The Jury Is Given Instructions in Twelve Angry Men

From Twelve Angry Men (1957)

Categories:

Run time: 1:10

Clip Description: The jury is given instructions in Twelve Angry Men. The judicial branch is one of the three branches of government in the United States.

American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip discusses the judicial branch and its role that it plays within the government.

Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip is useful in discussions on jury duty as well as the judicial branch of government.

Discussion Questions

The judge tells the jury that a reasonable doubt must produce an acquittal — and then never says what a reasonable doubt is. American courts have largely refused to define it, and some have held that trying to define it is itself reversible error. Why would a legal system leave its most consequential standard deliberately undefined, and what does that hand to twelve people with no legal training?
Everything that follows in the film happens because the verdict has to be unanimous and one juror will not go along. Until 2020, Louisiana and Oregon allowed felony convictions on a 10–12 vote; Ramos v. Louisiana ended that. What does the unanimity rule buy, what does it cost, and who bears each?
The judge delivers the charge as routine — he has done it hundreds of times. For the defendant it is the only trial he will ever have. Where else in American government does a bored professional on one side meet a once-in-a-lifetime stake on the other, and does that asymmetry change what comes out?

Assignment

Pattern jury instructions are public documents. Find your state’s standard instruction on reasonable doubt — in Pennsylvania it is in the Suggested Standard Criminal Jury Instructions — and rewrite it so that a first-year college student could read it once and act on it, without changing its legal meaning. Then write one page on what you had to give up to make it clear. Comprehension studies find that real jurors routinely misunderstand these instructions; your rewrite is an argument about whether that is a drafting problem or an unavoidable one.

For AP Students

AP U.S. Government and Politics
Unit 3: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

Topics: 3.8, on the rights of the accused
Skill: Concept Application (1.D)
Anchors: Gideon v. Wainwright (1963); Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments

The judge sets out the standard — unanimity, reasonable doubt, what is at stake — in about a minute, flatly and without ceremony. Most students have heard the phrase beyond a reasonable doubt their whole lives and have never once had to say what it means. This clip makes them define it.

Discussion questions

Define reasonable doubt in your own words, without using the words reasonable or doubt.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees a jury trial and the assistance of counsel. Gideon v. Wainwright required states to provide a lawyer to a defendant who cannot afford one. Explain what the right to a jury is actually worth to a defendant who has no lawyer.
The verdict here must be unanimous. Some countries convict on a majority. Name one advantage of requiring unanimity and one cost of it.

Short activity

Rewrite the charge (10 minutes). The judge’s instruction is written for lawyers. Students rewrite it in four sentences that a fifteen-year-old could follow, without losing the burden of proof, the standard itself, or the unanimity requirement. Compare two versions aloud and ask which one a juror could actually use in the room. Most first drafts quietly drop the burden of proof, and noticing that is worth more than being told it.

Clip hosted on Critical Commons.