"12 Angry Men," A Film Classic

The playwright Reginald Rose's jury room drama, 12 Angry Men, began as a one-hour play performed live on network television in 1954. When it became a feature-length movie, released in 1957, it was a box office flop, despite receiving widespread critical acclaim.

Decades later, writes Phil Rosenzweig, in his book, 12 Angry Men: Reginald Rose and the Making of an American Classic (Fordham University Press, 2021), it "is revered as one of America's greatest motion pictures," written by one of television's Golden Age writers.

The stage play version, popular with both professional and amateur productions, caused one current critic to note that the play "still manages to grip an audience as though it were ripped from today's headlines." One New York Times writer, however, called attention to the "legal and social anachronisms" present in the play (and the movie) such as an all-white, all-male jury, the allowing of jurors to smoke in the jury room, and the mandatory death penalty (in New York State). There is one other anachronism, Juror #8 (Henry Fonda's character in the movie) brings a switchblade knife to the jury room that's similar to the one used as evidence in the murder trial. Today, with metal detectors present at the courthouse entrance, the knife would have been immediately confiscated by court officers.

Otherwise, I agree with the Times writer's assessment that "the play [as well as the movie] remains fresh, engaging, and powerful."

True Crime On The Radio

I can't recall on which old-time radio show I first heard an episode of the true-crime series, Somebody Knows. It was either Hollywood 360 (nationally syndicated) or The Golden Age of Radio (on New York's WBAI-FM).

Somebody Knows, which ran on CBS, was the forerunner to such shows as Unsolved Mysteries. Per my sketchy notes, the episode I heard concerned a 39-year-old  Boston cab driver named Samuel I. Paris, who was robbed and killed in April 1948.The episode aired on August 10, 1950. "Through narration and dramatizations," reports the CD/DVD website Amoeba.com, "the known facts of unsolved crimes were presented and listeners who provided information leading to the conviction of a criminal" would be given a cash reward.

According to the website, only two of the eight episodes are available on recordings. As an old-time radio fan, especially of detective and mystery shows, I would love to hear not only those two episodes but those of another show Wanted, the rival of Somebody Knows, that ran on NBC. Wanted, according to Amoeba.com, "avoided dramatizations all together [sic]" but instead used the recorded "voices of DAs, newspapermen, police, prison officials, witnesses, etc."

What I would like to know is how many of these cases were ever solved.

Jury Fraud, A Threat or Not?

Cornelia "Libby" Winslow is a novelist and the protagonist in Laura Van Wormer's 1995 novel, Jury Duty (Crown Publishing). Libby is also juror number three and brings up an issue that has never crossed my mind and, unlike jury tampering, never gets reported on in the news--jury fraud.

After recently serving two days as a potential juror, her thoughts struck a chord with me: "Not once in this entire process had anyone ever asked her for an ID. For all they knew, Cornelia Winslow could have paid someone to show up at jury duty for her. Then she wondered what would happen if someone was found not guilty in a trial, only to find out later that one of the jurors had been an impostor. What happened then?"

At a time when many state and congressional legislators are clamoring about voter fraud and advocating that voters show photo ID before they are allowed to vote, this particular issue doesn't seem to be of any concern to them.

It would be interesting to learn if jury fraud has ever happened in the history of American jurisprudence. And if so, what were the consequences?

When Jury Duty Calls

This week I postponed jury duty for the fourth (and final, I hope) time. I go back in a couple of months. I decided that I will make the experience more tolerable by killing two birds with one stone: take notes about my observations during jury duty and read and review for this blog Jury Duty, a 1996 courtroom thriller by Laura Van Wormer (Crown Publishers) and make contrasts and comparisons.

I began reading Jury Duty when I got it in 1996 but I never got past page 122. My failure to complete the book had nothing to do with it not being interesting. Unfortunately, other things intruded. Now I have an incentive to finish it.

AIDS Researcher Wins Eviction Battle

A Greenwich Village co-op board 's year-long court battle to evict a doctor who treats persons with AIDS ended in defeat on October 17 [1984], due to the efforts of a gay rights group and the New York state attorney general's office.

The board, representing the tenants of 49 West 12th Street, told Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend last year that the tenants wanted him out of the building because of concern for their health and the lowering of property values of their apartments due to AIDS patients entering his office.

Sonnabend, a microbiologist and the occupant of the ground floor office since 1977, consulted his lawyer, William Hibsher of the New York law firm Teitelbaum and Hiller. Hibsher is also a board member of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the organization which took the case to court and succeeded in blocking the eviction with a temporary restraining order. The order was issued on October 14, 1983, by the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Sonnabend had no quarrel with the board's right to evict him. "But the mistake they made," said Sonnabend, "was to say it was over AIDS."

Then it became a case of discrimination, said Hibsher,"against a population that is really more deserving of people's compassion and help. I think that all people know that very often discrimination against people with AIDS is another form of discrimination against gay people."

In New York State, there is no law prohibiting discrimination against people because of sexual orientation; however, Lambda used a provision of the state's human rights law protecting disabled people from discrimination as the basis for their lawsuit.

"Five of Sonnabend's patients," said Hibsher, "joined in the lawsuit for legal reasons. We were concerned that since Dr. Sonnabend is not himself a disabled person, the defendant might take the position that [Sonnabend] could not raise the disability statute in support of his legal position."

With the patients as co-plaintiffs, continued Hibsher, "they could say they are disabled persons, and they are potentially being discriminated against by the building's decision." Two of the five patients have since died of the disease.

In the court settlement, Sonnabend was awarded $10,000 in damages and a new one-year lease. The co-op must also pay $1,000 in legal costs to state Attorney General Robert Abrams's office, which acted as Lambda's co-counsel.

Hibsher sees the settlement as a landmark case that "projects a very strong image on the part of those who protect the rights of these citizens."

He continued: "It's, to our knowledge, the first litigation brought in connection with alleged discrimination against people with AIDS, and it established very importantly legal procedures in the State of New York and nationwide; One, that people with AIDS are considered disabled persons under the disability laws, and most states have a civil rights law which protects persons who are disabled from discrimination. Two, the court issued a preliminary injunction in the course of the litigation and part of its ruling was that it accepted the expert opinion that AIDS is not casually transmitted. Consequently, the court rejected any notion that a person with AIDS could be segregated or kept out of a public accommodation on the grounds of potential contagion. Three, and I think most important, the case stands for the proposition that the civil rights community, Lambda, the attorney general of the State of New York, and other litigants are not going to sit back and let people discriminate" against people who are gravely ill.

Sonnabend, who spends much of his time doing research, said that after the settlement, "some of the tenants offered their congratulations. Many tenants at the time [of the eviction attempt] were quite unhappy with the way the board proceeded."


This article was originally published in the Gay Community News (Boston) on November 10, 1984.