The kid was guilty as sin

Why the kid should have gone to the chair

Leo McKinstry

15 September 2007

Why Twelve Angry Men is liberal twaddle

It is a question that could be addressed to those who now run the British criminal justice system. Recent decades have seen the triumph of the bleeding hearts throughout the institutions that should be protecting our society. Offenders are increasingly viewed as victims of oppression or deprivation or racism or a mental disorder and therefore deserving of support rather than of punishment. As a result of this enfeebled approach, even serious violent offences rarely attract heavy jail terms, while sentences have become almost meaningless. Community penalties are a joke. Burglary and shoplifting are hardly treated as offences at all.

The enraged juror from Twelve Angry Men, brilliantly portrayed by Lee J. Cobb, would have been appalled at the mess of our so-called justice system, ‘What is this? Love Your Underprivileged Brother Week or something?’ he shouts at his colleagues when he can sense their mood wavering towards the defendant. He would be driven to apoplexy by our youth workers who plunge into jargon about teenagers ‘at risk of offending’ or by police chiefs who endlessly prattle about ‘social exclusion’.

Yet the movie Twelve Angry Men was itself an important milestone on the road towards the collapse of the state’s confidence in its ability to enforce the law. In the 50 years since it was released successive generations have been brought up to revere the film, in which one articulate, concerned architect, played by Henry Fonda, gradually persuades his 11 colleagues on a New York jury to change their minds about the prosecution case against a Puerto Rican teenager who is accused of killing his father with a flick-knife. Initially, the other 11 all regard the defendant as guilty, for the evidence against him seems incontrovertible. Not only are there two convincing witnesses to the murder, but also the alleged killer has a long criminal record and no real alibi. Moreover, he had bought a knife, similar to the murder weapon, in a neighbourhood junk shop shortly before the incident.

But Fonda forces through a ‘not guilty’ verdict. Only Lee J. Cobb holds out for a while against the emotional tide of Fonda’s rhetoric, but in the final climactic scene, even he succumbs. The film has come to be seen as a triumphant narrative of liberal justice, a heroic tale of progressive compassion defeating reactionary prejudice. Tellingly, the Henry Fonda character is clad in a white suit, reinforcing his image as the saintly conqueror of bigotry.

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Scott B.

February 19th, 2008 1:04pm Report this comment

"It is one of the bizarre paradoxes of modern liberalism that those who trumpet their concern for the vulnerable should actually be such noisy supporters of criminals, the nastiest and most aggressive people in our society." Not that paradoxical when you consider that for the bleeding-heart liberal, a ‘victim’ is a social outsider, someone who is discriminated against by mainstream society', and who only liberals are compassionate enough to care for and minister to. When it comes to ordinary decent members of that society being genuinely victimised by a member of the supposed victim-group, then where’s the moral preening to be had in that?

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