Via Overlawyered, you can find a harsh critique of the classic jury deliberation movie here, and a vigorous defense here.
I saw the movie many years ago, but I remember that my reaction was that Henry Fonda raised many questions that should have been asked by the defense lawyer (e.g., maybe an eyewitness wasn't wearing her eyeglasses), raising two possibilities: (1) that the defense lawyer was incompetent; or (2) that the defense lawyer knew that the answers wouldn't have helped his client. This raised, to me, a broader issue: to meet his burden of proof, does a prosecutor need to anticipate and rebut all possible objections, even those not actually raised by the defense attorney, or is it enough for the jury to determine that if one accepts the evidence placed before them by the two sides, the prosecutor has the overwhelmingly stronger case?
Related Posts (on one page):
- 12AM:
- Twelve Angry Men and the Cumulative Weight of Evidence:
- A Debate on "Twelve Angry Men":
Unfortunately, the author of the linked article does not provide any argument that there was no reasonable doubt, much less that the kid was guilty.
That's something that the defense should have introduced -- and, in the context of the story of the film, shows that rules governing jury conduct are not necessarily directly about truth.
Jurors frequently violate the non-investigation, non-experimentation rule even though they are instructed about the impropriety of such independent factual inquiries.
Furthermore, jurors are not expected to abandon their knowledge and experience when they enter jury deliberations, and Fonda could legitimately raise during deliberations any knowledge he had acquired prior to the trial that such a knife was not unique and even that it was common. Suppose he walked out of the court one day during trial and purely by chance saw a huge display of the particular knife in a store window. Would he be required to ignore that, to refrain from mentioning it and even to refrain from letting it influence his own jury vote? Jurors cannot realistically be expected to accept as true that which they know to be false.
The prosecutor who puts on false or misleading evidence runs the risk of jury disbelief based on jury knowledge or experience, and the prosecution has no appeal from an acquittal even if it is based on improper jury investigation or experimentation. That is the way it should be.
Exactly. Took the words right out of my mouth.
And re misconduct, those were my thoughts (that he did commit misconduct), but it's a movie and sometimes, you just got to remember that. Also, as a moral matter, if I thought extrinsic evidence would exonerate someone facing the death penalty and I were a juror, I would commit that misconduct.
I do recall reading of one case where the defense attorney (new) thought he done OK in some rural courthouse. He went to the restroom, and noticed he could hear the jury deliberations thru the air conditioning duct. It was improper, but he listened in. And was crushed when he realized the argument that was winning his client acquittal was "look, he's got an incompetent attorney, we have to cut this guy a break and seriously look at whether the prosecution really proved its case."
The jury system hinges on reasonable doubt, and reasonable doesn't mean "none". Although I like the film, as find it great art, (much as I like Paths of Glory, another social film with significance), it is a poor guide to judging guilt or innocence.
As others have noted, the Fonda character introduces evidence from outside, and presents it to the jury outside the presence of the prosecutor. He proceeds to essentially impeach the prosecution witnesses, again, outside the presence of the prosecutor. The prosecutor is unable to respond or rebut. Such behavior in favor of the prosecution is immediate grounds for a mistrial and possible prosecution of the juror. Why should the standard be any less for the Fonda character.
Finally, nothing is said to rebut McKinstry's point that letting the guilty go free is condemning those who depend upon the justice system for protection. Those who think better a hundred guilty go free than one innocent be imprisoned need to answer for the additional crimes committed by the hundred guilty once they walk, and all those committed by the additional criminals encouraged by the lack of any societal response.
Real life, and real justice, is a balancing act. There is nothing in the movie Twelve Angry Men to suggest the writers or the characters are aware of that. I do not remember the characters in anguish over the consequences if they let a guilty man walk, or leaving the father's death unavenged. (And vengeance matters, if only to prevent the aggrieved from taking matters into their own hands should the system fail to deliver justice). I agree with McKinstry that the movie is contrived, and all of the force of the movie is towards "reason" overcoming "prejudice" - a portrayal of the prosecution that is unwarranted. Reaching a jury verdict is not easy, and the movie does a disservice to those who have had to balance the facts without the facile appeal to compassionate doubt offered by the movie.
