Inside Forensic Science · Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science

Series 3, Episode 6: The Verdict

·39 min·2 clips

The jury returned a verdict of not proven on both charges after just 73 minutes.

The episode begins in the courtroom on 12 December 1893. At half past ten precisely, Alfred John Monson appears at the High Court in Edinburgh under guard. The prosecution’s case is read out in full, with one charge centered on a bored hole in a hired boat as part of an attempt to drown Windsor Dudley Cecilhambra, and another on the shooting of Cecilhambra in a wood about 360 yards from Ardlamont House. Monson answers not guilty. The atmosphere is formal, clipped, and exacting. Before any evidence is heard, the famous Rowan tree, along with withered boughs of lime and elm trees, are framed as dumb witnesses. After that, the episode shifts away from the drama and into the logic of proof. An expert explains that the basic principles of how weapons fire and what happens to bullets as they exit are understood by both sides. The real dispute lies in how the evidence from this particular case is interpreted and what it means for the prosecution’s and defence’s competing propositions. That distinction matters. It is not just science versus no science. It is science filtered through opposing theories of what happened. The episode keeps returning to how a jury decides when experts disagree. It points out that expert evidence can nearly cancel itself out when each side can point to technical support. It also makes a practical observation: the way an expert presents the material can matter just as much as the material itself. If an expert can make a complex topic simple, the jury is more likely to take it in. The narration then widens the lens again and shows how persuasion is built in court. An expert’s opinion becomes stronger when it fits with the rest of the case rather than standing alone. The Crown, in that account, is not just asking whether a fact is possible. It is trying to make the fact feel consistent with everything else already laid out. The episode closes by pressing the listener toward the same question faced by the jury: after following the papers and the courtroom arguments, what verdict would you reach?

As heard by us

A careful courtroom mystery where the evidence matters as much as the verdict.

Set in 1893, this episode follows Alfred John Monson through the High Court in Edinburgh, where a boat, a shooting charge in the wood, and the forensic arguments around the death linked to Ardlamont House all come into focus.

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Press play if you like your true crime argued in court, not shouted in the hallway.

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