The People v. "the Kid"

Re: 12 Angry Men (1957), Veronica Mars (2004)/Juries

Sources:

Declaration of Independence (1776).

U. S. Constitution, Art. III §2; Amends. 5, 6, 14 §1.

Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223 (1978).

Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968).

Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128 (1940).

Sparf v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51 (1895).

Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78 (1970).

Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1978).

Judicial Council of California Criminal Jury Instructions. CALCRIM No. 101, 103 (2023 Ed.).

CJI2d NY Model Instructions Final – Jury Admonitions, Reasonable Doubt. New York Model Criminal Jury Instructions (2020 Ed.).

Death Penalty Information Center, “New York,” https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state/new-york

John Conway, “Not Until 1937 Could Women Serve On Juries in New York,” New York Almanack. (April 5, 2023), https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2023/04/sullivan-countys-first-juror-of-the-fair-sex/ 

Written, Researched, and Recorded by Céleste Young, 2023-2025.
Music: Out On My Skateboard - Mini Vandals

Waitisthatlegal@gmail.com

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            It seems to be a national pastime in the United States to complain about jury duty.  No one wants to get the letter in the mail summoning them to the courthouse to be on call for the week and even less people want to actually serve on a jury for a trial.  So many jokes get made about how to get out of serving jury duty.  Mostly it seems the reasons for this distaste are the low pay and lack of freedom; which is maybe just a reflection on how obsessed with work this country is?  It is not a joke though; serving on a jury is one of the most important duties of an American citizen.  And yeah I say that with a little saltiness, because I’ve been called to jury duty exactly twice and the first time I was out of the country for college, and the second it was the week of Thanksgiving so there weren’t many trials on the schedule and the majority of us were dismissed before lunch on the first day.  I also would likely never get to serve on a jury now, because lawyers don’t generally like having other lawyers on their juries.  But, seriously, if you ever get called for jury duty you should see it as your chance to be an active participant in the legal process.

            With that said, if you get that jury duty notice in the mail what you should not do is watch movies and TV shows for guidance on how to be a juror.  Two particular examples: the classic 1957 movie, 12 Angry Men, and the second season episode “One Angry Veronica” of the TV series Veronica Mars; show what should not be going on inside the jury room.  They do offer some good insight into the process of jury deliberations and how much power a jury can actually have over the outcome of a trial.

            The right to a trial by jury in a criminal proceeding is a fundamental part of the United States justice system and appears in Article III, section 2 in the U.S. Constitution and the 6th Amendment in the Bill of Rights.  The right to a jury in a civil proceeding appears in the 7th Amendment.  A jury trial is part of procedural due process which guarantees a fundamentally fair process when someone’s life, liberty, and property are threatened; which are the three essential rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence.  In fact the lack of jury trials is also a grievance listed in the Declaration.  In a criminal trial, a defendant’s liberty is at stake if they face imprisonment, and if they face the death penalty then their right to life is being threatened by the Government.  Any time the State is interfering with an essential freedom they must ensure that due process is followed.  The fifth and sixth amendments’ guarantee the right to due process at the federal level and the 14th amendment applies this right at the State level.  

            The Supreme Court has stated in numerous cases that the purpose of a jury trial is to prevent oppression by the Government.  In Duncan v. Louisiana, they stated that [quote] 'Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.' [end quote]  In Williams v. Florida, they noted [quote] “This purpose is attained by the participation of the community in determinations of guilt and by the application of the common sense of laymen who, as jurors, consider the case.” [end quote]  The size of a jury is not necessarily fixed; the number 12 is a leftover of English rule in the American colonies.  In English common law, juries consisted of 12 peers of the accused who lived in the vicinity of where the crime was committed.  The number of jurors just ended up at 12 over centuries of juries being assembled.  The Supreme Court requires that a jury be [quote] “of sufficient size to promote group deliberation, to insulate members from outside intimidation, and to provide a representative cross-section of the community.” [end quote]  This number has been further defined as a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12.  The Court supports those numbers with studies that had been done to determine the best number for a jury where it was concluded that a jury any smaller than 6 would not adequately represent minority views and a jury any larger than 12 would result in more hung juries due to too many opposing views.  The studies found that the smaller the jury, the more likely they would come to the wrong conclusion and were more likely to convict an innocent defendant.  In the end, the Court decided juries should be between 6-12 people.

