A TRUE VERDICT

Members of a deeply divided jury fight each other and themselves to render a just verdict in a civil case with more layers than a Dobosh Torte.

Plaintiff Ellison K. Ricard claims that Peyton Burke, the founder and CEO of MediMiracle, fired him because he threatened to tell the FDA about his discovery that Sophrosyne, the anti-addiction treatment the firm had developed, was actually “a drug that kills Black people.” Burke claims that she fired Ricard because he confronted and attacked her before a crowd of her employees. If both claims seem problematic—Ricard can produce no records demonstrating that Black subjects taking Sophrosyne in clinical trials had higher mortality rates than white subjects; his paralysis means he uses a wheelchair—you ain’t heard nothing yet. Opposing attorneys M. Bailey Klaus (plaintiff) and Cicely Pagano (defense) take turns swatting down witnesses’ testimonies, producing new evidence, and revealing their own prejudices. The real drama, however, is in the jury room. After two of the eight jurors get tossed off the case for scandalously improper behavior, the others wrestle in real time, debating the merits of every new bombshell as it’s produced without waiting for the trial to end. The Vet Tech, the Retiree, the Cleaner, the Furniture Magnate, the Scientist, and the Editor form alliances and opposing teams, changing their minds and sides as they seek to persuade each other of a truth that seems to recede further and further. The result is less like 12 Angry Men than like Raymond Postgate’s Verdict of Twelve (1940), painfully sharpened by the case’s racial elements.

A bravura demonstration of the truth that, as one of the jurors observes, “Our secrets define us as human beings.”