Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

What was it like to serve on Donald Trump's jury? The classic play '12 Angry Men' takes us inside a jury's deliberations

A 1997 television production of 12 Angry Men, directed by William Friedkin. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly via Getty Images)

After a jury in Wilmington, Del., yesterday took just three hours to find Hunter Biden guilty on three counts involving his lying on a form about his drug addiction in order to buy a gun, his father President Joe Biden spoke honorably about his commitment to our judicial system and the rule of law. This despite his obvious misgivings about why these charges were brought.

“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal,” President Biden said. He lovingly added that he and First Lady Jill Biden “will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”

It was a stark contrast to the despicable and angry attacks by newly convicted felon Donald Trump after that jury’s guilty verdict nearly two weeks ago. He immediately called the decision “a disgrace” and the proceeding itself “a rigged trial,” once again demonstrating his hostility toward our judicial system that is seeking to hold him accountable for his criminality.

With an eye toward understanding how a jury reaches its decision, Kenneth Dillon turned to classic literature. Dillon, who provides editing assistance to this publication, is a writer from New York who has published essays on politics, literature and film for Los Angeles Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, The Baffler and others.

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The last time I was called for jury duty, I showed up to the civil courthouse a few blocks away from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, where I grew up, with a copy of The Brothers Karamazov under my arm. It was my second attempt at Dostoevsky’s great novel, and my first successful one. For three days I sat among hundreds of New Yorkers engrossed in the trial of Dmitri Karamazov, charged with the murder of his father Fyodor, and the struggles of his brothers Ivan and Alyosha to put the pieces of the crime together while coming to terms with their changed identities. Suddenly, they were sons without a father (albeit a belligerent one). The loss throws all their beliefs about morality and religion, family and love, politics and justice into doubt.

Of all the interesting ways Dostoevsky explores these subjects, the final courtroom scene may be the most virtuosic. In it, attorneys for the prosecution and defense mount two equally plausible explanations for how the murder might have taken place, leaving the reader uncertain which version contains the truth. And so when the jury—made up of common Russian peasants—returns in short order with a unanimous verdict, the reader must wonder: How did they make up their minds?

I wouldn’t find the answer that week in the Bronx; my number was never called. But it's the same question many asked on May 30, when after just nine hours of deliberation a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felonies related to election interference.

What would it have been like to serve on that jury? Through fiction, we might begin to grasp how intense an experience it must have been. But The Brother’s Karamazov takes us virtually everywhere except the deliberation room. Instead, we might turn to Reginald Rose’s 1954 drama Twelve Angry Men (which you may recognize from the popular 1957 television version by director Sidney Lumet, or any of the numerous stage and film adaptations that have appeared since).

In Twelve Angry Men, a 16-year-old boy from a bad neighborhood stands trial for the fatal stabbing of his abusive father. The first act opens with the jury entering the room where they will remain for the duration of the play. Chatter amongst the jurors suggests an open-and-shut case; it’s obvious, they seem to think, that the boy is guilty. Hoping to go home early, someone calls for the first vote. The foreman asks for a show of hands from those who think the defendant is guilty. Eleven hands go up. All heads turn to the middle-aged architect near the center of the table—the lone dissenter known only as Juror #8.

“So what do we do now,” asks Juror #7.

“I guess we talk,” says Juror #8.

So they talk. Soon, it becomes clear that only some of the jurors are interested in discussing facts and evidence. Others simply want to air their grievances, assert that they are in the right, and bully Juror #8 into going along with the majority—rather than asking for his point of view. To their surprise, Juror #8 admits that they all may be right, the boy may be guilty.

But the problem is that he isn’t sure beyond a reasonable doubt. He thinks the court-ordered defense attorney threw in the towel. He is skeptical of the testimony of the two alleged witnesses: a meek old man who lives upstairs and a middle-aged woman who has some kind of visibility into the boy’s apartment through the elevated train tracks from her window across the street. And in a memorable stunt, after the other jurors claim that the alleged murder weapon is a one-of-a-kind switchblade, Juror #8 pulls an identical one out of his pocket, showing that the case is not as straightforward as it seems.

What point is Juror #8 trying to make? The difference between what we believe to be true and what the facts bear out matters—especially in a case where the mandatory sentence for a guilty verdict is the electric chair, as in Twelve Angry Men. Yet those existential stakes don’t register with most of the jury, at least not right away.