            The role of a jury is to be the finders of fact, in contrast to the judge whom is responsible for interpreting and applying the law.  The jury’s job is to observe the trial with an open mind and at the end decide whether the evidence supports a guilty verdict based on the guidance given by the judge.  Criminal defendants are innocent until proven guilty and the burden of proving guilt rests solely on the prosecution.  The prosecution must prove each element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a fairly high threshold compared to civil cases where the burden is a preponderance of the evidence or by clear and convincing evidence.  The prosecution proves their case by introducing evidence, both physical and testimonial.  The job of the defendant’s attorney is simply to show doubt, by exposing the weaknesses in the prosecution’s argument, questioning the credibility of witnesses, and introducing alternative theories of the case.  The jury is presented with both sides of the case and then deliberates amongst each other whether the burden of proof was met.  The jury can only discuss the actual evidence presented in the trial, but they can decide whether they believe physical evidence is convincing and if witnesses are credible.  Because jurors are chosen as a cross-section of the community, it is expected that they will consider their own lived experience and common sense as a part of their decision, but they are discouraged from allowing their personal beliefs and biases to overshadow the evidence.

            One of the most important pre-trial events is jury selection, or Voir Dire.  It is the process through which a jury is selected from a larger group of prospective jurors.  Potential jurors are summoned at random from various sources (like tax records, driver’s licenses or vehicle registration, or voter registration rolls).  After being summoned the potential jurors are narrowed down even more by being randomly placed into a jury pool for a specific trial.  The Judge and the lawyers narrow down the pool to 12 jurors (with 1 or 2 alternates) by questioning the background of the potential jurors and determining if they are able to be unbiased and fair.  Each side is given a certain number of peremptory challenges that they can use to strike jurors without needing a reason.  Jurors cannot be disqualified based on gender or race.  There has been a lot of research done about jury selection and make-up; and there are even jury consulting firms and specialists that will help attorneys prepare for voir dire.  Once a jury is selected they are sworn in and become part of the trial.

            12 Angry Men and Veronica Mars present two examples of a jury’s post-trial deliberation process.  They have some unique differences and some similarities.  Let’s start with 12 Angry Men.

            There are two unique aspects to the case presented in 12 Angry Men: the make-up of the jury and the fact that it is a death penalty case.  Both of these issues are products of the time the teleplay was written and when the movie was filmed.  The teleplay for 12 Angry Men was written in 1954 and takes place in the State of New York.  This is notable because it is pre-Furman v. Georgia, when in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court put a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty.  New York State had the death penalty back in 1954 and it was reinstated after Furman, though the new laws passed in 1973 were struck down by the New York Court of Appeals in 1977 and 1984.  Another law was passed in 1995 and struck down in 2004.  None of the post-Furman laws really mattered because the last execution to take place in New York was in 1963.  By 2007, the death penalty was effectively abolished when there were no more prisoners on death row and no laws left on the books.

            A major plot point of 12 Angry Men is that they are deciding whether this 18 year old kid will be sent to the electric chair.  Not only are they determining his guilt, they are also determining his punishment because there is a mandatory death sentence for murder.  Juror 8, who initially is the only juror to vote not guilty, expresses deep concern with this state of affairs.  At first, he just wants everyone to take some time to really deliberate and appreciate the gravity of the situation they are in.  Later he openly expresses that all the evidence does seem to point to the kid’s guilt but he just feels that the kid’s lawyer didn’t do enough and he can’t send someone to the chair because they had a bad lawyer.  This view highlights the exact reasoning that the Supreme Court used to find mandatory death sentences Unconstitutional in Woodson v. North Carolina, noting that [quote] “the practice of sentencing to death all persons convicted of a particular offense has been rejected as unduly harsh and unworkably rigid.” [end quote]  The Court cited numerous studies showing that juries were often unwilling to find defendants guilty solely because they did not agree with the mandatory sentence.  In fact, even when juries were given discretion to impose the death penalty they did so sparingly.  This unwillingness to convict despite the weight of the evidence against the defendant is sometimes called “jury nullification.”

