Twelve Angry Men: Persuading the

Twelve Angry Men: Persuading the Jurors the Young Defendant Is Guilty Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have a serious issue to ponder. For many days we have heard about the details of a horrific crime, perhaps the worst type of crime since time began -- the death of a man at the hands of his own son. Because of this young man's tender age, it is tempting to be sympathetic to his cause. However, his age must not blind us to the facts.

He is an adult, and must be judged as an adult. There has been a great deal of talk about race in this jury room, much of it negative. Yes, the young defendant is Puerto Rican. But this court case is not about race: the case revolves around the issue of the defendant's guilt or innocence. You are not supposed to decide whether you like Puerto Ricans or not, or young people who grow up poor in underprivileged areas.

You are supposed to make decisions based upon the circumstances, as presented by the prosecuting and the defending attorney. When deciding a murder case, we must all be in agreement as citizens. We cannot condemn this young man as to whether he is guilty or not, based upon his race, or his creed, socioeconomic class, or anything else over which he has no control. I expressly condemn any mention of the fact that this man is Latino as a greater or lesser reason to say that he is guilty.

But we must not forget that his father is Latino as well. His father has suffered too, and his father deserves justice. First of all, there is a credible eyewitness who has no reason to lie. A woman says she saw the boy engaged in the horrific act of stabbing his father. She remembers the moment clearly, down to the fact that a train was passing by at the time.

In support of this woman's story, an elderly man, also living in that same building heard, the boy threaten his father. He saw the defendant running away from the scene of the murder. Thus, there are two objective eyewitness accounts that support the prosecution's contention that the boy is guilty. The defendant is known to have purchased a weapon, a switchblade of the same type that was used in the murder right before the incident took place.

The district attorney has said that this is a rare type of knife, with a strange type of carved blade: although we have heard someone say today, amongst us, that he purchased a similar blade, can it be a coincidence that the boy was seen buying the same kind of knife used in the crime, not so long before it took place? The purchase of the knife indicates that the crime was clearly premeditated as well, another argument in favor of the ultimate penalty.

The boy admits that he had a stormy and contentious relationship with his father, characterized by physical violence, according to his own testimony. According to the boy himself he had motivation as well as the means to kill his father. Perhaps most damning of all, the young man has no alibi. He says he was 'at the movies.' Saying he was at the movies seems like a convenient excuse, given that it is a dark place where no one is likely to have seen him.

Furthermore, the defendant claims he cannot remember the films he saw. I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, if your life hung in the balance, could you not remember the names, or at least a few images and actors, of the movies you saw while your father was murdered? The young man's refusal to provide any evidence underlines his guilt. If he named a film, there would be no eyewitnesses at the cinema, and he knows he might give a wrong name and time for the film.

Any inaccuracy would automatically catch him in a lie. Further straining credibility is the statement by the young man that the knife he purchased fell through a hole in his pocket. How likely is it that the boy's knife fell through a hole in his pocket and then was discovered by the murderer in the same neighborhood -- and then the murderer carefully wiped the handle of the blade clean? There has been a great deal of debate about the credibility of the witnesses.

Some say that an old man could not have gotten to the door quickly enough to see the murderer fleeing. But given the extremity of the circumstances, would we not all move more quickly? The man had just heard someone being murdered in his presence! And I ask again: what reason does he have to lie?