A courtroom drama in which twelve jurors retire to deliberate the fate of a teenage boy accused of murdering his father, with a guilty verdict meaning a mandatory death sentence. What initially seems an open-and-shut case, with eleven jurors ready to convict quickly, is upended when a single holdout juror insists on discussing the evidence more carefully, gradually persuading the others to reconsider their assumptions, biases, and rush to judgment. As tempers flare in the sweltering deliberation room, the play becomes a tense examination of prejudice, civic duty, and the fragile mechanics of justice. Confined almost entirely to a single room, it remains a landmark of taut, character-driven drama and a staple of American stage and screen.

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