The kid is dumb enough to do everything...

The kid is dumb enough to do everything to associate himself with the switch knife-a switch knife murder -and then a moment after the murder he becomes smart. The kid is smart enough to make a kind of wound that would lead us to suspect someone else, and yet at the same instant he is dumb enough to do the killing as an el train is going by, and then a moment later he is smart enough to wipe fingerprints away. To make this boy guilty you have to say he is dumb from eight o'clock until about midnight and then about midnight he is smart one second, then dumb for a few seconds and then smart again and then once again he becomes stupid, so stupid that he does not think of a good alibi. Now is this kid smart or is he dumb? To say that he is guilty you have to toss his intelligence like a pancake. There is doubt, doubt, doubt.

Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men, stage adaptation by Sherman L. Sergel, Dramatic Publishing Company, 1983, pp.58.