The Honorable Judge Morrison read the verdict from the bench. The courtroom had no sound reinforcement because it was built in 1952 when judges simply spoke loudly. Judge Morrison was not loud. He was 72 years old with a naturally soft voice, and he read the verdict while looking down at his papers, directing his voice straight into the wooden bench surface.

The defendant, 8 meters away, heard mumbling. The defense attorney leaned in and whispered "I think he said guilty." The prosecutor thought he heard "not guilty." The jury, who had just spent four weeks on this case, looked at each other in confusion. The press gallery in the back row heard nothing at all and made up quotes based on the reactions of the people in front of them.

The courtroom had an RT60 of 1.8 seconds — not terrible, but combined with a 14-meter depth, the inverse square law reduced the judge's voice to below the noise floor before it reached the middle of the room. Without reinforcement, the STI at the defendant's position was 0.30. In the press gallery, it was 0.20. The most important sentence in someone's life was acoustically equivalent to shouting across a parking lot.

Courtrooms require STI above 0.50 at every seat. Many older courtrooms were designed for an era of projected voices and smaller rooms.

The Moral: Justice requires intelligibility. Measure STI at every critical listening position with SonaVyx STI — the defendant has a right to hear their own verdict.