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The Jury Files · No. 6Two in the Dock
Supreme Court of Victoria, Criminal Sittings, Melbourne · 20 to 22 November 1934
A wife and a chauffeur, tried together. The jury may convict both, acquit both, or split them. You are on the jury.
The case against Clarice Maud Pardoe and Eric Stanley Wray.
On the night of Friday 14 September 1934, Lionel Pardoe, sixty four, a retired indent merchant, is struck from behind in the sunroom of his house at Bellmere and dies before dawn.
In the dock, tried together on the one indictment, stand his wife Clarice Pardoe, thirty three, and his chauffeur Eric Wray, twenty, who lived over the garage and was, the whole suburb believed, her lover. The Crown says they did it together. Each of them tells a story that half shields, and half blames, the other.
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: A separate verdict on each accused, and each must be unanimous. Nobody tells you the answer before you give yours. The truth plays after the verdict, whichever verdict it is.
Two verdicts, not one
One for Clarice Pardoe and one for Eric Wray. You may convict both, acquit both, or split them.
Whose evidence counts against whom
What each accused said to the police out of court is evidence against the one who said it, and not against the other. The judge explains how to keep them apart.
What the Crown's case is worth
A note in her hand, a door found unbolted, and a young man's signed statement. The Crown says it is equally strong against both.
The law of the court, in plain English
- By 1934 a Victorian accused could give sworn evidence or make an unsworn statement from the dock. Clarice Pardoe gives evidence on oath and is cross-examined. Eric Wray makes a statement from the dock. The judge tells the jury to hold neither choice against either of them.
- Each verdict must be unanimous. There is no majority verdict and no "not proven".
- A Victorian jury of 1934 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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