Twelve Angry Men Argument

December 17, 2002

1.  The basic proposition for analysis presented in the film is if an uneducated Puerto Rican youth with a criminal record is guilty or not guilty of knifing his father to death with a switchblade. The judge instructed the jury that the charge is pre-meditated murder, with a mandatory death sentence. He particularly emphasized that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and specifically went over the criteria for judgment regarding "reasonable doubt." 

In the jury room, the Foreman called for a vote right away. Everyone wrote on their own piece of paper and gave them to the Foreman (who was juror number 1). The result of the vote was 11 to 1. The one was the Architect. First everyone started to state firmly that the boy was definitely guilty, except the Architect. Everyone started to gang up on the Architect. 

In the film there were many pieces of sufficient evidence offered in the jury room to justify their decision. The first evidence was the old man from downstairs claimed that he heard the boy yell, "I will kill you", and than he heard a thud and ran toward the stairway, and then he claimed that he saw the boy run downstairs. 

There was also a woman witness. She saw through her window that night that the boy stabbed his father as two cars of a passing train passed by. She was sure that she saw the boy stab his father. One member of the jury pointed out that the women witness needed glasses but didn't seem to have her glasses on when she claimed that she saw the boy stabbing his father. When she was on the stand, he noticed she had impressions on her nose from the eyeglass nose piece, even though she didn't wear her glasses on the stand to improve outer appearance. Also, everybody that goes to sleep doesn't wear glasses. Her testimony may be unreliable.

The noise of a train passing by can be extremely noisy; so it is a question whether the old man really heard the boy's yelling. As the noisy train passed by his open window, how could the old man be sure that he heard the body fall on the floor? The old man's testimony is also uncertainly clear. 

The third evidence of guilt was that the boy could not remember the name of the movie that he had supposedly gone to see. The architect asked a juror about what a couple of his previous days were like. The second and the third day he seemed to answer really well, but when the architect asked what he did on the day previous to that, he said he went to a movie with his wife. The architect then asked who was in the movie, and the juror seemed to be a little bit puzzled on the second character of the movie. The juror didn't seem to remember, and so the architect pointed out that even though under no emotional pressure the juror couldn't really remember the movie's character. The boy on the other hand was under emotional pressure from seeing his father lying dead on the floor. He said that when a person's under emotional stress or pressure of a situation, they may not be able to answer a factual question due to shock Therefore, the police interrogation of the boy might not apply to his situation. 

The fourth evidence of murder was that the boy claimed that he had lost his switchblade knife. The jurors  argued that the boy couldn't just coincidentally lose the same switchblade knife. They said the switchblade knife that the boy was accused of stabbing his father with looked very unusual. The architect took a switchblade knife out of his pocket and showed it to everyone at the table. He said that he bought it from a pawn shop around the corner. They all looked very shocked. That meant that it was possible that someone might have used the same kind of switchblade knife and stabbed the boy's father. 

The fifth evidence was that the old man claimed that he saw the boy run downstairs. As the architect pointed out, the old man had a stroke in the previous year, and he was dragging his foot at the court. Therefore he could not walk fast to the door to see the boy running downstairs. The architect used the room to demonstrate the old man's apartment. He demonstrated how long it would take for the old man to get to the door. He pointed out that it takes longer for the old man to get to the door than the old man testified. Therefore he couldn't identify that the person who ran downstairs was that boy. 

The sixth evidence was how the stabbing wound was caused. The boy was a half foot shorter than his father and also said that he was handy with the knife. The evidence in the court showed that the switchblade knife pointed downward on the body of the victim. One of the jurors who grew up in a slum pointed out that if someone is handy with a switchblade knife they would not cause the wound like that. If the boy really is the killer, he would stab his father with the switchblade knife upward instead of downward. It would take time for the boy to flip the knife after he switched open the knife. From looking at these facts it is not reasonable that the boy caused the man's wound. 

In a murder trial, there must be no reasonable doubt of guilt. Logic and reasoning must be used to think about principles, facts, and assumptions. Reasonable doubt can come from bad facts, untrue principles, and bad assumptions. The movie 12 Angry Men is a good example of argument and rebuttal. It has several examples of deductive and inductive reasoning.

2. Looking at the inductive reasoning definition, it is the process of using the past to predict future behavior or occurrences. The conclusion is only a likely one because, even if an event has happened frequently in the past, there is no guarantee it will occur again or in the same way. The more examples you rely upon to predict the future, the stronger the argument. A valid prediction about the future based on a hypothesis does not necessarily confirm the hypothesis.

One of the poorest examples of inductive reasoning given during the film is that the boy's friend said he had a unique knife. The boy claimed that he lost his knife, and the store owner said that the switchblade knife that the boy carried was the only one he had. The switchblade knife was very unusual. The knife was found at the crime scene. Therefore the boy must be the killer. The facts may look convincing that the boy was the killer, but looking at it in a different perspective it turned out not to be trustworthy. It is a poor example because the store owner claimed that the knife was the only one that he had but the same looking switchblade knife was bought by one of the jurors (the architect) just two blocks from the boy's building. It does not mean that the boy owned the only knife there is and that he was the killer.  If we accept that the boy who owned the knife was the killer, than that means that the architect or anybody out there that owned the same knife could be the killer. The fact that the boy had a knife cannot be considered as an evidence that he will use the knife to kill his father. The boy did have the reputation of using the knife in fighting but that does not mean that he bought the knife to kill his father. It may be a coincidence that the boy just happened to have a knife that was similar to the weapon on the crime scene. 

The inductive argument that a knife looks unique, that a person is skillful with a knife, that the person is a previous criminal, and that a person who has a switchblade has used it, turned out to be a bad inductive argument since the facts did not add to a conclusion. The facts were not really facts, so the conclusion was not justified.

3. A deductive reasoning definition is based on major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion. The major premise is a statement which offers a general statement or truth while the minor premise is a particular example of a true statement. If both the major and minor premises are correct, the conclusion offered must follow. Therefore deductive reasoning, if sound, is better reasoning than inductive.

One of the strongest examples of deductive reasoning offered by one of the jurors was that witnesses are credible for their testimony because they swear under oath and don't tell lies but tell the truth. The major premise is that humans are not perfect, they can make mistakes without acknowledging them. The minor premise is that the two witnesses are human, therefore, the conclusion is that they can make mistakes. When a person stands in court under oath and swears to tell the truth, that doesn't qualify that everything a person says is the truth. The testimony may be affected by unrelated events that happened in the past which cause the witness to be confused between the past and the present event. Events that witnesses acknowledge but are not sure of may cause them to believe in something that they think is positively clear. Mistakes may occur when people are assuming like that. When one of the jurors yelled out, "I am going to kill you" to another juror, it doesn't mean that he is really going to kill that juror. It's just a figurative word. If you believe that the boy killed his father for saying that he would do so, then that means that one of the juror is going to kill the other one. Therefore, making a remark or a figure of speech doesn't mean it will turn into action. 

The deductive argument used to refute the testimony of the witnesses was very strong in the movie. The major premise that witnesses are human and can be wrong is easy to prove true. The two witnesses are human in their weaknesses and in their desire to look good. And it turned out that the witnesses observed wrongly.