By now you are well aware of how easy it is to “cherry pick” evidence. In the article you just read, Mike D’Angelo makes the case that the jurors in 12 Angry Men made a big mistake in their assessment of the evidence: while there was room for reasonable doubt about any of the pieces of evidence taken individually, their combined weight really leaves no room for doubt. Do you agree with his assessment? Why or why not?
23 thoughts on “Did 12 Angry Men Get It Wrong?”
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D’Angelo makes an interesting case, but I don’t agree with his assessment that there is no room for doubt. I do think it’s possible the boy did it, but I feel strongly that there was sufficient reasonable doubt and that he should not have been convicted.
I feel that the eyewitness testimony, which D’Angelo puts a lot of stock in, was particularly unreliable. Research has shown that eyewitness testimony is in fact one of the least reliable forms of testimony, and I don’t find either of the witnesses to be credible. The woman really could have only seen a blurry figure from far away that I don’t believe she could have identified. I also think it’s entirely possible the man convinced himself he had seen the boy flee the building without actually having seen him.
I also disagree with D’Angelo’s logic that the evidence of the knife convicts the boy. Yes, it’s a coincidence that he owns the same knife that the killer used. The knife was accessible enough in the community that it’s perfectly plausible the killer also owned one. Admittedly, it’s a stranger coincidence that the boy would lose his knife the same night his father was killed, but I think another possibility the movie didn’t raise is plausible – the boy may have lied about losing his knife because he feared it would damn him, even if he was innocent.
Ultimately, I disagree with D’Angelo’s assertion that you’d need to reject every single piece of evidence to acquit the boy. I think you can find truth in some of the pieces of evidence and still conclude that they are not enough to convict. Even if it’s true that the boy yelled “I’m going to kill you” at his father, and even if he lied about losing his knife, and/or going to the movies, that is not enough evidence, in my opinion, to convict him.
I do agree with D’Angelo’s premise; it is coincidentally basically the same argument I made in our original post about 12 Angry Men. While my views on the justice system and on human nature make me predisposed to empathize with the Kid in a situation like this, ultimately it requires far too much suspension of logic and probability to accept that the Kid is innocent. It is truly hard to believe so many dominoes would have fallen against the Kid in such a short period of time.
This discussion reminds me of the first season of the podcast Serial, which followed the story of a Maryland teenager convicted of killing his girlfriend. While each episode poked holes in specific bits of evidence laid out by the prosecution, the host’s final conclusion was one of serious cynicism about Adnan’s innocence for exactly the reasons D’Angelo laid out. It is possible in both cases to explore doubt about particular evidence, but assessing as a whole it is much more difficult to rationalize so many damning pieces of evidence together.
I find it difficult to believe such a gross miscarriage of justice occurred in indicting the Kid. Don’t get me wrong, guilty people are imprisoned and exonerated all the time. But, it seems that in many of these cases the evidence came down to merely one or two eyewitnesses with faulty testimony, or one piece of flimsy evidence, or a lack of DNA testing-rather than a host of potentially damning evidence.
I disagree with his assessment, because several of his points are also vulnerable to doubt. The kids threatening to kill his father in the heat of passion is not very strong motive for murder, especially if the murder occurred hours later. In terms of the two witnesses, the testimony that they gave in court is inconsistent with the time frame that they cited. With dealing with tragedies, it is easy to forget which movie one saw. If the kid truly planned the murder, and was going to use the movies as his alibi, then he could have gone to trouble of finding out what was playing that evening. At the time of this movie, it is impossible to know the caliber of forensics performed. Why would the police want to stick around a bad neighborhood to collect additional evidence that they did not need? And as for the knife, maybe that was the type of knife that was popular in that neighborhood.
The paragraph that I wrote went through all the doubts in D’Angelo’s essay. The United States criminal justice system holds the defendant innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The jury in the movie gave several reasons to doubt the defendant’s guilt. If our criminal justice system was based on guilty until proven innocent, perhaps the verdict would have been different. However, this is a teenager which a history of neglect who may or may not have killed his father. Given these factors, I would be prepared to also save him from the electric chair.
