By Nicholas Stix
Revised, 9:17 p.m., Saturday, May 2, 2020
[Re: “On September 20, 1954, Dramatic History was Made, with the Only Broadcast of the Original, 50-Minute, Reginald Rose Teleplay, 12 Angry Men (Complete, Restored Video)”; and
“David in TN and Nicholas Stix: More on The Defender.”]
In the 1954 live telecast of 12 Angry Men, the performances, camera work and direction were excellent, but the writing was not nearly as good as advertised.
When I was a kid, I would have fallen for this, as I did with the movie version, which was twice as long. But since then, I’ve seen hundreds of fictional TV and movie trials, some based on real cases, and covered a number of trials. As a result, I’ve learned a great many lawyers’ and writers’ tricks.
Seven points:
• Only bigots want to see the defendant fry. Rose portrays those passionately in favor of conviction in the harshest possible light, as driven by hatred, one for his own son, and the other for Puerto Ricans. The other jurors have no twisted passions. But those who support murderers have the most twisted passions of all.
• Support for free speech + Democracy + immigration = acquitting Puerto Rican murderers.
• The knife story from the juror who grew up in the slums was just a Rose tactic to confuse viewers, to make them think the killer must have used a different kind of knife. But we know that the murder weapon was a switch blade. That had been established during the trial.
Sheer Improbability, I, II, and III:
• The defendant insisted he’d been at the movies during the murder, but had no ticket stub, and couldn’t recall a single thing about them, not even the titles. No way;
• The defendant would buy a switchblade that very day, only to have it mysteriously fall out of his pocket (there is no mention of the pocket having a hole in it); and
• That the victim would have a fight with his violent, criminal son, who already had a history of stabbing someone in the arm, the son would run out, and someone else would magically materialize in the apartment and murder the father.
Shooting fish in a barrel:
• Rose has the last holdouts hang everything on testimony by people claiming to be eyewitnesses, which he then impeaches. But Rose knew that “eyewitness” testimony is the least reliable form of evidence, after forensic and circumstantial.
And finally, I know a little secret about Reginald Rose: He liked to see guilty-as-hell murderers walk. Don’t believe me? Check this out:
“David in TN and Nicholas Stix: More on The Defender.”
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2 comments:
First version of Angry Men had a whitey guy as the accused. Second version had a man with "Hispanic" appearance. You gotta keep up with the times.
jerry pdx
Sad thing is, the legal system is rife with ideologically bankrupt evil judges, lawyers & DA's, of all races, but the self hating white ones are the most disturbing and I just encountered one online. I became embroiled in a debate with a former DA from Oregon in Willamette Week comments. His name is Joshua Marquis and he is an attorney who served as Clatsop County DA for a number of years. The comments field was under an article about how black defendants are convicted more often with non unanimous juries than white ones. However, while it's a subject that could be debated, it's not what got my attention. In Mr. Marquis comment he wrote this (quote):
"Notice how sex crimes (committed overwhelmingly by white men) make up MOST of the non unanimous verdicts? They benefit".
How does he know that "sex crimes are overwhelmingly committed by white men"?
He said nothing about the fact that the US is still mostly white so more "white sex offenders" would simply be a reflection of demographics, not that white men are the "worst". Or that the county he served as DA is 99% white so has a negligible non white population to even draw sex offenders from (don't tell George Soros, he'll start shipping Somali's there).
He referred me to the OR dept. of Justice and Oregon Criminal Justice Commission as "sources" but when I investigated, I discovered neither site supplies stats re race and crime, just the number of black inmates or offenders vs. white ones. But no crime/race breakdowns. I did discover the OCJC site stats are uploaded to the FBI databases which does breakdown the stat re race and crime and release them to the public so the FBI stats I cited to him were actually from the OCJC itself, a fact he was not aware of, despite having qualified himself as serving OCJC commission for four years. When I pointed out that out, he didn't answer.
After reiterating my challenge for him to support his assertion about white men with some legit stats and again directing him to the FBI databases and the local sex offender registry in Portland, he stopped responding. Not surprising, his type loves to pose and posture as the noble anti racist (by defending black criminals and demonizing all white men), even supposedly conservative ones, as he allegedly is. Confront them with facts they scurry away and hide, which is exactly what he did. It's sad these mentalities populate our justice system and political system but they do, and they are people who are supposedly educated and intelligent, they just don't have the common sense god gave a horse (as my grandpappy used to say). You can read our debate here (I am Germart):
https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2020/04/29/oregon-convictions-are-thrown-into-doubt-by-the-u-s-supreme-court-we-examined-the-cases/
And no, Mr. Marquis, white men are not the "worst" sex offenders, you just pulled that out from where the sun don't shine. Truth is, the worst sex offenders in the US are hispanic/latino men, followed by black men. I don't know if latino/hispanic men commit regular rape/sexual assault more than black men but they commit child sex crimes at vastly higher rates than anyone else and for that, they get to be the worst.
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