You thought he probably did it? I thought that the evidence was practically non-existent. Very little of the witnesses testimony implicated the suspect, what little implication there was is explained by the fact that the witnesses thought the suspect was guilty. The physical evidence was non existent. The suspect didn't have an ironclad alibi but we can hardly say that anyone without an ironclad alibi is guilty.
The physical evidence is that he purchased a knife with an unusual decorative handle just days prior, and then coincidentally lost the knife the exact same day that an identical knife with that same decorative handle was used to murder his father. The jurors demonstrate that it's plausible by finding another knife like that for sale in his neighborhood, showing it's not unique, but that's it. While plausible, this remains a very weak defense.
Two witnesses gave compelling testimony against him. The woman reports seeing the boy physically stabbing his father with a knife, in a manner consistent with the autopsy report. Their address to the woman was to point out she was in bed and normally wears glasses, and so maybe she didn't see what she thought she did because her glasses were probably off. That's extremely conditional, and hardly destroys her testimony. For example, it's already known that she doesn't always wear glasses in public. While they argued she may just be self-conscious about it, and trying to hide this from the court, it's also perfectly likely she was farsighted and had plenty good vision for seeing across the street -- or providing testimony in court. Since the jury simply didn't know, they decided reasonable doubt was in place here, but by no means did they actually show she was mistaken.
The second witness, the man downstairs, reports seeing him run out of the apartment, after he screamed he was going to kill his father, all at the time of death. The jurors suggest he
may have perjured himself because he wanted recognition and importance, because the oldest man on the jury projects his own feelings onto the guy. Wow, talk about speculative! They support this by theorizing it may have been physically impossible for him to hear what he said he heard or see what he said he saw. Without a proper cross-examination, and the ability of the man to defend his own testimony, that argument only casts doubt on his testimony, it doesn't render it insignificant. The jury would no more convict him of perjury than they convicted the boy of murder.
The boy's alibi is not just weak, but the police interview lends credibility to the idea that it was fabricated. He was unable to recall what movie he just watched just an hour later -- that's very hard to believe. The experiment in the jury room where a juror wasn't able to recall all of the details of his own engagement earlier in the week didn't even come close to amount of memory loss the boy appeared to have. The argument in his defense that he was in shock at being interviewed in his apartment about his father's death, which is indeed plausible, but once again, not sufficiently persuasive to do more than preserve reasonable doubt that he
might be telling the truth.
With two witnesses against him, including one that says she saw him actually stabbing his father, and the weapon left on the scene being identical to one he purchased days earlier and couldn't produce after the murder, and an alibi that's so shaky that it comes across as a lie, the evidence is very substantial.
I completely agree that the public defender was terrible. With good representation, he may have been able to convince the jury more handily that he was innocent. But he didn't have that. Fortunately, strong defense arguments came out during jury deliberations, where the prosecution and witnesses were unable to respond to these speculative concerns. Maybe the prosecution wouldn't be able to answer these concerns well, which would likely be the case if the boy really was innocent -- but there's no justification for assuming that, outside the automatic presumption of innocence. It's entirely possible that the fact that the prosecution witnesses weren't able to respond to these questions was the only thing that saved the boy.
The jury made the right decision, because in pointing out significant arguments that were not brought up during the trial, they weakened the prosecution's case against the boy just enough to decide there was reasonable doubt. But they didn't know he was innocent. Even the initial juror that objected to sending him to the chair didn't actually think he was innocent, he just wasn't convinced. To really decide this case, they would have needed to be able to investigate their concerns more fully.
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Topic: 12 angry men. (Read 3857 times)