I disagree with Mike D’Angelo’s assessment that The Kid in 12 Angry Men is very likely guilty. D’Angelo’s weakest argument is when he compares The Kid to O. J. Simpson. Simpson was defended by a very expensive lawyer and it’s likely he would have been found guilty if defended by a legal mind of more ordinary abilities, while The Kid was defended by a public defender and, initially, an architect.
D’Angelo cites several things which had to happen for The Kid to actually be innocent of the crime for which he was acquitted. Yes, it’s unlikely all of those things happened but as Fonda’s character insists throughout the movie there needs to be beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are all true. Given what we’ve been reading this week we can imagine how the elderly man down the hall, the woman across the street without her glasses, the police, the judge, and the prosecutor, could have all been subject to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias could have made the police show up and question the witnesses in a leading way. Maybe the police not only asked the old man down the hall “Did you hear or see The Kid run away?” instead of “Did you hear or see someone run away?” Likewise D’Angelo says “Somebody else killed The Kid’s father, for reasons completely unknown, but left behind no trace of his presence whatsoever.” This may be true, but perhaps the police already assumed The Kid did the crime and thus they did not look for other evidence?
Mike D’Angelo puts forth an interesting argument but not without a few loopholes. I agree with his viewpoint to an extent. Regardless of how coincidental it is for all or most of the evidence to be fallible supports the importance of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Besides the movie amnesia evidence each piece of evidence received a satisfactory analysis. Siding with D’Angelo the case does seem unrealistic and unconvincing if all of the evidence were to not “stick”.
As a juror it is not a priority to question the result. Weighting all the evidence presented at trial through deliberative methods lays a juror priority. The aforementioned method should yield the optimal result to make the best decision. This is what took place in the movie hence the shift in votes from “11-1” to “12-0”. (The three most salient pieces of evidence are the position of the knife in the father’s chest, the elderly man’s testimony of seeing the kid run and the woman from across the street, account of the events. Upon further review, the kid would not have been able to commit the murder or at least be convicted with these erroneous pieces of evidence. Disregarding personal feeling and a nationally televised chase scene, if the glove does not fit it means he didn’t do it.)
To be honest, I have a hard time making up my mind in siding on whether the boy was guilty or not, even after the compelling assessment by Mike D’Angelo. Perhaps I’m simply too afraid of committing any fallacy of heuristics, biases, or cognitive shortcuts. However, I’m not against the possibility that 12 Angry Men have got it all wrong! His reasoning of ALL these conditions need to be true in order for the boy to be innocent is not without merit. We have looked at all if not most factors in our analysis from the 2nd week. The role of reasoning and evidence in — the scream, the elderly man, the woman with questionable eyesight, the movie recall, AND the knife — all have played a significant role in the decision making process for the jury. One grey area that I don’t think anyone has explored a great deal of is the alternative murderer explanation—that “somebody else killed The Kid’s father, for reasons completely unknown, but left behind no trace of his presence whatsoever.” using the article’s language. This has left a big question mark on the case. For murder investigations, the question of motive is a big area of focus. I believe the assessment by D’Angelo uses overall good judgement but can be even more convincing if the investigator can absolutely find no alternative murderer with motive to kill the father. For example, to name a few, they could’ve checked neighborhood store records of those who had recently purchased the knife, history of conflict with the father from friends and families, neighborhood crime reports and statistics on burglary and such, assuming surveillance video or DNA testing were not in existence at that time. Overall, I tend to lean towards D’Angelo’s assessment that defiles our tendency to “cherry pick” evidence. The combination of all these factors to be true offers a substantial process of elimination indeed.
I disagree with D’Angelo that The Kid should have been found guilty. My first problem with his argument is his use of analogy. His comparison of this case to the OJ Simpson case weakens his argument and reduces its credibility. There are so many other factors contributing to the OJ case that led to this outcome (his celebrity status for one) that are NOT similar with the case in the 12 Angry Men.
