A mock trial case where your class is the jury.

Most mock trial cases come as packets to print: a case summary, witness statements and roles for counsel. This one is a live jury simulation: your class is the jury, and the case comes to them on the big screen and their phones. It is an original case written for this lesson, The People v. Casey Rowan, and every person, place and fact in it is invented. A silver 1960s film camera priced at $900 vanished from Mira Castell's stall at a rainy night market between 8:40 and 8:50 pm. Casey Rowan was there that evening, and four days later sold a camera of the same model, with a small dent on its top, to a second-hand shop for $420. Casey says they did not take it.

Everyone who scans the code is a juror. The charge is read on its own, then the four agreed facts, and every juror leans guilty, not sure or not guilty on their phone. Four witnesses follow, two called by each side: Mira Castell, who owns the stall; Owen Marsh, a shopper who saw someone in a bright yellow raincoat hurry away; June Okafor, who sold yellow rain ponchos all evening; and Sam Bexley, Casey's flatmate. After each witness the jury leans again, and on the next step the big screen deals that leaning beside the one before it, so the room sees what each witness changed. Six students can read the four statements and the two closing speeches aloud; they lean and vote with everyone else.

After the closing speeches, the judge's instruction comes to every phone, and to the screen when the jury votes: guilty only if you are sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that Casey took the camera. The jury deliberates at tables, then each juror votes guilty or not guilty. The verdict plays in three presses. First, the leaning after the last witness lands beside the leaning before any witness. Then every juror walks from where they started to where they ended, so the room sees who changed their minds. Last, each row's net change prints and the verdict stamps under the rule you chose, with what the other rule would decide beside it.

Under the verdict, a line counts reasonable doubt: of everyone who voted, how many were still not sure after the last witness, and how many of those voted guilty anyway. The closings and the deliberation added arguments, not evidence, and the debrief asks the room about that count. The case is built for a fair room to split: every prosecution fact has an innocent reading and every defence fact a guilty one, nobody saw the camera taken, and the fact that could settle it, whether the sold camera's dent is Mira's, is not in evidence.

The rule is yours to choose. This page plays the unanimous jury, where a split jury is hung. The simple-majority jury, where a simple majority decides the verdict, is the same case under “Other versions” when you open the lesson in Decka. Each says what the other rule would have decided, so the class can argue which a verdict should need.

Counts only: the screen never names a juror or a seat. Each phone shows its own leanings and its own path, then the jury's verdict beside its own. Try the screen-and-phone preview: you run the projector's steps and play one juror's phone, and fictional classmates lean and vote through the same runtime as the lesson; they are illustrative, not observations of a real class.