            Jury nullification is a bit of hot topic in criminal law and regularly appears in comments and posts across the internet.  It is not a new concept.  In the U.S. it has been widely used by juries to protest against colonial rule before independence and later against laws they deemed unfair or immoral (like the Fugitive Slave Act), and laws that were extremely unpopular (like Prohibition).  These uses of jury nullification can sometimes seem noble or even heroic, but the same mechanic has been used to exonerate murders of Black people in the South by all-white juries (though these are usually seen more as prejudicial acts and not political statements).  Technically, jury nullification is not permitted in the U.S.  The Supreme Court, as far back as 1895, came to the conclusion that the role of a jury is to be the trier of fact, while the judge is the exclusive trier of the laws.  A jury is supposed to take all the evidence and determine if it is enough to convict the defendant of the crime they are charged with under the law as explained to the jury by the judge.  The Court argued that it is contrary to the principles of justice for a jury to make up the law or come to their own conclusions as to how it should be applied.  There are safeguards in place to prevent judges from wrongly applying the law, they are required to explain their decisions and can be overruled by higher courts.  There is also the issue of who is making these laws, because it is not the judges.  State legislators draft and vote on proposed laws and State governors sign them into law.  Federal laws are written by members of Congress and signed into law by the President of the United States.  All the people involved in this process are popularly elected by the people in their districts and States.  In the current political context, this is of course complicated by extensive gerrymandering of districts that often skew representation towards one party, but that is a different debate for a different time.

            All this being said, there is actually very little that can be done to stop jury nullification.  Juries are not required to give their reasoning for the verdict they come to.  Jury deliberations are considered confidential, so their reasoning is doubly protected.  Verdicts are also final and binding, so without a valid reason to appeal, if a defendant is found Not Guilty then they will go free and cannot be tried for the same crime twice due to Double Jeopardy.  The safeguard here is that the jury has to come to a unanimous decision (this sometimes varies at the state level, but federal juries and juries deciding the death penalty have to be unanimous).  So all 12 jurors have to be in agreement that they do not want to follow the law or there will be a hung jury.  When a jury is hung and cannot come to a decision, then the judge must declare a mistrial and the prosecutors will have to drop the case or retry the defendant.

            It is also notable that all 12 jurors are white men; even for 1957.  The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law which means that the government (both State and Federal) cannot discriminate based on race or gender.  This is extended to jury service, as noted in the 1940 Supreme Court case Smith v. Texas, [quote] “It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the community. For racial discrimination to result in the exclusion from jury service of otherwise qualified groups not only violates our Constitution and the laws enacted under it but is at war with our basic concepts of a democratic society and a representative government.” [end quote]  In that case, the Court held that Texas had discriminated against Black people by excluding them in practice from serving on Grand Juries.  The Court determined that Black people made up 20% of Texas’s population and 10% of its voting population and yet between the years 1931 to 1938 only 5 Black jurors, compared to 379 White jurors.  This is only 1% of the total jurors that served on a grand jury during those years.  (By the way, the Court does not use the term Black, I’m substituting it in.)

            The population of New York City in 1950 was about 7.9 million and approximately 748,000 were Black; which is almost 10% of the city’s population.  The jury in 12 Angry Men has no people of colour, but we don’t necessarily know if this was a common occurrence or if that trial just had a jury pool that contained no qualified Black jurors.  As for there being no women on the jury, this is also a product of the time the movie takes place.  Women were actually barred from serving on juries in New York State until 1937, but the law only included the ability for women to opt in to jury duty.  So women were not required to serve on a jury until after 1975 when the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue.  If you look closely, there is actually a door for a women’s bathroom in the designated Jury Room, so they at least are accommodating the possibility of female jurors.

            Despite no racial or female representation, the jury in 12 Angry Men is actually fairly diverse.  The men are varying ages with jobs ranging from manual labour to architect to high school football coach to stock broker.  Their lived experiences are also diverse: there is the one juror that refers to “those people” from the slums and another who identifies as being from the slums.  There is the one juror that is a European immigrant who provides an insightful view of the role of a jury in a democracy.  Some of the jurors express their interest in the process and others just want to get to the baseball game they have tickets for that night.  So it’s actually a good mix of people that really shows the importance of a jury as a cross-section of the community.

