Twelve Angry Men

Left to right: Grant Buckler, Kevin Shipley, Josh Ginsberg, Steve Powell, Gene Lee, John Geddes, Richard Palimaka

A 16-year-old has just stood trial for the fatal stabbing of his father. It looks like an open-and-shut case until one of the jurors begins opening the others' eyes to the facts.

Among the jurors are men who are sure of the defendant's guilt based on little more than his background, and men who are more concerned about getting back to their own lives than about his guilt or innocence. But there are also jurors who want to be sure of the facts, including one who escaped from a country where justice was rarely done and who reminds the others not to take it for granted, and one who simply cannot convict a man "without talking about it first."

As they discuss the case, it becomes clear that the supposed murderer—while he is clearly no saint—has not been well defended, and that a verdict of guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" may be harder to justify than most of the jurors believed. And yet, the danger of a wrongful conviction must be weighed against the danger of releasing a killer who might kill again.

Left to right: Martin Fobert, Damien Schaefer, Jason Bowen, Steve Powell, John Geddes, Richard Palimaka

Reginald Rose wrote Twelve Angry Men as a television play in 1954. Rose is said to have been inspired to write it after doing jury duty in a murder trial. He made it into a stage play the following year, and later into a movie, in which Henry Fonda played a starring role, and which was nominated for three Academy Awards (but lost to The Bridge on the River Kwai in all three categories).