s pants to court during the trial. There is no mention of the boy=s pants being introduced into evidence at the trial. The boy=s pants probably had no hole in either of their pockets, and their admission into evidence would have been detrimental to the accused=s defense.

Based on the size of the knife, it would appear probable the boy would have felt the knife fall through a hole in his pocket. This is another weakness if the accused=s alibi.

However, the best evidence the accused is lying about his alibi is his inability to narrow down the time when he allegedly discovered his knife was missing. If the son had just purchased the knife, he would have inevitably felt for it at least once, if not every five seconds, if not fumble with it all night in some dark corner of the movie theater, while he allegedly sat through a double feature. This was an eighteen-year-old, criminally minded kid with a new, cool-looking, switchblade knife. He must have taken his knife to the movies since he said it fell out of his pocket between 11:30 pm and 3:10 am. How could he have been unable to further narrow down when he lost his knife? It was highly improbable, if not impossible, the accused did not reach to feel for his knife while he sat in the movie theater. Thus, there is another one in a million chance the boy lost his knife and could not narrow down the time when he lost it to anything better than between the time he says he left the apartment at 11:30 pm and when he returned and was arrested by the police at 3:10 am. The answer to the question of when the accused became separated from his knife is fairly obvious, at 12:10 am when he left it sunk four inches deep into his father=s chest.

If the accused=s alibi was unconfirmed by any other witness and, otherwise, it had only one chance in a million of being true, then it is too unreasonable to be believed, and beyond a reasonable doubt, the accused=s alibi is a lie. Since the accused proved himself to be a liar, the accused is more likely to be lying when he claims his innocence. Technically, the accused son taking the stand was a huge mistake.

The prosecutor was able to admit into evidence the accused=s prior juvenile record presumptively because the accused took the stand, and the prosecutor was able to use the information from his juvenile record to impeach answers given by the accused during his direct examination by his public defender. That would appear to have been the only way arrests not amounting to convictions, i.e., being picked up twice for knife fighting, could have come into evidence. Perhaps the accused testified he did not know how to use a switchblade knife or had never been in a knife fight which opened the door for the prosecutor to present contrary evidence.

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If the boy proved to be a liar upon being impeached by the prosecutor, the jury never mentioned it.

The accused=s Apoor me@ defense merely informed the jury that violence was a normal state of affairs with him, so why should anyone on the jury have doubted the accused was capable of knifing his father?

The Knife Evidence Should Never Have Been Thrown Out When the jury convened, the judge, the prosecuting attorney, the defense attorney, the defendant, and eleven of the twelve jurors were convinced the knife used in the murder was, as admitted to by the accused and as testified to by the shopkeeper and the accused=s Afriends,@ the same knife the accused had purchased from a local junk shop four hours before the murder. Juror Number 8 admitted the knife was Apretty strong evidence@ but thought it possible Athe boy lost his knife and somebody else stabbed his father with a similar knife.@ Even if there were a number of similar knives, the possibility someone else knifed the father with an exactly similar knife was of an extremely low order of probability. It would be more likely that one of the accused=s father=s enemies, and none were suggested, followed his son for several weeks hoping a weapon of some sort would drop from his person unnoticed, and when it did, he then immediately retrieved it and used it to kill the father and frame the son. In that scenario, the accused would have needed to lose his knife before going into the movie theater. That way the father=s enemy, who would have necessarily followed the boy, could have retrieved the knife in time to go back to the apartment and knife the father by 12:10 am. Juror Number 8 does not present this outlandishly improbable scenario as a viable alternative and, instead, presents an even less likely scenario that someone else committed the murder with a knife exactly similar to the knife the accused had purchased and said he lost.60 Juror Number 8 surprises the other jury members by pulling from his pocket a switchblade knife identical to the switchblade knife which was marked and identified as the murder weapon, and firmly stabbing it into the jury table next to the murder weapon previously stabbed into the table by Juror Number 4.

60

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 4

The knife and the way it was bought is strong evidence, don't you think?

Juror No. 8

I do.

**** Juror No. 4

Are you trying to tell me that this knife fell through a hole in the boy's pocket, someone picked it up, went to the boy's house and stabbed his father with it just to test its sharpness?

Juror No. 8

No, but it's possible the boy lost his knife and somebody else stabbed his father with a similar knife.

Juror No. 4

Take a look at this knife. It's a very unusual knife. I've never seen one like it. Neither had the storekeeper who sold it to the boy. Aren't you asking us to accept an incredible coincidence?

Juror No. 8

I'm just saying a coincidence is possible.

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Juror Number 3 had an initial reaction which would have been more carefully considered by the remaining jury members and the audience if not made in his usual, loud, abrasive, boisterous, bullying manner. Juror Number 3's initial reaction was, Now supposing you tell me what it proves? Maybe there are ten knives like that. **** What does it mean? You found a knife like it. What's that? The discovery of the age?@ Juror Number 8 finding another knife just like the one used in the murder was not the discovery of the age and proves little since it was found three months after the murder. The jury knows nothing about the knife business. Between the time of the murder and the time Juror Number 8 went poking around the accused=s neighborhood, another shipment of knives exactly similar to the knife purchased by the son might have been delivered, but at the time of the murder, the knife used in the murder might have been the only one in New York City. The Jury does not know if that might have been the case because Juror Number 8 circumvented cross examination, and the People had no notice giving them an opportunity to address the new find with evidence the People might have then acquired.

