Samuel Damren
Fordham University Press recently published “Reginald Rose and the Journey of 12 Angry Men” by Phil Rosenzweig, a professor of business administration at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. For years, he incorporated the play and movie into lectures to dramatize interpersonal relationships and group dynamics to business executives.
That the movie enjoyed a separate life in the business world parallel to its longstanding popularity in the legal community was a surprise. Nor did I know that “12 Angry Men” is one of the most popular plays in amateur and professional theatre and has been translated and revised for production in television and stage in numerous countries, ranging from China, France, Russia, and Lebanon.
Originally “12 Angry Men” was written for television premiering on CBS’s Westinghouse Studio One in September 1954.
The movie version starring Henry Fonda reached the screen in 1957. Both the television and movie versions received critical acclaim, but at the box office the movie only broke even. Critical acclaim, however, brought the author of the play and screenplay, Reginald Rose, to greater professional notice as a dramatist. Later, during the 1960s, he became the producer, editor and a writer for the groundbreaking TV series “The Defenders.”
After the initial movie run in 1957, no one involved, including Fonda, director Sidney Lumet or any of the stellar cast, expected it could be someday recognized, as it now is, as No. 5 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time.
Reginald Rose was not a lawyer. His sense and keen understanding of the interpersonal relationships that underlie “12 Angry Men” is the reason for its longstanding regard in theatre, film, the legal community, and in the psychology of group dynamics in business academia.
According to Rosenzweig, “12 Angry Men” is a “masterclass” in group dynamics. It all begins with the unique circumstance posed to jury members deciding a capital criminal case. The play is set in Manhattan during a hot New York City summer. The defendant is a juvenile charged with first-degree murder of his father.
For members of that jury, as is the case for jury members in other capital cases, the human dynamics of jury service is unlike any situation they have experienced.
Before the trial, the jurors never met one another; nor did they know the judge, prosecutor, defense counsel, or witnesses. They sat together for a week hearing the evidence, arguments, and received instructions on the law in a case where the penalty for conviction was death by electric chair.
The judge’s instructions did not, however, provide the jurors with a practical methodology for reaching a decision that must be unanimous. In this important respect, the jurors were on their own.
Each juror has one vote. They cannot ask for help in reaching their verdict from people who they have relied upon in the past for advice and support; not family, not friends, not anybody except one another. If points are raised during deliberations that they might like the prosecution and defense to address, they can’t ask for that help either.
They are 12 men from different backgrounds, all white, deciding the fate of a Hispanic juvenile. The jurors bring their individual perspectives, prejudices, and beliefs into the jury room; but, in deciding the case, the jurors know they will have to confront the, yet unknown, individual perspectives, prejudices, and beliefs of fellow jurors.
The jurors also know that as residents of the largest metropolis in America, they will probably never see one another or any of the witnesses, lawyers, or judge again. Once they reach a verdict, they won’t be allowed to change it if they later have misgivings or re-consider the evidence at some time in the future.
The play and movie place the audience in a seemingly disadvantaged position from the onset. The testimony of the witnesses and arguments of the lawyers in the case are not presented to the audience to evaluate for themselves.
The audience only learns of that testimony and argument through the recollections of jurors during later unfolding deliberations.
“Twelve Angry Men” opens in a courtroom where an overburdened and weary judge issues final instructions to the jurors. A couple of jurors glance at the defendant as they file out of the courtroom. Led by a bailiff, the jurors enter a small room with a long table surrounded by nondescript chairs. The bailiff exits and locks the door from outside.
After initial comments by several jurors that the case appears “open and shut,” the foreman decides to take a preliminary vote to see where the jury stands at the start of deliberations. Eleven jurors raise their hands to vote guilty.
Some do so quickly; others only after witnessing an increasing tally.
When the foreman calls for “not guilty” votes, Juror No. 8 raises his hand.
Juror No. 3 asks with gruff incredulity — “You think he’s not guilty?”
Juror 8 replies, “I don’t know. It’s not easy to send a boy off to die without talking first.” There is a disquiet pause.
“What do we do now?” — is the unspoken question in the cramped jury room.
It is also a question every member of the audience will ask themselves.
Some members of the audience will recognize that if they were in this situation, their answers could be quite different from the answers of other jurors. Others in the audience will prefer to see how the play unfolds before reflecting on personal choices they might or might not have to make. But everyone will be engaged.
THAT was the genius of Reginald Rose, the author of “12 Angry Men.”
In the next commentary in this series, some of the lessons on the group dynamics that are at work in the play will be the topic. Professor Rosenzweig is an accomplished academic credited with several highly regarded books on business management, including “The Halo Effect” and “Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions.”
His thoroughly researched and well written biography of both Reginald Rose and “12 Angry Men” is from the heart. Rosenzweig is donating author royalties to The Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School and the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
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Samuel Damren is a retired Detroit lawyer and author of “What Justice Looks Like.”
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