In the United States we are innocent until proven guilty and in trials the defense only has to prove that there is doubt. I think that there was plenty of reasonable doubt in this trial which is ultimately what led to his acquittal. D’Angelo’s argument that there is no way the pieces of evidence could all be coincidence doesn’t necessarily lead to guilty.
Overall I think D’Angelo makes a weak argument based on his use of analogies. If he had backed it up with further examples he might have convinced me.
Although Mike, D’Angelo makes some good points regarding ‘The Kid’ being guilty of murdering his father based on the evidence presented, I am going to have to disagree with his assessment. I was recently summoned to jury duty, and the one thing that the judges stressed was that in a criminal case, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. It is the prosecutors job to prove this guilt, and in order to convict someone of a guilty verdict, the jury must unanimously agree on the guilt without a reasonable doubt. If there is reasonable doubt, the jury must vote not guilty. With this in mind, even though at first glance the evidence pointed towards a guilty verdict, when they took a closer look at all the evidence, there was a lot of room for doubt. If the kid had a fancy lawyer like OJ Simpson, the lawyer would have brought to light all these doubts in the court room. Making a comparison to OJ Simpson, only made Mike D’Angelo’s argument weaker, because it emphasized that the fact that in order to obtain a guilty verdict, the prosecutor must prove the defendant’s guilt without a reasonable doubt. Although, OJ Simpson was likely guilty, his lawyers did a great job at poking holes in the evidence to raise doubt in the minds of the jurors.
Mike D’Angelo made quite a compelling case by pointing out the many circumstantial evidence. The justice system in America convicts a defendant when he/she is found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and as we saw in the film, all evidence presented was not infallible. There’s no denying that the film portrayed an unbelievably idealistic scenario where all the evidence is flawed to favor the defendant. But I think the objective of the film is to demonstrate how the legal system in America should work – leaning toward caution – any defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Therefore, I do not agree in Mike D’Angelo’s assessment (that’s not to say that I affirmatively believe that the kid is innocent).
As we learned, our thought process tend to be influenced by our own biases causing us to cherry pick information to support our predispositions. Hence, it’s crucial to play the devil’s advocate (as the rational cartoon stick figure emphasized) when bias is taking place in a group. Confirmation bias played a role in most jurors’ decision making process, cherry picking information to fit their guilty verdicts rejecting contradicting information that did not agree with their beliefs. The film exemplified the value of forming opinions until all forms of debates are contemplated to make sound judgments and how only one person willing to play the devil’s advocate was all it took, using reason and compassion, to turn the verdict around.
I believe the defendant in 12 Angry Men is guilty for the same reason as D’Angelo. There are weaknesses in the alibis, and as D’Angelo argues, it is improbable that all of the evidence is wrong. Despite the film’s suggestion of the defendant’s diminutive size, in a fit of great rage against an older man, he could very believably have committed this crime, particularly with a prior history of domestic violence. Yet, I also do not think the jurors as a group got it wrong. D’Angelo makes an error in his own argument for guilt by comparing these fictional bits of evidence with the OJ Simpson case. The Simpson case included strong evidence of a blood-drop trail of Mr. Simpson’s blood from the murder scene to Simpson’s car and from the car into Simpson’s home. This was very persuasive evidence and the two cases are not analogous at all.
The beauty of our trial system is that it allows for a jury of one’s peers, people with similar experiences, language and, perhaps, even biases, to make this legal decision. It is this human element that must evaluate the evidence. Jury composition is therefore important because peers are the people most likely to understand the local circumstances that may bear on a case. They know the slang, and, young people particularly, may understand the motive of a young person in the face of a transgression. The composition of this jury was peculiar in its near homogeneity. These jurors were not the defendant’s peers socially and, with perhaps one exception, they were not his peers ethnically. All of them were older than he was. It stands to reason that this jury would share few ideals with the defendant and would likely find reasons among the evidence to assign guilt.
