PL AYBILL twelve angry men
twelve angry men reginald rose }{
A pproxi m at e ru n ni ng t i m e: 2 hou rs T her e w ill be one 20 m i nu t e i n t er m ission
ARTIST NOTE: WILLIAM WEBSTER
As we reconvene on Twelve Angry Men, I’ve been thinking a lot about George Stinney. Stinney, a 14-year-old black boy from South Carolina, was convicted of murder in 1944. In less than three months he was tried and put to death – the youngest person to be executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. He was arrested without a warrant. He was questioned without a lawyer. There was only circumstantial evidence: the word of a local police chief. The allwhite, all-male jury took only 10 minutes to return a guilty verdict. In 2014 a state judge ruled that Stinney had not received a fair trial, and his conviction was vacated. It took 70 years to overturn the injustice of his sentence. A decade after Stinney’s execution, Reginald Rose’s play was first presented as a live television drama. By 1957 it was a Broadway hit and Hollywood film. Set in New York, it’s important to remember context. The paranoia of the Cold War, the McCarthy hearings and palpable fear of
the rising chaos of gangs that created an unhealthy sense of Isolation, Otherness and Terror. In the play, a jury of 12 men holds the life of a 16-year-old boy in its hands. We have been given instructions by the judge, told we must come to a unanimous verdict of “Guilty” or, tempered by Reasonable Doubt, find the child “Not Guilty.” Visual evidence is often said to be the least reliable of proofs. It reminds me of the remarkable late Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Eye witnessing led to 19 years wrongful incarceration. Yet this man triumphed as few could. He shared his moral and spiritual strength with us here in Toronto and we are the better for it. Who we are now is not who we were then. Amen.
p roduc t ion s p on sor
William Webster, Juror 10 in Twelve Angry Men