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The Jury Files · No. 2The Third Verdict
High Court of Justiciary, Parliament House, Edinburgh · 7 to 10 June 1926
A student, a pistol, eleven forged cheques, and the verdict only Scotland allows. You are on the jury.
The case against Nicol James Aird.
Nicol James Aird, nineteen, an engineering student, is tried on two charges: forging eleven cheques on his widowed mother's bank account, and murdering her with a pistol in their sitting room at Comely Bank.
He admits the forgeries were discovered that morning. He denies the shot was his doing. The Crown says he silenced her. The defence says the pistol went off in her own hand while he sat at his drawing across the room.
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, not guilty or not proven, on each charge. Nobody tells you the answer before you give yours. The truth plays after the verdict, whichever verdict it is.
Two charges, two decisions
The forgeries and the shot are separate charges, and you return a verdict on each.
Whose hand was on the pistol
A police surgeon and two gunmakers give evidence about powder marks and what a close shot would leave. They do not all agree.
Which of three verdicts
Scots law gives the jury a third answer: not proven. The judge explains in plain English what each verdict means, and why Scots law asks that no fact rest on a single source.
The law of the court, in plain English
- Nicol Aird gives evidence on his own oath and is cross-examined, as the law by then allowed.
- A real 1926 High Court jury sat fifteen and decided by simple majority. This case seats twelve, like every Jury Files case, and asks eight of the twelve for any verdict: a table rule, and the case says so openly.
- 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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