He showed how jurors can be won over by arguments that are based on reason and that show compassion, so that the legal safeguards can operate to protect the vulnerable, especially the safeguard that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to make a case to a jury that is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. However, he ended the teleplay on an optimistic note. He also worried that a lack of a sense of civic duty among many native-born Americans posed a similar threat. Rose was particularly concerned about the impact of prejudice and bigotry on the legal process, regarding them as preventing democratic and legal institutions from fulfilling the ideals upon which they were founded. Worried in particular about the vulnerabilities in American legal safeguards and the jury system, he wished to see good men (those with a profound sense of civic duty, the capacity for reason, and compassion) set them right and steer them towards upholding justice. Rose valued American democratic institutions and practices that he believed were under threat by negative social forces and historical trends. He also sought to protest against what he regarded as an abuse of the American legal system during the early 1950s (the McCarthyist era) and to warn Americans about the vulnerabilities of the jury system and show how they can be overcome. Reginald Rose wrote the television drama Twelve Angry Men (1954) from being inspired by his experience serving on a jury.
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