If a exact duplicate knife was sought to be introduced into evidence, such as a duplicate knife found by the public defender=s investigator, then the prosecutor would have been given an opportunity to inquire into the facts and circumstances of when and where the knife was found and purchased. The prosecutor would have been able to call the shopkeeper or pawnbroker to testify where the duplicate knife was purchased, to learn how it came to be offered for sale in his shop, when it became available, from what warehouse it had come, and whether any other duplicate knives were offered or were available to be offered for sale prior to the killing.

Suppose there were ten such knives as Juror Number 3 suggests. That would only lower the otherwise astronomical odds another person would have murdered the boy=s father with an exactly similar knife. The advertising executive put it rather succinctly when he asked Juror Number 8, AYou mean you=re asking us to believe that somebody else did the stabbing with exactly the same kind of knife?@ The successful marmalade salesman, Juror Number 7, who would have been familiar with sports betting, conservatively set the odds of the knifing being done by the son rather than by another person with an exactly similar knife as Aa million to one.@ Juror Number 8 argues, AI=m just saying its possible,@ but the emotionless stockbroker, Juror Number 3, coldly reminds him, ABut not very probable.@ No one on the jury ever challenged the marmalade salesman=s estimate that the odds were one in a million someone else did the stabbing with exactly the same kind of knife. No one on the jury ever challenged the stockbroker=s assessment it was not very probable somebody else did the stabbing with exactly the same kind of knife, apparently accepting Juror Number 7's odds. That leaves one chance in a million the accused is innocent based on the knife evidence. When the bank teller told Juror Number 3, AYou said we could throw out all the other evidence,@ he was right about what Juror Number 3 said to emphasize the strength of the testimony given by the woman

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across the street, but he and the remaining members of the jury were wrong to throw out the knife evidence just because Juror Number 8 found another knife just like it.

The Conduct of Juror Number 8 Was Grounds for a Mistrial According to Juror Number 8, he went out walking the night before the first day of jury deliberations and purchased the duplicate knife for $.6.00 61 from a pawn shop just two blocks from the apartment shared by the accused and his father. This would be in direct violation of what should have been a stock preliminary jury instruction read by the judge to the jury before the jury=s first recess and from time to time during the trial in an effort to guarantee the accused and the People received a fair trial. The present preliminary jury instruction used in the New York Courts= system regarding outside research and consideration of facts not presented in open court during trial states in pertinent part, Do not visit or view the premises or place where the charged crime was allegedly committed, or any other premises or place involved in the case. . . **** Do not attempt to research any fact, issue, or law related to this case, whether by discussion with others, by research in a library . . . or by any other means or source. **** Our law also does not permit you to visit a place discussed in the testimony.

First, you cannot always be sure that the place is in the same condition as it was on the day in question. Second, even if it were in the same condition, once you go to a place discussed in the testimony to evaluate the evidence in light of what you see, you become a witness, not a juror. As a witness, you may now have an erroneous view of the scene that may not be subject to correction by either party. That is not fair.

Finally, our law requires that you . . . not attempt to research any fact, issue, or law related to the case. Your decision must be based solely on the testimony and other evidence presented in this courtroom. It would not be fair to the parties for you to base your decision . . . upon information you acquire outside the courtroom.

Juror Number 8's snooping around the crime scene, buying the knife, bringing it into the jury room, and testifying about how he acquired it were all acts taken in violation of the stock preliminary jury instruction. The experiment performed in the jury room to measure the time it took the old man downstairs to travel from his bed to his front door, also orchestrated by Juror Number 8, was also in violation of the stock preliminary jury instruction. Juror Number 8 acted in contempt of court in addition to having committed the crimes of buying a switchblade, carrying 61

$6.00 is worth $51.04 in 2015 dollars.

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an illegal weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a weapon into a courthouse, and vandalism of public property when he stabbed the knife into the table. These acts were more than enough to created a mistrial, and Juror Number 8 may find himself tried for contempt and made to pay restitution to the state equal to the entire cost of the trial from the judge=s salary to the fair market value of the rental of the courtroom space to the other jurors= fees. And it is not as if Juror Number 8 is likely to get away with it. He left the knife he brought into the jury room on the jury table when he left the room at the end of the movie. The knife can be seen in the closing shot when the camera pans the jury table. Sooner or later that knife will be discovered, sooner if the bailiff makes a quick check of the jury room after the last juror leaves the room. The judge would be immediately informed of the knife. The proceedings would screech to a halt.

The People would be best served if the bailiff discovers the duplicate knife on the table before the jury is seated and their verdict announced. After the verdict is announced, the bailiff might be able to corral the jury before they leave the courthouse since jurors do not immediately leave the courthouse following the end of trial as suggested in the movie. All jurors, rich and poor, can usually be seen standing in line before the paymaster waiting to pick up a check for their juror fees. Oftentimes the attorneys are allowed to talk with the jurors, and only in unusual cases do all the jurors decline to do so. The bank teller would happily speak with the prosecutor and would inevitably spill the beans. If the knife was not found until the next Monday, the judge would have all the jurors summoned back to court. The jurors would probably be interviewed one at a time under oath in the judge=s chambers.

The legal question is whether another trial would subject the defendant to double jeopardy.