Juror #8 combats nihilism, cynicism, anti-intellectualism, prejudice, racism, cowardice and plain stupidity. He keeps a stiff upper lip through it all because he takes jury service seriously. And with carefully considered questions and strong logical arguments, he slowly convinces more and more jurors to change their minds. But not without some hot-blooded altercations. In one scene after another juror goes on a racist tirade, Juror #8 says this:

It’s very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. Well I don’t think any real damage has been done here. Because I don’t really know what the truth is. No one ever will, I suppose...we’re just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it’s sure.

In other words, certainty is a high standard, and one that cannot be met through prejudiced finger-wagging or by using logical or rhetorical shortcuts.

It would be easy for liberals to take similar shortcuts in our thinking right now. With an outcome that many of us expected in Trump’s criminal case in New York, there is a temptation to simply hold up the guilty verdict to conservative friends and neighbors as if to say: You’re wrong, I’m right, and if you don’t agree then you’re a fool.

But what if the jurors on Trump’s trial had done that? If they had showed up for jury duty knowing they would vote to convict or acquit before hearing any arguments or seeing any evidence, whether they realized it or not, they would have been trampling on the very principles they’d be seeking to uphold.

No, in the wake of the guilty verdict—and possibly three more eventually in South Florida (Jack Smith’s documents case), Washington, D.C. (Smith’s election interference case) and Fulton County (Fani Willis’s election interference case)—we need to double down on our commitment to follow the facts where they lead.

This is especially true as the judicial system is inundated with renewed threats. From the moment the verdict was returned, Trump’s sycophants in the highest and lowest places have kept busy denigrating every part of the process.

“We have rogue prosecutors around the country that have drug President Trump through this process because of who he is,” House Speaker Mike Johnson erroneously claimed. (Meanwhile, Johnson had no problem yesterday with the trial and verdict of Hunter Biden.)

And in a bizarre, hour-long, puff-piece interview with Trump, non-practicing psychologist Phil McGraw, aka Dr. Phil, suggested that his own past experience as a paid trial witness made him an expert on the law. He used these pseudo-credentials to blame the jurors themselves for the guilty verdict.

“The burden [of proof] legally is with the prosecution, but logically is with the jury,” said McGraw.

“Guilty until proven innocent,” responded Trump.

“That’s exactly the truth, that’s how it plays out,” said McGraw.

NBC reports that rank-and-file MAGA trolls are swallowing these high-profile attacks on the judicial system whole, and directing their own ire at suspected jurors. Multiple doxing attempts have been made while comments like these are flooding online forums: “We need to identify each juror. Then make them miserable. Maybe even suicidal.” These attacks are part of the “Indict the Left” movement that has sprung up since Trump’s conviction.   

If you had known this antagonism would follow a conviction you had voted for, would you still have been able to serve on the jury without partiality? Could you suppress your personal beliefs—about Trump, about the 2016 and 2020 elections, about deceitful business practices, about extramarital affairs—and stick to the facts of the case? Would you keep your temper with those who disagreed with you? Would you be able say for certain whether the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?

This year and beyond, a firm commitment to facts and the judicial system is more important than ever. Maybe you will soon encounter someone like 12 Angry Men’s Juror #4, a person who disagrees with you on every issue but is willing to talk with you and even change their mind. Or maybe you will meet a version of Juror #12, a nervous young person who changes their opinion whenever they hear a convincing argument.

You may know someone like Juror #3, whose emotions cloud their judgment, or Juror #10, whose nihilism has drained them of the ability to care about politics. Twelve Angry Men is worth revisiting—or watching or reading for the first time—as you look for a way to experience the profound responsibility of jury service. Just take it from overly-polite Juror #11, a German refugee from World War II, who breaks up an argument like this:

This fighting. This is not why we are here, to fight. We have a responsibility. This, I have always thought, is a remarkable thing about democracy. That we are, uh, what is the word. Notified. That we are notified by mail to come down to this place and decide on the guilt or innocence of a man we have never heard of before. We have nothing to gain or lose by our verdict. This is one of the reasons we are strong. We should not make it a personal thing.

Unlike jury service, politics is a personal thing. But like justice, politics is also about taking responsibility for upholding basic democratic institutions and our collective future. The American jury system is a rare window into the willingness of most people to do right by others. That service should be respected even if we sometimes wonder how jurors reach their conclusions.

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