Courts and Justice in Twelve Angry Men (1957)

Introduction

The title of the film Twelve Angry Men (1957) is somewhat misleading: there are actually eleven angry men depicted and one rational man who is capable of seeing the facts clearly. The classic courtroom drama depicts twelve male jurors who have recently heard a trial in which a young Puerto Rican boy stands accused of murdering his father. At the beginning of the film, all of the jurors — and the weary judge — seem resolved to convict the defendant, believing the case is open and shut. The one exception is a single juror who refuses to vote guilty based on his conviction that when a man's life is at stake, no decision can be made lightly. The movie (essentially a filmed stage play, given its largely static nature) dramatizes how the other jurors come to doubt their original positions and arrive at what the film implies is the truth: that the boy is innocent.

The Prosecution

The prosecution in the film could be described as the "villain" of the piece, since it seems likely that the prosecutor capitalized on social prejudices to secure a conviction. As one critic observes, "Clearly, Reginald Rose, who wrote the original teleplay as well as the film script, intended the unnamed defendant — we'll just call him The Kid, as the jurors generally do — to be innocent. There isn't some hidden twist that nobody's ever noticed until now. But in attempting to make the scenario as dramatic as possible, Rose inadvertently and unwittingly made it almost impossible for The Kid not to have killed his old man" (D'Angelo, 2012).

Based on the evidence recounted by the jurors, it appears that during the trial the prosecutor argued the boy had both motive — he was overheard threatening to kill his father shortly before the murder — and the means to commit the crime. There are also two eyewitnesses: an elderly neighbor who saw the boy fleeing the apartment, and a woman who claimed to have witnessed the murder itself. The boy's alibi is that he was at the movies, but he cannot remember which film he saw, and he admits to owning a switchblade similar to the murder weapon. Because the story is set in the 1950s, there is no DNA evidence to connect the boy to the specific blade used in the crime. The prosecutor appears to have been the more persuasive attorney of the two, given the overwhelming desire to convict among the majority of jurors at the outset.

The Defense

Neither the prosecution nor the defense is actually depicted on screen. There is a strong suggestion, however, that the defense was inadequate — evidenced by the extent to which all the jurors, even the more reasonable ones, are initially aligned against the defendant. It falls to the lone dissenting juror, Juror No. 8, to mount a more effective defense of the accused than his actual attorney ever did. Juror No. 8 reenacts the crime, challenging the supposedly watertight eyewitness testimony. "We watch as Fonda imitates the shuffling step of the old man, a stroke victim, to see if he could have gotten to the door in time to see the murderer fleeing" (Ebert, 2002). Although this is an extraordinarily dramatic moment in the film, a competent defense attorney should have raised this issue at trial.

There is little indication that the most obvious weaknesses in the prosecution's case were ever highlighted by the defense. At one point, Juror No. 8 even produces a switchblade identical to the defendant's, purchased in the same neighborhood — the kind of investigative step one would expect from a defense attorney, not an impartial juror. The film ultimately places greater trust in the jurors' capacity to sift through evidence than in the attorneys themselves, reflecting a broader skepticism about the quality of legal representation available to defendants like the accused. For a discussion of the constitutional right to counsel, the Legal Information Institute provides useful context on what competent defense representation is supposed to entail.

Conclusion

Today, Twelve Angry Men is considered a cinematic classic. It exposed the darker dimensions of the American judicial system while still affirming that the system can, at least in principle, work — even for a defendant of color. Though the film's ending is deeply idealistic, it does not shy away from raising uncomfortable questions about the jury system that remain relevant decades later. Putting aside prejudice when judging a case is profoundly difficult, particularly for individuals who have not been trained in law, and the film's enduring power lies in its insistence that the attempt must nonetheless be made.