If the knife in the jury room was discovered before the court announced the jury=s verdict, the judge would stop the proceedings, declare a mistrial, the defendant=s case would technically never have come to an end, and the accused could be subjected to another trial which would actually be a continuation of the first trial as no verdict would have been announced. In that case, double jeopardy would not apply. But what if the knife was not discovered until after the jury had rendered its verdict, when the defendant had already been acquitted, and the defendant was waiting to check out of jail?62 What if the knife was discovered by the weekend cleaning crew, the judge then found the knife on his desk Monday morning along with a note saying where it was found, and by that time the acquitted had been released from jail? What if someone from the cleaning crew stole the knife, and the juror misconduct was not discovered until years later? If the prosecutor finds out about the jury misconduct from the bank teller, does the prosecutor have a duty to ask all the jurors to return to the courtroom and send the bailiff running after the one juror who already received his check and was halfway out the building? Could a steamed prosecutor bring charges against Juror Number 8 for contempt of court for failing to follow the judge=s preliminary jury instructions, or is that at the sole discretion of the judge?

If a mistrial was declared before the verdict was announced, the continuation of the first trial would not be double jeopardy. If a mistrial was declared after the verdict was rendered, and the judge was at fault because he failed to give preliminary jury instructions, the kid walks. If a mistrial was declared after the verdict is rendered, and the mistrial was caused because the jury 62

The accused is presumptively in custody since it is doubtful he could post bail, and his case went to trial three months after he was arrested, inevitably within 60 days after he was bound over at the preliminary hearing and arraigned in the Supreme Court (which is the New York felony trial court).

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failed to abide by the preliminary jury instructions, the matter becomes more complex with the answer depending on whether the manifest necessity exception to the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment can be satisfied. Like the house painter asked the architect, ASuppose you talk us all out of this, and the kid really did knife his father?@ There is Enough Evidence to Convict the Accused Without the Testimony of the Two Eyewitnesses This summary of the evidence includes the testimony of the people across the hall, the testimony of the shopkeeper, the testimony of the accused=s friends, the testimony of the police, the admissions of the accused, and the physical evidence, all of which were not disputed by any of the jurors. Also included are some of Juror Number 8's observations and this author=s cold, hard logic: First

The accused was the eighteen-year-old son of the victim, and the son would have had a key to the apartment where he lived with his father or would have been let into the apartment by his father.

Second

The father regularly beat his son with his fists until the boy learned violence was a way of life.

Third

The son exhibited violence at a young age by throwing a rock at his teacher.

Fourth

By the time the son had become a young man, his violence had progressed to the point that he mugged a person, was picked up by the police twice for engaging in knife fights, and had developed a reputation of being real good with a knife.

Fifth

At 8:00 pm, four hours before the murder, the father and son had a loud argument which sounded like a fight, and the father, who was seven inches taller than his son, punched his son several times with his fists.

Sixth

As a result of being beaten by his father, the son angrily ran out of the apartment and went directly to a local junk shop where he bought an illegal switchblade knife.

Seventh

The knife the son purchased was unusual and was the only one of its kind the shopkeeper had ever seen or had in stock. It was a rare knife to see at the time of the murder.

Eighth

The son illegally carried the switchblade knife, showed it off to his friends, and then returned at 10:00 pm with the switchblade knife to the apartment he shared with his father.

Ninth

The police received telephone calls from the old man downstairs and the woman across the street at about 12:10 am reporting an incident at the apartment shared by the accused and his father.

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Tenth

When the police arrived at the apartment, they found no signs of a forced entry, the son was gone, and the father lay dead in the son=s bedroom with a switchblade knife stabbed downward four inches into his chest.

Eleventh

The coroner determined the time of death to have been around midnight with an accepted tolerance of measurement consistent with the time the old man downstairs and the woman across the street telephoned the police.

Twelfth

The shopkeeper testified the murder weapon was the one he had sold the accused four hours before the murder. The son admitted he showed the knife to this friends, and his son=s friends testified the murder weapon was the one the accused had shown them three hours before the murder.

Thirteenth

The son, unaware of the newly found duplicate knife, admitted in court the murder weapon was the switchblade knife he purchased four hours before the murder.

Fourteenth

The son testified he left the apartments at 11:30 pm and took his new switchblade knife with him and, therefore, by process of elimination, the accused said he did not leave his knife in the apartment while he was allegedly at the movies.

Fifteenth

The son was unable to produce the knife he purchased seven hours earlier when he arrived home at 3:10 am and found himself apprehended by the police. He claimed he lost the knife because it fell through a hole in his pocket sometime between 11:30 pm and 3:10 am.

Sixteenth

The son claimed he went to the movies between 11:30 pm and 3:10 am, but upon questioning by the police that evening, the son could not name the movies he saw or who starred in them.

Seventeenth

The son could not narrow down when he lost the knife other than to say he lost it between 11:30 pm and 3:10 am and, therefore, the son claimed he never once felt for his knife when he was allegedly walking to the movie theater or sitting in the movie theater or when he was walking home from the movie theater.

Eighteenth

Although their chain of custody would have been easy to establish, the son made no attempt to enter into evidence the pants he wore on the night of the murder to prove they had a hole in one of their pockets big enough for the knife to have slipped through unnoticed. In fairness, the prosecutor also made no attempt to enter the pants into evidence to prove otherwise, but the prosecutor might have been "a fourteenth assistant or something."

....

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Nineteenth

The son was unable to produce a single witness verifying he left the apartment at 11:30 pm or went in or out of the movie theater on the night of the murder.

Twentieth

An investigation by the police was unable to find a single witness who could verify the son left the apartments at 11:30 pm or went in or out of the movie theater on the night of the murder.

Twenty-first

There was no evidence that the motive for the murder was to rob the father as nothing was taken from the apartment.

Twenty-second

The son chose to testify, but he presented no evidence anyone other than himself could have made an unforced entry into the apartment, or had a motive to murder his father, or possessed a knife exactly similar to the one he purchased.