Almost every juror had a personal reason to vote “guilty” initially. Some clearly followed the majority given how quickly they subsequently changed their votes to “not guilty.” The jurors’ personal reasons for their guilty votes allowed juror Number 8 to question the reliability of evidence. He challenged his fellow jurors, in turn, until all had changed their minds. Had they all voted guilty for the same reason, in accordance with a common bias, he might not have succeeded.
D’Angelo’s argues that defendant’s guilt should be based on the improbability that all evidence presented in the case is wrong, not simply based on a small chance that each evidence is tainted. D’Angelo makes a great case that in terms of probability or predictability of the outcome, the likelihood that all evidence was wrong and that there is a deliberate motive to put this defendant in jail for biased reasons is very small. I agree partly in his assessment that probability and statistics will prove the unlikely scenario that all evidence was manufactured to put this kid in jail. However, I believe the prosecutor has the burden to show that all evidence must be free of reasonable doubt and the motive of the defendant is clear. The defense only needs to prove that there is a small chance that there is another alternative to the claims by the prosecutor.
I do not agree with D’Angelo because when a man’s life is in the line, there should be no doubt in the evidence even if it is a very unlikely that all evidence is erroneous. In the movie 12 Angry men, testimonial evidence is inherently difficult to judge whether it is a fact or not. This uncertainty is enough to doubt the motive of the defendant. I believe it was more important for prosecutors to prove that the kid poses a significant threat to the community if acquitted. The question should be what is the probability that this man will commit another murder? Not what is probability that all evidence is fact or not?
Although there is always the possibility of reasonable doubt, collectively the evidence is overwhelming. Components of a case are motive, opportunity and past behavior as a predictor of future actions. The 12 angry jurors had solid proof of all these variables. The message of the movie highlighted reasonable doubt but another message was really self-doubt. The architect was able to convince each juror to relinquish their beliefs, moral judgment, confidence, experience and knowledge once he was able to customize a flaw in their character. The majority of the evidence is solid. The kid’s motive was to stop domestic abuse by his dad. The opportunity occurred by being alone with his dad and earlier in the day the kid attests to wanting to kill his father. It was mentioned that the kid’s attorney didn’t defend his client passionately. I may be using the cognitive shortcut of consistency where the attorney may have already made a decision about the kid’s guilt and his actions aligned with those thoughts. Disputing whether the woman across the street and an elderly man down the hall actually cited the kid was problematic for the jurors but they did not take into consideration these neighbors lived in the vicinity for varying amounts of time. It would have been more likely to misidentify a stranger who had come to kill the father rather than the kid who they were familiar seeing. The reversal of the juror’s guilty decision seems more irrational than the crime itself, depending on how you look at it in Hollywood.
D’Angelo makes a case that I had not considered. His observation of “the sheer improbability that all the evidence is erroneous” is quite convincing. Especially since probability, not possibility, should factor more in determining reasonable doubt. However, as a jury, they should weigh the reliability of all the evidence. This connects to what we have discussed in reference to central route processing versus peripheral route processing. Just because all the evidence may point to one conclusion, does not mean that all the evidence is important or even reliable; especially when it comes to the case of eye witness testimony. Because of the jurors’ initial predisposition to be influenced by “social proof” and authority, it was necessary to weigh the evidence in the way it was laid out in the film. In the real world, is it likely that so much evidence against one individual would result in a not-guilty verdict? Maybe not, but it’s definitely happened. The important piece to remember is that our legal system is not just founded on evidence, but also on principles that are designed to protect those who may be at a disadvantage. After all, this isn’t mob rule.