            With the context of the mandatory death penalty and the make-up of the jury behind us, we can ask whether the jury in 12 Angry Men did their job.  After the jurors are settled into the Jury Room and they have taken their initial vote; they decide to go over the facts of the case, so far, so good.  As the finders and triers of fact, this is exactly what they should be doing; going over the facts of the case and deciding if it is persuasive.  They are supposed to weigh the testimony of the witnesses and determine if they think the witness was credible.  Where they start to get into trouble is when they start doing the defense attorney’s job.  They pick apart the timeline, bring in their own facts about how long it would take the train to pass, how fast the old neighbor could walk, whether the lady who saw the murder wears glasses.  Some of these facts were based on the jurors’ observations of the witnesses, but they are not facts that were brought into evidence during the trial, nor are they using the observations merely to question the credibility of the witness’s testimonies.  They are speculating as to the facts and raising their own doubts, which again is supposed to be the defense’s job. 

            Then they go completely off the rails and into jury misconduct territory when Juror 8 introduces his own evidence.  When the jurors are discussing the knife and how unusual it was, Juror 8 takes out a knife that is exactly the same.  He explains that he went for a walk through the neighbourhood where the crime took place and found a store that was selling the same knife.  He bought it for $6.  Again, Juror 8 is doing the defense attorney’s job and the fact that the Kid did not get effective assistance of counsel is an issue that is not for the jury to deliberate.  Actually, Juror 8 is in direct violation of the current jury rules in New York.  The preliminary instructions given to juries in New York contain a list of things they should not do: they should not talk about the case outside the jury room, even to other jurors; they should not do research on the case, any of the facts, witnesses, or laws involved in the case; they should refrain from watching any news reports or social media posts about the case; and they should not visit any location that is part of the trial.  The instructions give an example speech for the judge which includes why the rules are there.  It says in part: [quote]

Our law also does not permit you to visit a place discussed in the testimony. First, you cannot always be sure that the place is in the same condition as it was on the day in question. Second, even if it were in the same condition, once you go to a place discussed in the testimony to evaluate the evidence in light of what you see, you become a witness, not a juror. As a witness, you may now have an erroneous view of the scene that may not be subject to correction by either party. That is not fair.

Finally, our law requires … that you not attempt to research any fact, issue, or law related to the case. Your decision must be based solely on the testimony and other evidence presented in this courtroom. It would not be fair to the parties for you to base your decision … upon information you acquire outside the courtroom.

These rules are designed to help guarantee a fair trial …

[end quote]

My guess is that jury instructions back in the 1950s were not as explicit, and the judge at the beginning of the movie does not really give any rules to the jurors.  It does not seem that the jurors were even given any written instructions to take into deliberation with them.  Jury instructions are given to the jury for deliberations to help guide them in coming to a verdict.  They usually are hotly debated between the prosecution and defense before the end of the trial to try to get the most favourable wording for their side.  The instructions lay out the charges against the defendant and outline each element of the crime or crimes charged.  If the defendant is claiming an affirmative defense, like self-defense, then this is also included.  The instructions also will explain the burden of proof.  Had they been given instructions they might have had a better understanding of reasonable doubt.  The Model Jury Instructions for New York offer this explanation of reasonable doubt: [quote] “A reasonable doubt is an honest doubt of the defendant's guilt for which a reason exists based upon the nature and quality of the evidence. It is an actual doubt, not an imaginary doubt. It is a doubt that a reasonable person, acting in a matter of this importance, would be likely to entertain because of the evidence that was presented or because of the lack of convincing evidence. [end quote]  They also note: [quote] “The law recognizes that, in dealing with human affairs, there are very few things in this world that we know with absolute certainty. Therefore, the law does not require the People to prove a defendant guilty beyond all possible doubt. On the other hand, it is not sufficient to prove that the defendant is probably guilty.” [end quote]  This is notable because there is a debate between the jurors about a fact being possible versus being probable and later one of the juror talks about needing to be certain of the kid’s guilt to send him to die.  Reasonable doubt does not mean that there is some doubt; it has to be reasonable based on the circumstances of the case.  This is the same as something that is possible, but not really probable.  The jurors in 12 Angry Men seem to believe that having doubts about the facts of the case means the kid must be found not guilty.  The standard isn’t beyond any doubt, or beyond doubt based purely on speculation; it is beyond a reasonable doubt.  Is it possible the witnesses all lied, or were mistaken about who they saw stabbing the father? Yes.  Is it possible that the kid was at the movies and someone else framed him for the murder by using his knife?  Sure, it’s possible, but is it probable?  The biggest issue here is that Juror 8 doesn’t refute the facts with facts from the trial, he is using a mix of his own detective work, personal experiences, and his empathy for the defendant.  He repeats several times the unfortunate circumstances the kid was born into, how his father beat him and all the kid knew was violence.  His empathy and compassion combined with the mandatory death penalty are giving him the doubt that the other jurors are saying is reasonable doubt, but it is not reasonable.