But that's exactly what jurors are supposed to do, for all the witnesses. A juror criticizing a witness the defendant called, outside the presence of her lawyer, would most definitely not be grounds for a mistrial.
If it is a criminal issue (not civil) it is supposed to be
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT,
however that doubt may arise before the finders of fact.
Huh? Questioning the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses during deliberations is juror misconduct and grounds for prosecution? I suspect that's not what you mean, but I can't fathom from this what you do mean. It certainly is not the case that the prosecutor has any right to address the jury or rehabilitate his witnesses after deliberations have begun.
The catch to me is that jurors aren't lawyers (at least not necessarily so). Isn't that the point of a jury trial? Jurors are fellow citizens, i.e. peers, not lawyers. They, in my opinion, should have considerable leeway in how to conduct their deliberations, as long as they are acting in good faith.
The jury, of course, is supposed to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses, but they may not bring in external evidence to do so. That's one of the reason why we use voir dire to screen out jurors who have outside knowledge of the case, the participants, or the witnesses - to preclude them from bringing in outside evidence.
The evidence that a juror brings in can not be contested by either side, nor ruled on by the judge. It is to that which I was referring. Apologies to those I confused.
McKinstry knows nothing about criminal trials or the jury's role. Most evidence in a trial--at least the evidence that occupies most of trial time--is circumstantial evidence rather than direct evidence. Beyond the reasonable doubt instruction, the jury is given a standard instruction that from circumstantial evidence, it is not to adopt an inference consistent with guilt unless that inference is more reasonable than any inference consistent with innocence. The jury is in effect specifically told it has an affirmative duty to consider alternative inferences arising from circumstantial evidence. It is told to speculate, to raise different possibilities.
The fact that the old lady probably needed glasses was an inference from what the jury observed. There's nothing wrong with a juror making that kind of inference, nor is there any obligation to tell the prosecutor that the jurors are making those kinds of inferences during their deliberations. It's expected that they're going to draw inferences. In fact the judge probably instructed them that they were free to draw inferences.
That's actual perfectly proper. The jury can consider how the witness behaved on the stand, and it can make an inference about a witness from her behavior, based on its common sense.
External evidence would be something like if a juror thought he saw the witness wearing glasses on the subway on the way to court. Using the evidence presented at trial (and a witness's demeanor is evidence the jury can consider) in a way unexpected by the lawyers is not external evidence.
I can't remember the scene well enough to have an opinion on whether it was a reasonable inference, but it wouldn't be misconduct, or grounds for a mistrial.
If I understand correctly you are claiming the jury can't use anything not presented in the trial. So if a juror were an ophthamologist who knew, for example, that past a certain age pretty much everyone needs glasses, it wouldn't be legitimate to use or present that information during deliberations.
That strikes me as legalistic nonsense. Does it make any sense to convict someone of a crime without taking relevant information into account? Not to me.
Trial lawyers and judges are continually amazed at what jurors find important in a trial; there's no way to anticipate and rebut all possible objections. Some things you know in advance will loom large in jurors' minds even if they have are undisputed, so yes sometimes you will call in a witness to establish a point that is otherwise unimportant (example: fingerprints are rarely recoverable, jurors think they are universally accessible and available, so you call a crime scene tech to explain why it would've been a waste of time to dust for prints).
You mean like if a juror knew that unemployed youths were more prone to commit crimes, it would be legitimate to use or present that information during deliberations?
No it is NOT legitimate to use inferences based upon generalizations, to rebut a prosecution witness in the jury room, any more that it is legitimate to use such generalizations to presume the guilt of the defendant.
BTW, as the son of an optometrist, I can tell you that your generalized information is wrong. Although many people need glasses in old age for reading, many people have no need for glasses for viewing in the distance. The old woman may have needed reading glasses, but not glasses for distance. By introducing such misconceptions into the jury room, the Fonda character was biasing the jury.
Should the prosecution have to prophylactively rebut every prejudice of which a juror may conceive?
