A Question About Old Juries and the Classic Movie “12 Angry Men”
A QUESTION ABOUT OLD JURIES AND THE MOVIE “12 ANGRY MEN”
Each time the classic legal drama 12 Angry Men comes on television, I try to tune in and (re)watch it. The “action” takes place almost entirely inside a single small room, with jurors shoe-horned around a table deciding the fate of a Puerto Rican teenager on trial for the murder of his father. Though it fared poorly in movie theaters when first released in 1957, 12 Angry Men has since become a short course and a de facto legal education for multiple generations and is widely acknowledged as one of the best courtroom dramas ever made. To this day, it has timeless lessons for us all about evidence and preliminary judgement.
However, I still have a question about this film that (so far) has never been answered.
Why was this movie (which was originally a stage play that first opened in 1954) comprised entirely of MEN? Also, why are 11 of the men WHITE (note that one juror is Hispanic)? Why were there no WOMEN selected for the jury? Why were there no BLACKS on the jury of 12 Angry Men? These aren’t merely out of touch politically-correct concerns, nor the application of today’s values on society 70 years ago.
I spent a little time researching this, and while it’s inexplicable why a film with clearly a progressive theme would exclude women and minorities from the cast of characters, worse — it (apparently) fails to reflect the reality of those times. Women have been picked for juries since the start of the 20th Century in many states, and by the 1930s, women were a substantial percentage of many juries in all but the most conservative states. New York City, with a substantial pool of potential women and minorities for a jury, almost certainly would have reflected a healthy cross section of the city’s population at the time (someone correct me, if wrong). Moreover, how could a defense attorney, even a public defender agree to an “all-male* jury of which 11/12 are White?
Yeah, this is an obscure observation. But it still bothers me. Perhaps someone with more legal knowledge and an understanding of history can explain why this landmark film seemingly contains such a glaring fallacy.
Comments welcome.