The preceding twenty-two facts refute Juror Number 8's contention that the prosecution=s entire case relied upon the testimony of the two eyewitnesses. The circumstantial evidence alone offered more than enough evidence to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt the accused murdered his father. The son's prior treatment at the hands of his father, his criminal experience, and his coming of age gave him knowledge and the propensity to murder his father. The son's 8:00 pm beating at the hands of his father, and his purchase of a switchblade knife in response to the his 8:00 pm beating gave him a motive to murder his father. There was no evidence of robbery or that anyone else had a motive. There were no signs of forced entry, and the killing took place in the son's room. The son had the opportunity to murder his father. There was no evidence anyone else could have had the opportunity. The knife used in the murder was either the one the son bought four hours before the stabbing or by an extraordinary one-chance-in-a-million coincidence was exactly similar to the knife the son bought but was, in actuality, another knife used by someone else to commit the murder. Accepting the son=s contention that he never felt for his knife between 11:30 pm and 3:10 am on the night of the murder, which would be absolutely necessary if the boy=s alibi were to be believed, would require accepting another one-chance-in-amillion leap of faith. The accused lying about his alibi is further evidence of his guilt. The finding of the dead father, the corpus delicti, which was not in dispute, along with all the circumstantial evidence against the accused, along with a complete lack of any evidence pointing to any other suspect, was more than enough to convict the son of first degree murder.63 The evidence is too cumulative to be ignored. If the accused did not commit the murder, What are the odds:

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The accused is charged with first degree murder which would require an intent to kill coupled with deliberation prior to his committing the crime. He purchased the switchblade knife four hours earlier showing premeditation. However, he did not immediately use the knife to kill his father at the first opportunity, and he only used the knife after he and his father got into another fight. He did not claim self-defense. He claimed he was not at the apartment during the murder in an effort to avoid all responsibility. For sake of movie interest, the boy was guilty of first degree murder or guilty of nothing. The jury could not find the accused only guilty of manslaughter as a lesser included offense.

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a.

That within hours of the accused being punched several times by his father, running out the apartment, and buying a switchblade knife, that someone else using an exactly similar knife would end up sticking it four inches into his father=s chest (1 chance in 1,000,000); and,

b.

That the father and son=s slum apartment would show no evidence of there being a forced entry (1 chance in 10,000); and,

c.

That on the same evening as the murder, the accused would lose his brand new knife within seven hours of buying it through a hole in his pocket without noticing it was missing (1 chance in 10,000); and,

d.

That the accused would not be able to narrow down the time he lost his knife any closer than within a three hour forty minute window when he was supposedly going to a moving theater, sitting in a movie theater, and coming back from the movie theater (1 chance in 1,000,000); and,

e.

That the accused would be unable to remember anything about the movies he allegedly saw when questioned by the police (1 chance in 2)?

Using the above estimates of the individual probabilities, calculating the probability all these events happened at the same time requires one to multiply each of their individual probabilities. The final odds the accused was not the one who committed the murder is one chance in twenty quintillion (1 chance in 20,000,000,000,000,000). Twenty quintillion is roughly 2.7 times the number of grains of sand on the Earth. So finding the accused innocent based on the circumstantial evidence alone is like finding a specific grain of sand on a planet whose surface area is 2.7 times that of the Earth. Possible, but so unlikely it is not worth anyone=s consideration.

There is no reasonable doubt about the accused=s guilt on the circumstantial evidence alone.

The Eyewitness Evidence In addition to all the circumstantial and physical evidence, there were two eyewitnesses to the event. The first eyewitness was a 75-year-old man who lived in the apartment directly below the apartment shared by the accused and his father. The second eyewitness was a woman who lived across the street and elevated train tracks from the boy and father=s apartment. She had known the boy all his life. Her window was directly in line with the window to the boy=s bedroom.

There was no evidence presented the old man downstairs or the woman across the street had any bad dealings with the accused or had developed any bias against him. The old man said he heard what went on in the apartment above and saw the accused run down the stairs and out of the apartments. The woman across the street said she actually saw the accused stab a knife downward into the chest of his father through the last two cars of a passing elevated train. ....

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The Old Man Downstairs The credibility of the old man downstairs was drawn into question. First, it was questioned whether the old man could have heard the accused yell, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ and could he have identified the accused=s voice. Second, it was questioned whether the old man could have reached his front door in time to see the accused run down the stairs and out of the apartments.

The old man downstairs testified that at 12:10 am he heard loud noises which sounded like a fight, then heard the boy yell at his father, AI=m gonna kill ya.@ The old man said a second later, he heard a body hit the floor. Juror Number 8 combines the testimonies of the old man and the woman across the street to conclude the old man could not have heard the boy yell out, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ Juror Number 8 argues that since the woman across the street testified she saw the killing through the windows of the last two cars of a passing six-car elevated train, and since it would take a six-car elevated train ten seconds to pass a given point,64 and since the roar of an elevated train passing one=s window is deafening, and since the old man testified he heard the accused yell, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ and a second later heard a body hit the floor,65 then the elevated train must have been roaring past the boy=s window a full ten seconds before the body hit the floor and, therefore, the old man could not have heard the accused yell, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ and if he did hear someone yell, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ then he would not have been able to identify the voice.

The old man on the jury, Juror Number 9, suggested the old man downstairs made himself believe he heard the boy say, AI=m gonna kill ya@ and made himself believe he saw the accused run out of the apartments because he was Aa quiet, frightened, insignificant old man who [had] been nothing all his life@ and A[needed] to be quoted and listened to . . . just once.@ 66 64

The ten second period of time is an estimate made by various members of the jury. Elevated train cars are 60 feet long. A six car train would be 360 feet long. New York elevated trains can travel up to 45 miles per hour. At 30 miles per hour, an elevated train would travel 44 feet per second and pass a given point in 8.18 seconds.