            So, no.  The jurors did not do their job.  Instead of evaluating the facts presented during the trial, they conducted their own investigation and trial.  Juror 8 went above and beyond not doing his job, he actively committed juror misconduct and should have been removed from the jury.  As soon as he produced the extra knife the Foreperson should have alerted the bailiff.  The judge would have then called a mistrial.  This probably would have happened anyway, in the movie Juror 8 clearly leaves the 2nd knife behind in the Jury Room.  The bailiff would have found it and been confused that there were 2 knives and told the judge.

            From the facts given it would seem that the jury had more than enough evidence to convict the defendant of murder.  It is horrible that the defense attorney seems to have done a really bad job and did not question the prosecution’s witnesses adequately enough or introduce evidence that would refute the prosecution’s theory of the case.  It is not up to the jury to do the defense or prosecution’s job.  Their role is to watch the trial then use the facts presented to come to a verdict.  They are not supposed to let their personal feelings or biases get in the way.  The juror’s in 12 Angry Men failed in both respects: some of the jurors that thought the kid was guilty only thought that because he was “one of those people” and a bad kid; Juror 8 and some of the other jurors let their emotions and beliefs about sending an 18 year old kid to the electric chair get in their way.  The jury probably came to the wrong decision, but they were not wrong to actually talk it out and look at bit closer at the facts.

            In the Veronica Mars episode “One Angry Veronica,” Veronica is summoned for jury duty.  The episode is clearly meant to play homage to 12 Angry Men and does play out in some similar ways.  Veronica Mars is set in the fictional city of Neptune, CA.  The jury that Veronica is on must decide if the co-defendants are guilty of aggravated assault.  In the Veronica Mars case the initial jury vote is 11 Not Guilty and 1 Guilty, so instead of trying to sway the jury away from conviction the lone dissenter is actually trying to convince the others of the defendants’ guilt.  Unlike the jury in 12 Angry Men, the Veronica Mars jury has a lot of diversity.  There are old and young people, women and men, and there are Hispanics and Blacks represented.  From the facts of the case that are presented and a general background knowledge of the show, Neptune is divided into the rich, white, upper class neighbourhoods and the poorer more racially diverse areas that are predominantly Hispanic and Black, so this is a good cross-section of Neptune’s population.  The balance here is important because the defendants are rich white kids and the victim is Latina; and there is one instance in particular where one juror makes a racist generalization and he is quickly corrected by the other jurors.  

            Despite the fact that the jury has good representation, it is a bit baffling that Veronica is even chosen to serve on the jury.  Generally, during jury selection the judge will ask all the prospective jurors some basic questions like if they know the judge, any of the lawyers, and any parties and witnesses involved in the case.  Veronica is very involved in the law enforcement community of Neptune.  Her father is the former Chief of Police, Veronica dates one of the Neptune PD officers at some point in the series, and through her PI work she routinely finds herself interacting with various officers in the department and has an antagonistic relationship with the current Chief of Police.  Even if the Judge doesn’t think Veronica should be disqualified, she definitely should have been dismissed by either the defense or prosecution.  She is too enmeshed with the Neptune Police, both negatively and positively, to be unbiased and she should have been dismissed.

            Also in contrast to 12 Angry Men, this case involves charges of aggravated assault which is both a lot less serious than murder and is not subject to the death penalty.  None of the Veronica Mars jurors are morally opposed to the potential sentence the defendants might receive.  There is no jury nullification component to this jury’s decision.