When it comes to a murder case all evidence have to be taken into consideration in order to convict or acquit the suspect. No one wants a person who is guilty of a crime goes free, just the same no one doesn’t want to live with the fact that they send an innocent man to his death. D’Angelo made some strong points, strong enough for anyone to rethink their decision about the “kid’s” innocence. Was he guilty or not guilty? As D’Angelo stated, for all the evidence to be pointing to the “kid” just means he is guilty or someone must have framed him and refer to the OJ Simpson case to clarify his point. I for one think the boy is innocent based on the fact that the witnesses were unreliable, then again in real life I believe OJ was guilty, so does that mean the boy was guilty too. Could he have known that he would be acquitted for a crime that he was guilty of for the mere fact that he was surrounded by people whose statements would not be credible in the court of law? Yes D’Angelo could be right that we all got it wrong…but did we? I guess that is a mystery we would never solve.
The argument that Mike D’Angelo makes about 12 Angry Men and the case of The Kid murdering his father is quite compelling. His explanation is solid and understandable. I agree with his assessment, even though it is not what I want to believe but because of Mr. D’Angelo’s comparison of the The Kid in the movie to O.J. Simpson and Lee Harvey Oswald. There so many missing pieces of information from the 1957 film/case that are now available to us; and we’ve grown accustomed to judging cases based on, such as surveillance videos and DNA, that it now seems difficult to decide guilt or innocence without them. The specific line in the article really made me think, the author states that “determining whether a defendant should be convicted or acquitted isn’t—or at least shouldn’t be—a matter of examining each piece of evidence in a vacuum.” If in actual legal practice separate pieces of circumstantial evidence combined made a case, then a lot more people would be guilty based on circumstantial evidence and not hard evidence.
First of all I will consciously disregard all the evidence against the accused in this case the kid. D’Angelo’s arguments about each of the evidence makes total sense to me and I agree with him, but at the same time I am glad that Fonda (juror number 8) was able to go through each of those evidence and to create doubt in the minds of the 11 other jurors. From the start of the play, I felt that the Kid did not get the defense that he deserved. The jurors were quick to make a decision because they presume guilt for the kid and since they had other things to do they didn’t want to spend any more time. I think that the main objective of the play was to show how we should uphold the maxim of presume innocent until proven guilty. needs a fair trial from all aspects, the lawyer, jurors and judge. Someone’s background should not be the basis to be used to judge him or her during the trial process.
After reading Mike D’ Angelo’s article, I reconsidered my original conclusion from the murder case of 12 Angry Men. I don’t agree with his assessment but it had helped me realize I no longer believe with Juror #8’s assessment and the innocence of the Kid. D’ Angelo made the valid argument that the sheer improbability that all the evidence presented was erroneous, unless being framed or facing damning coincidences and misidentifications. Presenting each suggestion along the reasonable doubt within the evidence served as a questionable conclusion to this murder case.
His comparison to the OJ Simpson case exemplified the anchor and adjustment principle along with the consistency (“appearance of consistency”) of his argument made me question his assessment. Considering the unrealistic contrast of both cases debilitated his argument. Putting a high-profile case of technologically advanced times in comparison with the relatively inconspicuous case of the 1950’s seemed more of an eager measure to convince the reader of his point of view.
After reading Mr. D’Angelo’s article, I do agree with him that the unraveling of the case against “The Kid” was highly unlikely. I do not agree that the decision should have been made as “guilty”, however. This was a 1957 Hollywood production wearing some pretty obvious themes of morality on its sleeve. The movies are where each juror can be flipped one by one by a lone egalitarian architect, who seems to also have went gotten his JD at night school.
I do, however, think that comparing the fictional production to the Orenthal J. Simpson case is gross oversimplification of the actual case and factors surrounding the 1995 trial.
This was a great piece that in my opinion made me understand making an argument through commitment. Mike D’Angelo does a great job when listing all the ways one may argue that by coincidence the boy may be mistaken for committing the murder. Even the way how each argument was added to the list was brilliant. As a reader of this piece, this is a trap. Most likely if you commit to the first piece of evidence, it begins to get harder to not agree with the rest of the listed arguments or to begin to formulate arguments on why you don’t agree. It was like going down a to do list and say ” Check, Check, Check”.
