[Opinion] Everything I Found Wrong in the Movie "12 Angry Men" (Spoilers)

Yesterday, my parents made me watch a movie called "12 Angry Men." My mother used her usual reasoning "It's a classic, you've gotta watch it."

As I usually respond "You said James and the Giant Peach was a classic, and we both hated that." Anyway, the vote was two to one, so I agreed to watch their movie. Let me tell you, it was quite amusing. Not because of the plot, but because of the fallacies in the plot. I'm gonna try to explain what I remember being wrong:

The first thing I noticed was that the vote was 11:1 in favor of guilty. The 11 jurors ask this guy why he thinks the guy is not guilty, and he says "I don't think he's not guilty, I just want to talk." So they spend ten minutes stating why he's guilty, and when it's the juror's turn, he says "I just want to talk." Without providing any reasoning behind his vote, his side earns another person.

This guy has the same reasoning as the last. So eventually, the guilty voters say "Well, the murder weapon was a knife that the kid owned." The not guilty "Well what if someone owned a similar knife." Then he asked to see the knife. He then pulled out an identical knife he'd gotten two blocks away from the murder location. In modern times, you are not allowed to introduce evidence as a juror, you use the evidence you're given, so that right there calls for a mistrial, instead, he earns more support. Making the vote 9:3 in favor of guilty.

So, one juror eventually (or before hand [don't remember]) said "well he had a clear motive, his father hit him a few hours earlier, and he was mad." The juror responded "The boy was abused his whole life, and that was a normal event for him." That same juror would later contradict himself. One juror said "Well he didn't remember which movie he'd seen when the police interviewed him after his father was found dead." The same juror argued "He'd just been through a traumatic experience when his father hit him, that probably caused him to forget the movie."

The juror would also conduct an experiment to see if one of the witnesses could have been at their door in time to see the boy run away. I again remind you, the jury can't introduce evidence or conduct experiments, so this would - again - probably be grounds for a mistrial.

Later on, the vote is 9:3 for not guilty. One juror says "These boys are born like this, when you're from the slums, you kill people without hesitation." This caused a rather hilarious silent treatment from the not guilty jurors. They all got up, and turned so their backs were to him and refused to respond. When he finished, they told him not to speak again, and put him in a corner to think about what he had done. It would appear that Hollywood was not much different 60 years ago than it is now. However, this scene does demonstrate a logical fallacy on both sides.

The guilty juror had an obvious prejudice, and was reasoning as such. And the other jurors refused to use persuasion, and instead bullied him into agreement. They instead, should have pointed out the mistake in his thinking. Another point I'd like to make is that the prejudice of the juror does not prove the innocence or guilt of the defendant. But, he wound up switching his vote without further persuasion.

Another mistake I noticed was the whole argument that switched one of the jurors to not guilty. They noticed impressions from glasses on the female witness' (who had seen the boy kill his father from 60 feet away) nose, so he claimed that she couldn't have been sleeping with her glasses on, and therefore couldn't have seen the boy. My response would have been, how do you know the impressions are from long distance glasses, what if they're from short distance reading glasses, and you just put a murderer on the street because of that.

While the movie had many errors and inconsistencies, it also made excellent points about the importance of juries in the American system of government. For example, this guy made great points:

Here's another good clip about the responsibility involved with being a juror. However, you don't need to believe they're not guilty (as he states), you need to have a reasonable doubt of their guilt.

Welp, that's all. This movie did do some good things too, like emphasizing the importance behind 1. The jury, and 2. Jury deliberation. Let me know what you think in the comments, and remember to check back later!

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