A few years ago, I sat on a jury that was charged with deciding the innocence or guilt of an eighteen-year-old Dominican male who had been charged with second-degree murder, allegedly getting into an altercation over a gold chain inside a bar and then leaving, only to return with a pistol with which he fired four bullets at point-blank range into the chest of the other male, killing him before fleeing in an SUV. In the end, there was enough evidence and a lack of reasonable doubt to assuredly convict this post-juvenile offender, so the jury’s conscience is clean, but each time I watch 12 Angry Men (1957), memories of the week-long proceedings are conjured, from jury selection through deliberation.
What also comes to mind is how a movie from fifty years ago should also resonate as anachronistic, but somehow, this one does not, and this is not to decree that “Racism still exists!” a declaration that would seemingly fail to shock anyone, but rather, 12 Angry Men remains relevant inasmuch as it illustrates how our justice system is taken for granted, perhaps because we somehow disassociate ourselves from the possibility that we could be sitting next to a public defender who has little to no use for our case and is merely taking the charge because his superiors drew his name from a hat.
This is also not a slight on the judicial system, though it seems Lumet is poking fun in that the opening scene gives us a judge who perfunctorily informs the jury “one man’s dead, and another’s life is at stake” before auguring the tip of his pencil into the back of his name plate, spinning it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand while cupping his chin in his left palm to support the weight of his jowls as he reminds them they’re “placed with a great responsibility, thank you gentlemen,” which is all said in a monotone that bespeaks his urge to remove his robe and distance himself from the courtroom and the alleged minority-assailant. In contrast, the judge for the case on which I sat was very active through the proceedings and held a firm order in the court.
That aside, the demeanor of the jurors in the film mirrored those who were dismissed by either the prosecutor or the defense attorneys during my jury selection, showing an indifference to both the content and significance of the proceedings, categorizing the situation as a burden, a waste of time, or at least, less entertaining that what is portended on Law and Order or L.A. Law.
In Lumet’s film, Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb) criticizes the trial as a boring affair, stating “I almost fell asleep […] the lawyers talk and talk and talk even if it’s an open and shut case like this one,” implying that his judgment of guilt is based on the look of the client rather than anything said, given that its contents were not riveting enough to keep his attention. Moreover, he follows up his visual assessment shortly after by asserting “the kid’s a dangerous killer, you can see that!”
Clearly, a criticism of racism is at play here, and Juror 3 is not the only one to employ this phobia: Juror #10 (Ed Begley), who might be the most overtly racist of the group notes “you know what we’re dealing with […]I’ve lived among them all my life […] they’re born liars,” classifying all minorities or “others” as untrustworthy. And, while both #3 and #10 are cartoonishly created so that toward the end, they become the last two villains in the way of Juror #8’s (Henry Fonda) crusade, there is an element of timelessness that exists here in the use of pronouns to disassociate one’s self from an “other.”
During our deliberation proceedings, there were similar sentiments in a disturbingly parallel fashion when a middle-aged woman, whose daughter I went to highschool with, immediately announced her judgment of guilt, following it up with “he just looked guilty, and … you know how they are,” grouping all of us together in an emotionally sympathetic ploy with “you” and separating us from the defendant – and anyone not Caucasian – with “they.”
Perhaps he did look guilty, and there were a few times that I noticed him smirking throughout the trial, but to find guilt in the assumption that “slums are breeding ground for menaces” as Juror 4 (E.G. Marshall) notes, is not only racist, but sinks any notion of a fair trial.
What’s a bit more striking than the clannish, ethnocentric mentality that I encountered in the early aughts was the indifference of the potential jurors during jury selection, some whose excuses far surpassed the cartoonishness of certain characters in the 1957 film. Take for example Juror #7 (Jack Warden), whose only concern is whether or not they will deliver a verdict in time so that he can make the Yankees/Orioles game that evening, so much so that he changes his judgment when “not guilty” becomes the majority of votes, suggesting that he has been inconvenienced by the process and really just seeks a conclusion to his civic duty.
The subtext here is the disassociation we feel from the defendant, a situation that stems from our inability to visualize ourselves in his or her place, thus coercing us to see a defendant as guilty, because, why else would he or she be there, right?
Perhaps we’re not criminals, and perhaps we shouldn’t be on trial, but 12 Angry Men repeatedly illustrates that our indifference is what hinders our justice system in such a way that immediately labeling a defendant as guilty by means of appearance, demeanor, or ethnicity prevents the wrongly accused from remaining free.
And, this disassociation revealed itself through the real-life cartoons whom I saw and heard exposit their inability to sit on a jury because they “worked in a lumber yard,” which somehow justified excusal because the man had “seen people lose fingers and hands,” to which I wondered whether or not there was a killing spree that jaded his ability to be impartial; though, one of my favorite excuses would have to be from a woman who simply said “I don’t like blood” – a statement that suggests she believed the crime would be recreated so efficiently within the courtroom that she would faint.
Perhaps she truly thought the body would be rolled in on a gurney, and we would have to individually inspect the bullet holes. Perhaps Days of Our Lives was coming on shortly and her DVR was on the fritz.
In a more dire interpretation, this separation of self from defendant – whether guilty or not guilty – causes the jurors to gloss over the technical terms in the legal system, particularly “these picky little points” that would keep an innocent defendant free, but these picky little points are the “reasonable doubt” that needs to be dismissed in order to find someone guilty.
And while these are cleverly worded lines of dialogue in a script, this “reasonable doubt” that Juror #3 dismisses as “nothing but words” resonates in Cropsey, a 2009 documentary in which Andre Rand is sentenced to multiple life sentences for the kidnapping and murder of two little girls despite the lack of any physical evidence, but that’s okay – as one interviewee notes – because he’s a “drifter” and you can’t get “caught on the little things” like circumstantial evidence and reasonable doubt – the two main tools that a wrongly accused defendant has at his or her disposal.