I believe Juror # 8 still demonstrated that there was enough reasonable doubt to not say the kid was guilty. The argument of coincidences are great but still not greater than the arguments Fonda made about the reliability or validity of both the testimonies from the women who did not have her eyeglasses on to see and the old man with the bum leg that could not possibly gotten to the door so quickly to see the kid run out.
It is highly unlikely that in reality like Mike D’Angelo says this boy would go free but if were a juror, and heard this case and Fonda’s arguments I may honestly be cause of a hung jury.
D’Angelo makes a very compelling argument that the 12 jurors made a mistake. Each piece of evidence individually leads Fonda to doubt the charge, but as D’Angelo states, there is more than enough damning evidence when viewing the overall case. I have never thought to compare the Kid to OJ Simpson, but there are parallels in regard to the evidence in the case. D’Angelo’s comparison to the inverse of winning the lottery really solidifies the argument. If each piece of evidence logically leads one to conclude that the defendant is guilty, then it would be highly improbable that the defendant is not guilty. That said, I personally do not believe the Kid should have been convicted, as no one definitively proved his guilt. Maybe I am just defensive because the other 11 jurors lead from a presumption of guilt, but I believe unless the prosecution has damning evidence, and eyewitnesses (without visual impairment), one should not presume guilt.
Ni, I do not agree with D’Angelo’s conclusion but I do agree with parts of his reasoning. There is a difference between innocence and reasonable doubt. After watching the film I did not think that what Fonda proved was innocence. He never makes that claim rather he sets out to put doubt in the minds of the other jurors. In order to prove innocence Fonda (or the defense) would have had to present another viable suspect to take the blame off of ‘the kid’. Without this suspect the facts still remain that the old man is dead, he was stabbed with a knife that they found at the scene, and his son arguably was the last person to see him alive. In the film no one answers or even asks the question ‘if the kid didn’t kill his father than who did?’ No one proclaims the kid’s innocence rather the prove how faulty evidence and witnesses can be. I believe that the evidence taken individually or put together presents much room for reasonable doubt and without another line of possibilities the jurors ultimately made the right decision.
Though I find D’Angelo’s take on 12 Angry Men plausible, I still believe the boy received his appropriate judgement of innocent. The image painted by the prosecuting attorney forges the jury to believe that the kid ‘must be guilty’ based on his upbringing, socio-economic standing, past relationships and troubles with the law. The prosecutor’s job is to be the ‘persuader’ of the court and convince the jury in his favor. D’Angelo points out the more probable heuristics and biases that one would conclude. Tversky and Kahneman’s concepts of Representativeness and availability are keenly seen in D’Angelo’s argument. The boy is categorized or stereotyped based on his background, his representativeness as an upstanding citizen is questioned. Also, the ease of believability based on evidence such as the knife, the boy’s memory of the movie and neighbors hearing “I’ll kill you” makes influences the availability.
I still support the men’s decision in this case. After seeing the effects of Collin Powell’s heuristics and biases, I think informing ones’ self and making decisions based on more than biased intuition is extremely important. Had Fonda (juror #8) been present during Collin Powell’s presentation to the UN there would be an extremely interesting take on Iraq’s intentions.
After reading the argument made by Mike D’Angelo I am a little apprehensive in choosing a side. Henry Fonda made a pretty strong argument in favor of the kid in making him not be guilty. He went through all the evidence and made us the audience and the jurors have doubt on the evidence presented. But I think the reasoning went a little too far in making all the evidence a causality a coincidence. No even one piece of evidence was true in the argument made by Honda.
That made in a way agree with the explanation and assessemnt Mike D’Angelo showed of the film. Not everything could had been a coincidences. The investigation of evidence could have gone further if they actually tested the weapon of murder for DNA, or talk to more of the neighbors. Still the statements made actually made me think how can it be possible for the kid not to remember the name of the movie he just watched or what was it about even if he was in shock. It is true that in reality all we need is a little bit of doubt to change the outcome of a situation either for the better or worse.