But going out, buying a piece of evidence, and bringing it into the jury room is entirely different.
The problem is that much of "common knowledge" is wrong. Even if the juror is correct in deducing the witness wears glasses, deducing that the woman needed glasses for distance and could not have seen the defendant is assuming facts not in evidence, based on the juror's incomplete knowledge that there are many types of vision issues. Believing that "past a certain age pretty much everyone needs glasses" is prejudice, and indulging in it in the jury room is indulging in prejudicial bias.
Perhaps what you really meant is, "Bias is fine, as long as it is in favor of the defense", or, "Bias is fine, as long as it is in favor of the party with whom I agree." The problem is that bias isn't easy to control once it is let loose. Once you accept jurors bringing all types of pet beliefs into the jury room, you are going to have to accept jurors deciding on the basis of faith, signs from god (or the judge), and all types of other notions.
This isn't to say that such things don't happen already (they do, and all to frequently), but I see no point in romanticizing it, as in the movie, "Twelve Angry Men".
I'm not sure how you are going to accomplish what you want with human beings as jurors.
Most jury instructions explicitly say that in evaluating credibility jurors may consider a witnesses' manner while testifying, whether their testimony is "logical," whether their statements are "inconsistent," etc. At one level or another, this is going to involve knowledge, understanding, and belief about the operation of the world in general that jurors did not pick up in the courtroom.
Depends on the Jurisdiction.
This isn't the law everywhere.
What I am objecting to is what I regard as the introduction of "evidence" into the jury room, and I (obviously) consider the idea that a witness could not have seen someone do something "because she needed glasses" to be a form of evidence. The witness needing glasses or not is a verifiable objective fact, not a judgment call on the witness' credibility. To infer an objective fact outside of the channels of courtroom presentation is to contaminate the proceeding, IMHO. As someone or the other said, "Its what we know that isn't so is the problem."
Nope. The woman likely wore glasses. People normally need glasses because they can't see very well. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the woman wore glasses because she couldn't see very well.
Now, this may not be true. Maybe she wears sunglasses all the time because she works on the beach. But that is pure speculation, which, as you mention, isn't allowable in a jury room.
However, it was the duty of the prosecutor to establish that her eyesight is in fact good enough to see that distance in the evening. The fact that he didn't means either he screwed up, or he could NOT establish that, and hoped that if he ignored the issue, the jury would too. Either way, the jury is allowed to make inferences based on that as well.
Having sat in a few juries, I know that the jury determines the credibility of each witnesses. They either believe a witness or they don't -- sometimes he comes down to a feeling. In one jury case, we had ten blacks on the jury, and two whites, and every one of the black jury members discredited the prosecution witnesses for no other reason that an assumption (unwarranented by the evidence), that the police can get you to say whatever they want you to say on the witness stand. "We don't know that they promised or threatened those witnesses to say what they said" was what one elderly gentleman said.
We convicted anyway. But there are no rules for what juries can establish regarding credibility of the witnesses, so long as they don't bring actual knowledge from outside the courtroom.
Knowing that older people often have problems with eyesight is not 'bias' or 'prejudice.' No more than knowing that people who have ten beers have trouble driving is 'bias' or 'prejudice.' It's just life experience, and it's proper to bring that into a jury room.
Is this guy so contemptuous of history? And I seriously doubt more than 1% of the US population has actually seen the movie, so to put the blame of all of society's ills is rather a stretch.
Exactly. And the fact that the prosecutor did not establish that fact leaves the jury room to make it's own conclusions as to why the he failed to establish the fact.
Especially considering that fact that more than half of the US population needs corrective lens, it is the duty of the prosecutor to establish that any person, young, old, 20/20 eyesight or not, was able to see that distance under those conditions.
People will believe what they want to believe, but believing it so doesn't make it true. On that note, all I can reply is, "Whatever!"
I can see why you'd think this, but it's really not the case. The jury can't stop its deliberations, call a witness back, and ask her some extra questions. It has to make the best evaluation it can based on the evidence before it.
Additionally, don't think that when an innocent person is convicted that he and his family and friends don't experience feelings of vengeance.
