Twelve Angry Men Review: Empathy, Critical Thinking, And How Our Justice System Makes Us Willfully Stupid
It’s pretty common nowadays to acknowledge that the American justice system is broken, flawed, or even inherently corrupt as a result that most of it is based on the monetary advantage a person can have over someone of a lower economic status, regardless of the inherent severity of a crime. This factor has often been used to illustrate how even a poor and penny stricken innocent man can go to jail for a minor offense as opposed to a person or an institution avoiding time in a cell based on the effortless affordability they can have in retaining the services of a highly qualified attorney. Whether this is some athlete whose drunk driving resulted in the death or fatal injury of an innocent bystander, or some large pharmaceutical company’s deliberate mishandling of the distribution of a highly addictive drug, the fact that all they had to do was pay a small fine showcases that our justice system is nothing more than a complex based soley on profit rather than actual justice. These factors are very much prevalent in the criticism that Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men focuses on. But several things that have been overlooked are that our justice system minimizes our capacity for empathy and critical thinking. Although it would be odd to say that a good amount of people out there still have faith in our judicial system, the fact that some people do is a horrifying thing to take into account, regardless of what metric is introduced, and this only further conveyed in the specific case that Twelve Angry Men tackles.
The start of the film already shows the conclusion of a murder trial involving a nameless eighteen year old defendant. By this time, the prosecution has already presented every piece of evidence possible in order to secure a conviction. All that remains is for the 12 twelve nameless jurors to vote on a twelve to none guilty vote. Within seconds of a vote, nearly every juror votes on guilty. It is only the lone juror 8 played by Henry Fonda who votes not guilty. A first impression of this contrarian action would immediately paint him as someone who believes the boy is innocent. But within moments of being accused of such a belief, Juror 8 immediately states “This is somebody’s life. We can’t decide in five minutes,” and this is after admitting how he doesn’t know whether the boy is innocent or guilty. Instead, his reasoning for not going along with the crowd is expressed through his desire to simply talk. This approach is immediately greeted with a form of tribalistic social hostility that does nothing short of treat Juror 8 as if he were a lunatic as opposed to someone who is saying something reasonably sane, something our justice system purports but ultimately fails to truly enact given that it approaches the idea of truth with a binary if not intellectually offensive demonstration.
We’ve seen enough legal dramas or tv shows to know how cringe-worthy it must be for a witness to be asked a series of intense questions and then be denied the opportunity to give a detailed and more effective answer that addresses the inherent complexity of the matter in which they are being questioned. It certainly carries a lot more integrity than the more complacently accepted yes or no answer every asshole attorney bullies into a witness. As fair minded as the idea of voting on a person’s life may seem, the idea that a persons life cant be determined within a spectrum of five minutes carries an absurdity that Juror 8 clearly recognizes, and further points out with the introduction of a civility the justice system is clearly lacking.
Over the course of 12 Angry Men’s 96 minute run time, the twelve jurors go over the already mentioned details of the case and the unexplored components that were never truly addressed throughout the whole of the trial. As clean and shut as they seemed to be upon the time of their vote, Juror 8’s pragmatic approach towards the inconsistencies he found within them operates as an even more valid criticism of the film’s cynical view of the justice system. In fact, one of the supporting arguments Juror 8 makes for why the facts that were already presented by the prosecution didn’t sit well, “I sat there in court for six days listening while the evidence built up. Everybody sounded so positive, you know, I... I began to get a peculiar feeling about this trial. I mean, nothing is that positive. There're a lot of questions I'd have liked to ask. I don't know, maybe they wouldn't have meant anything, but... I began to get the feeling that the defense counsel wasn't conducting a thorough enough cross-examination. I mean, he... he let too many things go by... little things that…” It’s these very little things which are often over looked or rarely taken into deeper consideration within any trial given the obligatory initiative either a direct conviction or an immediate pardon stresses, and all this does is discredit the importance of finding the truth because facts have their own measure of complexity, and the details help to support that.
12 Angry Men isn’t the story of a lone contrarian Juror’s quest to prove the innocence of a eighteen year old who has been wrongfully accused of murder. 12 Angry men is a story about the importance of applying reason, critical thinking, and most importantly empathy when having a high stakes dialogue. Although plenty of the jurors who immediately vote on guilty, a few stand out more openly with their own personal prejudices serving as driving motivations for why the boy should be sentenced to death by the electric chair. Two of the most notable ones include Juror 10 (Ed Begley) and Juror 3, (Lee J. Cobb) whose personal prejudices reveal not only their flaws as people, but just how mentally stifling the judicial system can be in its ability to discourage any critical thinking, while paving the way for the kinds of personal biases people can apply in their evaluation of a person that it ultimately clouds their sense of judgement. Juror 10’s biases center more around his more bigoted views towards slum kids while Juror 3’s are more prideful and personally focused on his broken relationship with his son, which only oozes out with greater if not pettier rage every time a piece of evidence is reevaluated in favor of a more not guilty plea. Even when the tables are turned and he is left as the lone juror with a guilty plea, it is only until he sees a photo of his son that his reasons for wanting to sentence the boy to death spiral beyond any control he was able to maintain throughout the runtime of the film. “Rotten kids, you work your life out… “ After spewing out his venom, [Juror grabs the picture of him and his estranged son and tears it to pieces. He suddenly realizes what he's doing and sobs into his clenched fist] At this point, a breakdown of this degree illustrates the psychological epiphany he has regarding how corrupting his prejudices can be, and to a deeper level, that speaks to the crippling effects our judicial system can have on our minds.
As already mentioned, given how simplistic and dedicated to a rudimentary form of pragmatism with the way the case distributes facts, 12 Angry Men spares no effort in showing that in addition to the mental stifling our judicial system enables by making us think less critically, it also enables the capacity for us to be motivated more by the unavoidable prejudices we already carrie so much so that makes empathy almost a nuisance rather than an essential necessirty. The prime examples of this demonstration come from Juror 10 and 3. Whether its outright racial bigotry or the type of macho tough guy bravado that prevents someone from truly recognizing the fault in their pride, the judicial system’s dedication to straight out punishing crime—although effective sometimes—carries the kinds of errors that can easily make people very passive and even unobservant when presented with a scenario where the outcome of a person’s life is at stake. Although the cruelty of capital punishment receives some focus within the film, especially with the vicious and near sadistic impulse several jurors (particular 3 and 10) express when wanting to see the boy fry in the electric chair, it’s difficult to determine whether the film is truly against it. However, given the importance that Henry Fond’s Juror 8 (Davis) points out about the absurdity of determining a person’s life in the span of a five minute votes, it becomes that more essential to understand that whether the death penalty is moral or immoral regarding severe crimes, it is not a matter that should be approached with the same ease and innocent connivence a person embraces when ordering a meal at a restaurant.
“The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.”
Henry Giroux
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