            Did the Veronica Mars jury do their job?  Were they better or worse than the jury in 12 Angry Men?  Again, we can look at the recommended jury instructions, this time for California’s trial judges.  The jurors are given similar admonitions as the New York juries, though the California version is a lot more detailed.  The relevant portion here is: [quote] “It is unfair to the parties if you receive additional information from any other source because that information may be unreliable or irrelevant and the parties will not have had the opportunity to examine and respond to it. Your verdict must be based only on the evidence presented during trial in this court… If you receive any information about this case from any source outside of the trial, even unintentionally, do not share that information with any other juror. If you do receive such information, or if anyone tries to influence you or any juror, you must immediately tell the bailiff.” [end quote]  The instructions also provide guidance on the reasonable doubt standard: [quote] “Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you with an abiding conviction that the charge is true. The evidence need not eliminate all possible doubt because everything in life is open to some possible or imaginary doubt.” [end quote]

            During the jury deliberations, Veronica has a conversation with one outside person and is given information about one of the witnesses by her own dad.  The conversation is actually pretty innocent, despite the fact that it is with a member of a local Latino gang and could be seen as juror intimidation.  He asks if she is going to let two rich, white guys get away with beating up a Mexican girl from his neighbourhood?  When Veronica replies that she cannot discuss the case, he says he doesn’t want to prejudice her.  While Veronica does not start the conversation and responds in the way the instructions tell her to, she probably could have informed the bailiff of the conversation.  More egregious is the information Veronica receives from her dad.  Keith Mars gives Veronica an early Christmas gift of a laptop and encourages her to try it out.  When she opens the laptop there are two articles about one of the witnesses saved as the background (not even just up on the screen, but made into the actual background like he doesn’t even want plausible deniability).  Instead of immediately averting her gaze and closing the laptop, Veronica reads the articles.  The next day she brings up the witness in deliberations.  She doesn’t overtly disclose the information she learned but she does intentionally jog the memory of one of the jurors as to the witness’s former football career.  With this prompt, Veronica is then able to raise doubts about the witness’s credibility which leads to the jurors coming up with an alternate series of events.  This ends up convincing all the jurors (minus one) that the defendants are guilty.  The one juror goes along with the guilty verdict, but only because he believes the defendants will win on appeal, which one hundred percent NOT how a jury should reach a verdict.  If he truly believes they are so innocent they will win on appeal, then he needs to stick with his vote for Not Guilty, even if it means a hung jury.  However, Veronica’s actions here were wrong.  She was influenced by information from outside of the trial and she brought that knowledge into the deliberations.  Initially, she is not at fault, her dad set her up to receive that information.  When she does not immediately inform the bailiff and instead uses that information to influence other jurors, she has tainted the jury’s deliberations.  This would be cause for a mistrial.

            Veronica’s machinations aside, all but one juror believes initially that the defendants are Not Guilty.  The actual evidence and testimony provided at trial were not convincing enough for the jury to decide the defendants were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  The fact that the testimony of the witnesses is picked apart and the jury supplies some alternate facts and motivations for why the witnesses would lie for the defense does not erase this doubt.  Unlike 12 Angry Men, where the jury was doing the defense attorney’s job, here the jury is doing the prosecution’s job which is so much worse.  The prosecution has the job of proving the defendants committed a crime and they must do this convincingly enough that there is no reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors that they might not have done it.  The instructions state: [quote] “In deciding whether the People have proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt, you must impartially compare and consider all the evidence that was received throughout the entire trial. Unless the evidence proves the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they are entitled to an acquittal and you must find them not guilty.” [end quote]  The defendants probably did assault the victim here, and the witnesses have some serious motives for lying, but the prosecution did not prove this.  In fact, the jury didn’t even prove it, they just speculated it.  Even if the jurors decided to completely disregard the testimony of the witnesses they thought were lying, there were still enough questions raised that constituted reasonable doubt.  The prosecution failed to erase the doubt that existed from the evidence presented at trial so the jury had no other choice but to acquit the defendants.

