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The Jury Files · No. 3The Fourth Jury
Central Criminal Court, Darlinghurst, Sydney · May Sittings, 1889
Three juries could not agree. You are the fourth. You are on the jury.
The case against Albert Edward Durrant.
Albert Edward Durrant, a tally clerk of thirty five, is on trial for the fourth time for poisoning his brother-in-law George Pellow, a master cooper, with arsenic in his nightly cocoa in September 1888.
Three juries could not agree. Before a word of evidence, the newspapers have told the city what to think: a weak case, a widow who gained, and a jury that "stood eight to four".
The case is original fiction: the people and the crime are invented, and no real person is portrayed. The court, the year and the law are taken from the period, and the case says so openly wherever it departs from them.
The people at the heart of it.
The questions put to you.
Verdicts open to you: Guilty or not guilty, and it must be unanimous. Nobody tells you the answer before you give yours. The truth plays after the verdict, whichever verdict it is.
Whether the Crown has proved it
That Albert Durrant put arsenic in George Pellow's cocoa, meaning to kill him, beyond reasonable doubt.
What to leave outside the room
Everything the newspapers have printed about the first three trials. You try the case on the evidence you hear.
Whether twelve people can agree
Where three juries before you could not. A hung jury is a legitimate outcome here too.
The law of the court, in plain English
- In New South Wales in 1889 a prisoner could not give evidence on oath. Albert Durrant makes an unsworn statement from the dock and cannot be questioned.
- The verdict must be unanimous. There is no majority verdict and no "not proven".
- A New South Wales jury of 1889 was twelve men. Players of any gender take any juror card.
Solo, or the whole room.
The trial is the same either way: the same witnesses, the same exhibits, the same summing up. Only who argues with you in the jury room changes.
One juror: you. The other eleven are AI jurors who argue, point to exhibits and can be persuaded, or not.
Tell me when it launchesSix to twelve people in the room, each with a juror card. The host is the foreperson: holds the remote, reads the judge's directions if the sound is off, and calls the votes.
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