Why aren't jurors allowed to investigate? Not during deliberations, necessarily, but during the trial, why are jurors required to remain limited to what they passively see and hear and not allowed to investigate for themselves by questioning the attorneys, the witnesses, etc., the way the SCOTUS judges can question the attorneys during oral argument?
In the interests of accuracy, presbyopia is not nearsightedness (aka myopia). It's almost the opposite.
I think he should have picked a different movie to illustrate his point about the UK going to hell in a handbasket by not prosecuting perps and more besides.
Not necessarily true. In a case I helped try (a long time ago) in Federal Court, the judge let the jurors write questions and the judge read them to us.
I second Christopher Cooke on this. I once tried a criminal case that lasted more than a year, then a record in Los Angeles County, and the state court allowed jurors to write out questions and submit them to him during the trial. He would ask the lawyers for their input on whether the questions should be asked. He actually asked most of them. Some of them he had the lawyers ask.
Depends on the Jurisdiction.
This isn't the law everywhere.
It is the law in Henry Fonda's home state, California. Hee, hee. I don't know about New York, where the fictional trial in the film took place.
But it any event the reasonable doubt instruction is sufficient to compel the jury to put the evidence to such a test during their deliberations, and every jurisdiction requires a reasonable doubt instruction.
They can use whatever evidence they have seen at trial to make that evaluation. But if they have been given none, they cannot just assume that she must have normal vision or someone would have said something.
So they did exactly the right thing, they took into account all the evidence they had, her age, her demeanor, what they saw her do in the court room, and so on. They then made a determination that it was at least reasonably possible that her vision was to justify the claims she made.
It seems that this is exactly what they're supposed to do.
I was using the ophthamologist as a possible example of a situation where someone know an objective fact that was not presented at trial. If that's not realy a fact, it may be a bad example, but that doesn't invalidate my point. It has nothing to do with the general criminal proclivities of unemployed youths.
(On the lighter side, I remember a joke about a defense lawyer challenging an eyewitness who claimed to have seen the incident, which took place at night:
Q: How far can you see at night, sir?
A: I'm not sure. How far away is the moon?)
He was probably afraid that a mistake in the notes would carry undue weight.
Speaking as a non-lawyer, I think it's one of those unspoken legal myths that people understand and remember what they hear. Many people, including myself, have learned to write down details that need to be remembered. Think about yourself: if you are going to type an unfamiliar name and address into a computer, do you have someone recite name, street, city and zipcode, then type it all? Or do you go line by line?
Studies have shown that the usual 1 hour lecture is a very inefficient way to transfer knowledge, but our schools, universities and courts still rely on it. Testing immediately following a talk or lecture usually finds that most of the first half have been forgotten.
In the jury trial, which involved a chain-reaction collision, there was no discussion of how the damage to a rear-engine VW Beetle might be different than the damage to a front-engine Datsun, given similar rear impact. One of the attorneys had pointed to the considerably greater visual damage to the Datsun as evidence that it had taken the brunt of the force. There were a couple engineers on the jury, but I was an alternate and excused from the deliberations.
The case involved back injuries, and somehow an issue of a magazine (Time, I think) with an advertisement featuring a large clear picture of a spine got into the jury room. (Someone had brought it along to read during the endless waiting, I think.) A couple of the jurors wanted to post it on the inside of the jury room door where it would be revealed to the court when the door was opened, but we persuaded them not to.
That's literally true, but then you won't be able to go from "can't see well" to "can't see the crime well". There are different types of not being able to see well; she probably couldn't see nearby things, which the crime scene most likely wasn't.
When I served on a jury for a civil case, we found not liable in 15 minutes based on an argument that neither side addressed. Basically, the plaintiff accused the defendant of withholding info that led to his injuries, but he acted in a way that assumed he already knew this "hidden information." It was a question that ran through the entire trial, nobody touched it, and since we, the jury, were so confused, we couldn't in good faith blame the defendant.
Juries can (and will) decide based on "common sense" arguments that neither the prosecutor/plaintiff or defense raise during trial.
How typical is that.