To take ten seconds, the train would need to be traveling 24.5 miles per hour. The jury has no idea how fast this particular train was traveling except it knew this train did not need to make any stops since it was just being moved downtown. Also, if the killing from the perspective of the woman across the street took place when the windows to the second to last car came into view, then the stabbing began after two-thirds of the train had passed, or after 6.66 seconds at 24.5 miles per hour and 5.5 seconds at 30 miles per hour.

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Advancing the cause of acquitting the accused, Juror Number 8 describes this delay which the old man downstairs said was Aa second later@ by adjusting it downward and saying the sound of the body hitting the floor was Aa split second later.@ 66

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 9

This is a quiet, frightened, insignificant old man who ... has been nothing all his life, who has never had recognition or his name in the newspapers. Nobody knows him. Nobody quotes him. Nobody seeks his advice after 75 years. Gentlemen, that's a very sad thing B to mean nothing. A man like this needs to be quoted, to be listened to, to be quoted just once B very important to him.

Juror No. 7

Are you tellin' us he'd lie just so he could be important?

Juror No. 9

No. He wouldn't really lie. But perhaps he made himself believe he heard those words and recognized the boy's face.

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An alternative not considered by the jury was the old man was embarrassed he had already moved to his front door and opened it to better hear the commotion as listening to such fights and arguments was probably one of the few diversions the old man had from his otherwise empty life, or perhaps he had a favorite listening place in his apartment where he could best hear the father and son through the ceiling, like next to an air vent. That too is speculation, but so is the opinion of Juror Number 9 that he hallucinated for attention.

Another alternative not considered by the jury which is not as speculative is that the boy, having stabbed his father while the train was going by and after he turned off the lights and then upon seeing his father begin stager around, yelled in recognition of his dastardly act, "I'm gonna kill ya!" That would explain everything.

There is no indication the old man downstairs ever called the police when the father was regularly using his fists to beat his son. The thud of a body hitting the floor probably sounded the same as the son going down for the umpteenth time. Simply hearing a commotion which sounded like a fight followed by a thud would probably not cause the old man to call the police given his prior history of not calling the police to report repeated instances of child abuse. So what made this instance so special the old man finally called the police? The old man calling the police evidences he heard something in addition to the usual sounds of the father beating his son. Since the old man finally called the police and since the father was found dead from a stab wound to his chest, the old man must have heard someone yell out, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ The old man could have heard the accused yell at the top of his lungs through the ceiling, a possibility the jury rejects without any evidence supporting its rejection and even though the jury never visited the apartments. The jury got sidelined into believing the old man could have only heard the accused yell AI=m gonna kill ya!@ through the open windows.67 Juror Number 8 wonders if the old man could have heard the boy yell out, AI=m gonna kill ya!@ though the ceiling, Juror Number 3 then says, AHe didn't. The window was open. So was the one upstairs. It was a hot night.@ From then on, the jury is tricked into believing the old man could have only heard what happened upstairs through his open windows.

When Juror Number 8 claims, AWe've proved the old man couldn't have heard the boy say >I'm gonna kill you,=" Juror Number 10 correctly says, AYou didn't prove it at all!@ but by that time in the movie the audience knows the garage owner is an abrasive, discourteous, crotchety, old bigot whose rejection of Juror Number 8's arguments was based on some discriminatory animus.

It was reasonable the old man downstairs heard the boy through the ceiling if not through the open windows. It was unreasonable for the jury to assume the old man lied just because he came to court with a split under the shoulder of his jacket or because he needed to drag his left foot because he had a stoke the year before. ....

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 8

I wonder how clearly he heard the boy's voice through the ceiling.

Juror No. 10

He didn't. The window was open. So was the one upstairs. It was a hot night.

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The old man testified he heard loud noises which sounded like a fight prior to his hearing the accused yell out, AI=m gonna kill ya.@ That began sufficiently before the train arrived and when the old man was in a better position to have heard what was said during the fight. The old man was asleep and was woken up shortly after midnight by the fight between the accused and his father. The old man knew the son=s voice, and he knew the father=s voice, and he could compare what he heard the night of the killing with what he had heard many times in the past. It was not necessary for the old man to have recognized the boy=s voice at the time he yelled, AI=m gonna kill ya,@ if the old man had already identified the boy=s voice from the argument leading up to the boy saying, AI=m gonna kill ya.@ There is no evidence one way or another what the old man told the police when he first reported the incident over the telephone.68 The old man testified before he called the police, he went from his bed to his front door in fifteen seconds, opened the door, and saw the accused running down the stairs and out of the apartments. Juror Number 9 says, AHe said fifteen seconds. He was very positive about it.@ Juror Number 3 says, AHe was an old man. Half the time he was confused. How could he be positive about anything?@ If the old man was too confused to be positive about anything, then his testimony should be ignored, but that is not why the jury chose to ignore his testimony.

It was not clear whether the old man testified he Aran@ to his front door. That is how Juror Number 6 and possibly Juror Number 7 remember the old man=s testimony. Juror Number 4 says the old man said he Awent@ to the door, but that was probably due to the stockbroker=s propensity to compromise testimony for the sake of expediency. The old man being wrong about it taking him fifteen seconds to reach his front door is no reason to distrust and exclude the remainder of his testimony.

