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12 Angry Men is a play written by Reginald Rose and adapted from a 1954 teleplay he wrote to be aired on CBS. Inspired by Rose’s experience serving on a jury in a manslaughter case, the teleplay was later made into a film, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda. It was later produced for the stage in 1964, and finally adapted for television again in 1957. Indicative of mid-20th century American naturalism, which depended on socially-conscious, psychologically driven realism, 12 Angry Men takes place in real time, and all in one room, during the fraught jury deliberations for a murder trial. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, the play’s themes of racial and social inequity were especially poignant at the time of its staging.

Set in 1950s New York City, the play opens on an empty jury room. We hear the voice of a Judge giving Instructions to a jury of twelve men tasked with arriving at a verdict as part of a murder trial. The judge instructs the men that, if found guilty by a unanimous vote, the accused faces a mandatory sentence of the death penalty, and the twelve jurors file into the room.

After a discussion about the room’s hot and stuffy condition, the men begin to deliberate about the case, which involves an 18 year-old boy of color accused of stabbing his father to death. At first, it seems as though the jurors might already have come to a consensus that the defendant is guilty, and the twelve men take a vote. Every juror votes “guilty” except for the 8th juror, who remains undecided.

At first, the jurors react violently against this dissenting vote and ultimately decide to go around the table, explaining why each juror believes the defendant to be guilty. It is through these arguments that we learn the following facts about the case. First, a downstairs neighbor testified that he heard a fight in the room above him, followed by the boy crying, “I’m gonna kill you!” The neighbor then heard a body hit the ground and saw the boy running down the stairs. Second, a woman living across the street from the defendant claims to have witnessed him killing his father through the windows of a passing train.

For his part, the boy claimed he had been at the movies when his father was murdered but couldn’t tell detectives the names of the films. Given his extensive rap sheet of prior offenses, and that he admits to having argued with his father, who struck him earlier in the night, the jurors rally against the defendant. The 3rd and 10th jurors are especially impassioned about their votes, with the 3rd juror likening his own estranged son to the defendant and the 10th juror revealing his racist biases against the boy.


The twelve jurors begin to discuss the murder weapon, a knife that the prosecution introduced as “one-of-a-kind” and therefore as damning evidence against the boy. To everyone’s surprise, the 8th juror suddenly produces the same knife, which he purchased from a pawn shop two blocks from where the boy lived, discrediting it as evidence against the defendant. Nonetheless, the 8th Juror makes a deal with the others: if they reach a unanimous vote of “guilty” aside from him, he will go along with that verdict. The others agree and take a vote. This time, there is another vote of “not guilty.”

Immediately, the jurors accuse the 5th juror of having changed his vote out of sympathy for the boy. But the 9th juror admits that he was the one who changed his vote, and that he’d like to continue hearing out the various arguments. Gaining steam, the 8th Juror then calls into question the testimony of the man who lives downstairs from the boy and his father. He argues that the alleged utterance of “I’m gonna kill you” could be taken out of context. Swayed by this, the 5th juror changes his vote to “not guilty” as well.

Next, the men discuss why the boy might have returned home after killing his father when he could have fled, an argument that wins another changed vote by the 11th juror. Furthermore, the 8th Juror questions whether the neighbor could have actually witnessed the boy running down the stairs, given the size of his apartment and his slow gait. By recreating these circumstances, they find that the neighbor could not have actually reached his door in 15 seconds, as he testified.

Outraged, the 3rd Juror suddenly attacks the 8th Juror, saying, “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!” In response, the 8th Juror calmly asks, “You don’t really mean you’ll kill me, do you?”

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