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[mainiac]

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.

How is this a weak defense?  The argument concerning the knife is: He is the only one who has this kind of knife, therefore it is his knife.  That argument is alright as far as it goes.  But we are shown that the premise that he is the only one with the knife is wrong.  Therefore the knife tells us next to nothing.  It doesn't prove his innocence of course, but very little could prove that besides an alibi or someone else being guilty.

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 women reports briefly seeing something across the street.  Then months later she reports that it happened in the logical fashion.  There are a million reasons why she could have been wrong.  And there are proven contradictions in he testimony.  And she did not decide it was the suspect in a vacuum, he testimony is influenced by her exposure to the boy before the murder and the investigation afterwards.  These are circumstances in which it's incredibly easy to mistake someone's identity and there are demonstrated contridictions in her testimony, proving that her recollection of the events is not entirely clear.  Her testimony demonstrates very, very little.

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.

Again, it's not that his testimony is proven false, it's that his testimony is not shown to have any certainty.  Again there are inconsistencies.  Again, he did not have reason to be certain he was correct.

It's the juries job to ask how reliable the witnesses are in a trial.  The judge is supposed to inform them of that before their deliberations begin.  The prosecution is supposed to highlight their concerns.  If the system worked as planned, those things would have happened.

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.

Even if he were lying, absence of an alibi in no way proves guilt.  It fails to prove innocence.  However there needs to be substantial reasons to doubt innocence in the first place.

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.

I personally don't think a better trial could have shed more light on this matter.  The prosecution has already presented their evidence and they have very little:

1) the knife
2) the woman
3) the old man
4) the alibi

Right off the bat we can discard the alibi because proving him a liar (a weak assertion) in no way proves him a murderer.  The knife is a matter of slight interest but doesn't demonstrate he had any agency.  That just leaves the witnesses who identified him based on:

Hearing one sentence shouted and a split second sighting across the street in bad visibility.

In the end, the case resides solely on the question of identification.  Did they see him there or not?  With what certainty can they say that it was the boy they identified and not someone else?


In my mind there is definitely a reasonable doubt about their identification.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

You're talking proof here, and I'm not. We have no debate on whether the prosecution proved the boy was guilty: they didn't. The standard you're challenging, and that I'm defending, is whether the boy probably killed his father.

I can demonstrate that using a wiggle of my ring finger and some mathematical magic on the knife alone. The knife does not prove anything, and is far too weak a demonstration to actually convict someone, especially with no other evidence, but I'm not going for proof here. I'm going for probability. And that knife is just loaded with probability.

There are two possibilities:

1. The boy murdered his father with his knife, and left it at the scene.
2. By coincidence, the boy bought a specific knife several days prior and then promptly lost it on the same day that his father was murdered with either it or an identical one.

The second option has several coincidences that can be assessed for probability.

First, what is the chance that the boy happened to buy the same style of knife that was used to kill his father? Let's say, extremely generously, it's one in ten.

Second, what is the chance that he would lose his knife on that same day? Let's say, still generously, it's one in one hundred.

Under these numbers, with no other evidence, the probability is 1,000 to 1 against this happening.

But on the other hand, what's the probability that the boy would want to kill his father? Well, setting aside all other circumstances except that this guy was murdered, the probability that his own son did it is about 1 in 53, according to FBI homicide statistics.

They're both really unlikely, but the father was killed by someone, and if it wasn't the boy, he lost his knife in a weird coincidence. So to find the probability for each option of these two, divide 53 by 1000, and with the knife alone, the statistical probability is about 94.7% in favor of him being the murderer, just on the sheer audacity of the coincidence.

This doesn't mean 94.7% certain and 5.3% doubt; there's much more doubt than that, and much less certainty. It just means he probably did it. Actual certainty created by this is quite low, and a great deal of doubt is left.

I don't know if he did it. I certainly wouldn't send him to the chair because there was an unlikely coincidence. There's plenty of reasonable doubt there. But that knife alone is enough to justify my statement that he probably did it.

[a1s]

actually both events (the loss and the murder could be connected)
The probability of the boy having a knife that used in the killing is indeed 1 in 100 or less
and him losing it in a few days outside the home is also very low (again let's say 1%)

but, what is the probability of him leaving a knife home? I'd say above of 1/2. Home is where people keep their stuff.
on top of that what is the probability the murderer used that knife? assuming they had 4 kitchen knives (for simplicity) and figuring in the probability that the murder was spur-of-the-moment rather than thoroughly planned out (1/2 is generous enough). we end up with a probability of less than 1 in 20 that the murder weapon is the lost knife but the kid isn't the murderer.
hm... that's still pretty low.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

If the boy's defense was that he left the knife at home, that would substantially help his chances in the probability calculation, especially if the murder took place in his own room and the knife was left in plain sight. But my recollection is that the boy's own testimony said that it fell through a hole in his pocket while he was out walking.

[mainiac]

Well now you're comparing the real world to movies.  I don't the those FBI cases have very much in common with the case in the movie.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

But if we use the probability that a person in a movie was killed by their own son, that's probably substantially less favorable to me.    

Edit: Rambo alone will ruin it.

[mainiac]

Well, either we go with the movie correlation or we go with the real world correlation.  If we go with the real world correlation there's no way I can win this argument.

Well... no way except going on a massive killing spree to change those odds.

[Yanlin]

Yanlin:

12 Angry Men

All 96 minutes, from the list of "related videos" in your link. 

I didn't pay much attention. Thanks a lot for linking this to me. I'll watch it soon.

Edit: I just finished watching it. I love this movie. Now I can't honestly give my verdict without actually seeing the trial, but judging from the deliberations, the boy is innocent.