Can't speak for The Ox-Bow Incident. I saw it not too long ago for the first time and I think something bugged me about it, but darned if I can remember. I suggest, though, you go back and watch Twelve Angry Men again with a more unbiased eye. For crying out loud, he might as well have been the defense attorney, making up excuses and analyzing the evidence. In our country the jury is only to consider the evidence put before them, not go out and do independent research. He went himself to the store where the murder weapon was purchased, recreated the murder scene in the jury room, asserted that the eyewitness really didn't see clearly because he wore glasses and probably wasn't wearing them at the time, and made socialist arguments about society's guilt.
If I was a jurist in that trial I would have reported him to the judge. All the ridiculous assumptions he made were never allowed to be rebutted by the DA because they were never made in the courtroom. Yet this was the "evidence" they used to acquit the defendent.
The whole storyline was a precursor to the whole "racial profiling" argument, and Fonda specifically took on this project because of it.
Besides, I heard Fonda was a complete SOB.
Time has proven a surprisingly high number of innocent people have been convicted and if it's a capital crime, the defendant pays for such a mistake with his life.
Fonda’s speeches about ‘society’s guilt’ were the weakest elements of the film and thankfully they don’t go on too long. The knife thing was a contrivance to geenrate drama and it certainly worked. It’s a very well constructed piece of drama with each character coming of as a distinct ‘type’. Writer Reginal Rose later wrote the great TV film ‘Escape from Sorbibor’.