The jury was convinced the testimony of the old man was unreliable because Juror Number 8 demonstrates that if the old man walked at the same pace he did to and from the witness stand in court, then it took him 42 seconds, not fifteen seconds, to get out of his bed and walk to his front door.69 The experiment performed by Juror Number 8 when he tries to imitate the old man getting out of bed and walking to his front door was filmed in one continuous shot and so can be separately timed by the audience. The bank teller misread the time. The time it took Juror Number 8 to perform the experiment as show in the movie was 31 seconds, eleven seconds less than measured by the bank teller.

The experiment orchestrated and performed by Juror Number 8 was outside of the courtroom, not subject to cross examination, and not addressable by either counsel which is why jurors are not allowed to conduct such tests and experiments, the reason for which is especially obvious in 12 Angry Men since there was no one to question the bank teller=s measurement of the time. Someone also needed to cross examine Juror Number 8 who said the old man suffered a 68

Now days, there would be a recording of the old man=s call to 911 in which the old man would be heard saying, AI just heard the kid upstairs arguing with his father, then he yelled out, >I=m gonna kill ya.= and then I heard a body hitting the floor.@ 69

The diagram of the apartment used in the movie is technically incorrect. The diagram of the apartment used in the play and teleplay showed the apartment had two bedrooms, one for the boy and one for the father. If the apartment only had one bedroom, there would be no reason why it would need a hallway.

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stroke Alast year,@ because Juror Number 8 knew nothing about how fast the old man could move at the time of the murder three months before trial. Juror Number 8 did not know whether or not the old man had suffered additional medical problems from the time of the murder which further slowed him down.

Many people have difficulty estimating the time it took an event to happen. This estimation becomes more difficult if the person was witnessing an exciting event of great consequence. A witness=s failure to properly estimate the time it took an event to happen does not mean the witness does not remember the event itself. Similarly, a witness may recognize a scene they would not otherwise be able to draw or a face they would not otherwise be able to describe.

The old man=s failure to correctly estimate the time it took him to go from his bed to his front door, even if he appeared very positive about his estimate, should not be considered a definitive test of whether the old man witnessed the accused run down the steps and out the apartments at the time of the murder. If the old man filled in a detail or two because of his need for attention, such as reaching his front door in fifteen second to make the time consistent with how fast he remembers he could walk it before his stroke, that would be a bit psychotic, but the old man=s conclusion would still be drawn from either reaching the door on time to actually see the boy sufficiently to identify him and/ or his recognition and identification of the boy=s voice and his recognition and identification of the boy=s cadence running down the steps which he would have heard numerous times. The evidence is actually that the old man had more than fifteen seconds to make it to his front door in time to see the kid run out of the apartments.

Juror Number 8 said the old man testified he began for his front door upon hearing the thud on the floor, not that the boy began running from the apartment as soon as he heard the body hit the floor. The assailant needed to take time to wipe the knife clean of fingerprints, and that could not have occurred until after the boy=s father staggered around a bit and finally fell with a thud. The woman across the street testified the lights went off in the boy=s room as soon as the train passed.

It took some time for the assailant to turn off the lights. If the lights went off in the boy=s room as soon as the train passed, then the assailant must have left the father before the train entirely passed to turn off the light switch, and the assailant apparently knew exactly where that light switch was located, and the assailant then needed to wipe the knife free of prints in the dark, which gave the old man even more time to reach his front door and look out. The old man need not be lying about looking out his front door in time to see the boy run out of the apartments, and his testimony in that regard should be accepted; he just might have been wrong in thinking it took him half the time to reach his front door as it actually did if he moved as slowly at the time of the murder as he did in court.

At the very least, the jury should have concluded that the person who committed the murder got in a loud argument with the accused=s father and was a young man capable of running down the stairs with the sound and cadence as that of the slender built son. The old man=s testimony would eliminate as suspects any of the father=s friends and associates who he might have allowed to enter his apartment at midnight. Whoever murdered the accused=s father would have needed to be a young man who the father allowed to enter his apartment and then allowed to follow him into his son=s bedroom. Not very likely anybody but the son.

At one point, Juror Number 4 says, AIf we're gonna wade through that nonsense about where the body was found,@ but that line of inquiry was never pursued. If the body was moved, 38

then the old man had even more time to get to his front door to see the boy run down the stairs.

Maybe the boy first thought about moving the position of his father to make it appear he acted in self defense or, more likely, his father moved around a bit before falling down during which time the boy turned off the lights, something which could have easily gone on for thirty seconds or more. Then the boy still needed to wipe the knife clean of fingerprints.

The Woman Across the Street Before the woman=s eyesight was drawn into question, before Juror Number 9 recalled she had eyeglass nose pad indentations which she kept rubbing in court, nine of the ten jurors had decided not to convict the accused based on the woman=s testimony even though there was no good reason for them not to do so. No one suggested they were accepting the garage owner=s raciest observation that her kind were Aborn liars@ and Ayou one can=t believe a word they say.@ Yet nothing else fully explains the jury=s unwillingness to convict the accused based only on the woman=s testimony even though she Atestified in open court@ as later stated in the failed argument

by Juror Number 3 at the end of the movie.70, or that she Atestified under oath@ as stated by the advertising executive who had the most faith in the sanctity of the oath.

It is not clear whether the woman across the street testified the elevated train was six cars long. Someone else needed to testify the train was just being moved downtown, which was something no one directly involved with the case could have known. Some public relations person from the New York subway and elevated train system probably testified that according to the regularly kept business records the train was empty, was just being moved downtown, all its 70

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 10

Here's a woman who's lying in bed. She can't sleep. She's dyin' with the heat. She looks out the window, and right across the street she sees the kid stick the knife into his father.

