Terry, better known as Toto from The Wizard of Oz, appears in this film as the dog that Spencer Tracy takes in from the rain at the beginning of the movie, becoming his traveling companion into the netherworld of small-town America.
Fritz Lang wanted Spencer Tracy's character to be a lawyer, but the producers thought he should be more of a working man, so he became an auto mechanic.
According to modern sources, Fritz Lang was the first filmmaker to use newsreel footage as a courtroom device in a motion picture, and may have done so before it was used in an actual court case.
Additional information in the Fritz Lang papers indicates that Walter Brennan, who played "Bugs" Meyers, had an extended illness that necessitated a transfer of some of his "courtroom business" to George Chandler, who played Milton Johnson.
Script was based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the son of the owner of Hart's Department Store in San Jose, California. The two kidnapping suspects were pulled from jail by a group of vigilantes, who dragged them across the street to St. James Park and lynched both of them.
Several cast members in studio records/casting call lists for this movie were not seen in the final print. These were (with their character names): Ralph Bushman (Young Teacher), Lew Harvey (Mug in Poolroon), Jack Perry (Man in Poolroom), Duke York (Taxi Driver), Erville Alderson (Plumber), Edward LeSaint (Doctor), Clara Blandick (Judge's Wife), Ward Bond (First Objector in Movie Theater) and Charles Coleman (Innkeeper)
This was Fritz Lang's first American movie, having arrived from a year in Paris after he fled the Nazi regime in Germany.
This was actress Sylvia Sidney's only film for MGM, and according to the papers of director Fritz Lang, he stipulated that she be cast in the part before he signed his contract with the studio.