            In 12 Angry Men and Veronica Mars, we have two very different juries that come to opposite verdicts despite the initial leanings of 11 of the jurors.  In 12 Angry Men, 11 jurors in the beginning vote Guilty, but in the end come to a unanimous decision that the kid was Not Guilty of murder.  In One Angry Veronica, 11 of the jurors, including Veronica, believe the defendants are Not Guilty of Aggravated Assault, but in the end they come to a unanimous Guilty verdict.  The process by which both of these juries come to their verdicts is similar, though their motivations are not.  Both juries use outside evidence and speculation to question the facts presented at trial.  In 12 Angry Men, Juror 8 brings in an identical knife to show the jury.  The jurors also actively conduct their own experiments to question the timing and actual method of the murder.  They speculate as to the extent of the disability of the witnesses and if they were telling the truth.  They speculate about the motive of the crime and whether they would have acted the same way.  Overall, Juror 8 was upset that the kid’s defense attorney didn’t do his job, so he did it for him.  The jurors in 12 Angry Men allowed doubt to enter their minds due mostly to their perception of what was a fair trial and how convincing the evidence had to be before they could sentence a kid to death.  In the end, it was less about the kid’s guilt, and more about the jury’s unwillingness to apply the law because of the mandatory death penalty.  And I don’t blame them.  The rational and objective view of the facts presented in that case shows that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the kid was guilty of murder.  However, watching the movie and thinking more about it after, I could not separate my own feelings about the death penalty and the idea of sending an 18 year old kid to the electric chair.  Jury nullification seemed completely justified in this situation even if they didn’t realize that’s what they were doing.

            In contrast, the jury in Veronica Mars initially doubts the story the prosecution is selling, until they pick apart the testimony and start supplying their own facts.  Here, the old knitting woman clearly feels that the prosecution didn’t do their job because of whom the defendants are.  The jurors then do the prosecution’s job of erasing the doubts raised by the evidence presented during the defense’s case.  And they do this in part because of Veronica’s prompting of the sports radio host to remember facts she only learned because of her dad.  Sure, the jury may feel that it is unfair that the defendants will go free, but they have no choice.  With the facts presented to them in trial, the prosecution failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  Even worse, they allow their prejudices and beliefs about how the criminal justice system treats rich, white boys to sway their decision, but not in a good way.

            There is also something to be said for erring on the side of finding someone Not Guilty.  The State has the discretion of deciding whether to bring a case or if they need more evidence from the police.  They also have vastly more resources available to them, so it is only fair that they have enough evidence to overcome a person’s fundamental rights to life and liberty.  In the cases where the prosecution does not meet the burden of proof and the jury is left with reasonable doubt it is important that they vote to acquit.  Ideally all trials would be fair with both the prosecution and defense doing great jobs and giving the jury all the evidence they need to confidently come to a unanimous verdict.  Human beings are not perfect and there is a lot of room for error in the administration of justice.  The role of the jury is an important safeguard, even if it comes down to disobeying the law.  A jury is a cross-section of the community and is meant to represent the values of that community.  So if a law or the application of the law is so disliked that a diverse group of 12 people can agree that it should not be applied, even if they are letting a potential criminal go, then I would argue that the system is working as intended.  The remedy being that the Legislature revisits the law to make it conform better to community standards.

            Both juries failed to do their jobs.  Both cases probably should have ended in a mistrial because of the actions of the jurors.  Instructions given to juries are incredibly important; they ensure the fairness of the trial.  All evidence used in a trial is vetted by both sides and the judge to make sure it conforms to the Rules of Evidence.  This allows for a level playing field where both sides are playing by the same set of rules.  No other evidence should be allowed to enter into the jury’s deliberations because it is not subject to the same scrutiny and standards as the facts presented at trial.  Justice only works in a democracy when everyone plays their part; with the population voting for representatives that draft and pass laws and the larger population voting for an executive that signs those laws and creates regulations to ensure they are enforced.  And ultimately, with a small, but representative part of that voting population deciding if the government has presented a strong enough case to find a person from their community guilty of breaking the laws.

Thank you for listening.  This show is researched, written, and recorded by me, Céleste Young.  None of the legal advice or opinions expressed in this episode are intended as specific or individualized legal advice.  Please like, subscribe, rate, or review this podcast if you enjoyed it.  If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail them to Waitisthatlegal@gmail.com.  You can find the Podcast on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

All it takes is 12 Angry People to decide someone’s guilt or innocence and this is a duty that all citizens should serve with pride and respect.