The time is 12:10 on the nose.

**** Juror no. 7

The lady across the street looked right in the open window and saw the stabbing.

**** Juror No. 8

The woman across the street swore positively she looked out of the window and saw the killing through the last two cars of a passing el train B the last two cars.

**** Juror No. 4

. . . . the woman across the street, who actually saw the murder committed. **** . . . . she described the stabbing by saying she saw the boy raise his arm over his head and stab down into the father's chest. . . . She said she went to bed about eleven o'clock that night. . . . She tossed and turned for over an hour. Finally, she turned toward the window at about 10 minutes after 12, and as she looked out, she saw the killing through the windows of a passing el train. . . . she got a good look at the boy in the act of stabbing his father.

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lights were turned off, and the train was six cars long. How did the People prove to the jurors the woman could see through the cars of an elevated train at night if their lights were turned off?71 This was the only factual proposition made by the garage owner which was accepted by all members of the jury. Did the prosecutor have a model in a darkened courtroom? Did everyone go out to the tracks at night? Did the People rely on expert witness testimony. Perhaps this proposition was never questioned because each of the jurors inevitably looked through darkened elevated trains when they were on their way home from the preceding five days of trail and when they drove around town during the intermittent weekend.

Because the woman had eyeglass nose pad indentations and for no other reason, the jury decided to wholly disregard the woman=s testimony. Juror Number 3 pointed out that the woman could have been farsighted or could have worn sunglasses and correctly asks, AWhat do you know about it?@ Confirmation the woman saw the killing with reasonable clarity was proven when the physical evidence matched what she described she saw. Either when she called the police or when she was later questioned by the police, but before she had any opportunity to know anything about the physical evidence left at the scene of the crime, the woman told the police enough details about the murder to indicate she saw enough to identify the accused. She said she saw a murder take place in the boy=s room. The father was found dead in the boy=s room. She said she saw the assailant stab with a knife. The father was stabbed with a knife. She said she saw the assailant stab downwards into the father=s chest. The father was stabbed downwards four inches into his chest.

If the woman across the street could describe the murder weapon as being a knife, she could then describe the general dimensions of the assailant. Further, she had seen the father and the boy since the boy was born,72 and she was familiar with how they carried themselves. At the very least, the woman was able to credibly testify the assailant was the same height, weight, and build as the accused. She told the police and testified under oath she recognized the accused as being the assailant.

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The script is as follows:

Juror No. 10

72

This el train had no passengers on it. It was just being moved downtown. The lights were out, and they proved in court that at night you can look through the windows and see what's happening on the other side B they proved it.

The script is as follows:

Juror No. 10

She's known the kid all his life. His window is opposite hers across the el tracks.

**** Juror no. 7

The lady across the street looked right in the open window and saw the stabbing.

Juror No. 4

Her bed was next to the window, and she could look out and see directly into the boy's room across the street.

The garage owner statement, AShe=s known him all his life,@ was never challenged.

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It is legitimate to question the ability of someone with normal vision to recognize at night someone in a lighted room 60 feet away through the windows of a passing elevated train. It was improper and unfair to the People for the jury to speculate as to the degree of the woman=s vision impairment, if any, especially when there was no evidence the woman had any difficulty negotiating the courtroom during the trial and no evidence she was nearsighted. Even given some vision impairment, but not enough to have stopped the woman from perceiving a knife being used in the murder, and in consideration of the woman=s familiarity with the accused=s physique, gestures, mannerisms, and movements through a lifetime of observation, the woman was qualified to identify the accused as the assailant. Her testimony like the testimony of the old man downstairs was supported by all the other circumstantial evidence. There is no evidence she or the old man took their oaths lightly, and their testimonies on the stand were not impeached in any way.

Looking solely at the most reliable information received from the eyewitnesses, what are the chances that the assailant would also be a young man of the same general height, weight, and build as the accused (1 chance in 10), and ran down the stairs with the same cadence as the accused (1 chance in 10)? Multiplying the previous calculation by these additional odds, the total odds the accused did not commit the crime become one in two sextillion, meaning there are a hundred times more planets with 2.7 times the surface area of the Earth to search for that one grain of innocent sand. If the witnesses were accurate in their identification of the son, then the son is absolutely the assailant.

The Exculpatory Arguments Are Insufficient to Impeach the Other Evidence There are two exculpatory arguments raised during the jury=s deliberations, neither of which can overcome the insurmountable evidence of the accused=s guilt. First, that the boy would not have come back to the apartment because he would have been afraid of being caught. Second, that the boy would have stabbed his father underhanded beneath the ribs rather than overhanded through the ribs and into his chest.73 Coming Back to the Scene of the Crime Criminals do dumb things all the time which lead to their being caught, and the accused returning to the scene of the crime was one of them, but the audience was not given enough information to assess just how dumb the accused acted. Were the black and white patrol cars still in front of the apartment, or did they leave? After the black and whites left, were a couple of detectives left behind to stake out the apartment on the off chance the murdered man=s killer would return to the scene of the crime?

The advertising executive argued the accused returned because he did nott think the body would be discovered until the next day, and he returned to retrieve his knife because he knew it could be identified as the one he had just bought. The watchmaker argued that it would not make sense for the accused to return to the apartment because he would have heard the women across the 73

Presumptively into the heart. If only into one side of the lungs, then the father may have remained on his feet coughing blood for several minutes.

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street scream when she saw the murder. The stockbroker suggests that perhaps the woman did not scream very loud or that screams in the slums were so common it went unnoticed.

Juror Number 11 said the woman across the street screamed the moment after the train went by as if there was a delayed reaction between the time she saw the killing and the time she screamed. This appears to be an assumption on his part. The distinct possibility is that she screamed when she saw the knife thrust into the father=s chest and that scream occurred while the last half of the last car was passing between the woman and the assailant. For the assailant to have heard the woman scream, the woman would have needed to scream directly out her window, and the assailant would have needed to hear the woman scream through an elevated train car with all its associated noise interference, and the assailant would have needed to hear the woman scream even though he was moving toward a light switch just as soon as he sunk the knife into the father=s chest.

In all likelihood, the assailant would not have been able to hear the woman scream.

The jury also assumed the accused returned to retrieve his knife. That is only one possibility. The other possibility, which is far more likely, is that after the accused fled the apartment and walked the street three hours, he realized he was broke, had no place to stay, and no means to run, and he needed risk returning to the apartment to take whatever cash and valuables he could find to help him make his escape.

When the accused arrived home at 3:10 am, he was arrested in the apartment=s hallway. If he ran upon seeing the police, and flight is always seen as evidence of guilt, that would account for why he ended up being thrown down half a flight of stairs. Regardless, the fact that the accused returned to the apartment three hours after he allegedly murdered his father is not as exculpatory as the watchmaker would like it to be, and it does not lessen the overwhelming probability the accused committed the murder.

Using the Switchblade Knife Overhanded Juror Number 5 makes an exculpatory argument based on his having always lived in the slums and thereby claiming to know a lot about knife fighting and how to use a switchblade knife.

He claimed switchblade knifes are designed to be used underhanded, and anyone familiar with a switchblade knife would not have used it any other way. The victim was stabbed down into the chest, so based on Juror Number 5's opinion, whoever killed the victim with a switchblade knife must not have been familiar with how to use it.

Juror Number 5 offers an expert opinion when he says the accused would have gone for his father underhanded which causes the jury to venture beyond consideration of evidence legally admitted during trial. Offering such an opinion is a violation of the New York Courts= stock jury instruction regarding juror expertise74 which states, In evaluating the evidence and the issues presented, you should use your common sense, knowledge, and experience, just as you would in making decisions in your daily life. When I speak of Aknowledge@ and Aexperience@ in this context, I 74

This stock jury instruction cites to a 1960 case decided after the filming of the movie.

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mean the sort of knowledge and experience that an average person would acquire in life.

Some of you, however, may have something more than ordinary knowledge or experience in a certain area. Indeed, it may be that you have developed a special expertise in a certain area, well beyond what an average person would have.

If you have such a special expertise, and if it relates to some material issue in this case, it would be wrong for you to rely on that special expertise to inject into your deliberations either a fact that is not in evidence or inferable from the evidence, or an opinion that could not be drawn from the evidence by a person without that special expertise. The reason it would be wrong to do so is that you must decide this case only on the evidence presented to you in this courtroom.

Therefore, with respect to any material issue in this case, you must not use any special expertise you have to insert into the deliberations evidence that has not been presented in this courtroom during the trial.

Juror Number 5 says he always lived in a slum, and knife fights came with the territory.

Juror Number 5 was professing to have developed a special expertise in knife fighting well beyond what an average person would possess. Juror Number 5 applies an expertise none of the other jurors possess, and in so doing, he Atestified@ anyone who knew how to use a switchblade would have stabbed the victim underhanded because a switchblade is designed to open horizontally for underhanded use, and switching to an overhand grip would take too much time.

Juror Number 5 was never in a knife fight and never taught knife fighting. He probably would not have qualified to testify as an expert witness on the subject of knife fighting. The accused was said to be real handy with a knife and probably would not have lost half a second to change his grip on the knife; if he was truly good with a knife, he probably practiced quickly changing his grip as one of his advanced knife fighting techniques. Further, if the boy was in his room, the knife might have already been open and sitting on a bureau making it easy to grab and use overhanded, and since an argument proceeded the killing, there was plenty of time for the accused to brandish the knife and change his grip. What is known for certain is that someone who used a switchblade knife to kill the father used it overhanded.

Does the Kid Walk?

If the judge failed to give the preliminary jury instructions and he was to blame for the mistrial, the kid walks. If busybody Juror Number 8 is to blame, then so is every other member of the jury. No juror mentioned what was said in the preliminary instructions about visiting any place involved in the case or researching any issue or basing their decision on information acquired outside the courtroom. Every juror had an obligation to report to the judge that Juror Number 8 came into the jury room packing a switchblade. Every juror had an obligation to report to the judge that Juror Number 8 was advocating performing an experiment to see how long it would take the old man downstairs to get from his bed to his apartment=s front door. Every juror had an obligation to ignore Juror Number 5's Aexpert@ testimony. Considering the watchmaker=s 43

attention to such details, one would need conclude it was the judge=s fault relieving Juror Number 8 from needing to pay for the cost of a trial he turned into a mistrial.

Over the course of the movie, the other jurors change their votes to not guilty. In the end, the movie audience comes away thinking the jury did the right thing when it acquitted the accused.

The movie audience becomes convinced there is a reasonable doubt about the accused=s guilt, and in so doing becomes the victim of movie manipulation in its purest form. The 12 Angry Men movie audience begins pulling for Juror Number 8 wanting to see him succeed even if it means engaging in rank speculation and demanding much more than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and those are the main problems with finding the kid not guilty.

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