How to play
GUILTY or NOT?

One real Canadian criminal case every day. You read the facts, you hear both sides, and you decide. Then the game shows you what the court actually did.

Every case in GUILTY or NOT? is a genuine Canadian criminal case, reproduced from the reported decision rather than invented for the game. The names are replaced with neutral descriptors while you are deciding, so nothing gives the answer away. The real style of cause and the citation appear only after you have rendered your verdict.

It takes about two minutes. It is free, there is nothing to install, and it runs in any browser on your phone or your desktop.

The five steps

1. Read the brief

   You get the facts of the case as the court had them. No verdict, no outcome, no hints in the framing.

2. Weigh both sides

   The Crown's argument sits on one side and the defence's on the other, laid out position by position so neither is dressed up as the stronger one.

3. Read the issue

   One sentence, stated neutrally, naming the question the case actually turns on. It is the last thing you read before you rule, and it never tells you which way the court went.

4. Render your verdict

   Guilty, or not guilty. Your time is recorded quietly while you decide, and you can see how the rest of the bench voted once you have committed.

5. See what the court did

   The actual decision, the court's reasoning, and the citation, so you can go and read the case yourself if it interests you.

Scoring, streaks and rank

Every case is worth the same: 100 points for a correct verdict — one that matches what the court actually decided. A wrong verdict scores nothing. You rule on the daily case once a day under your Judge name; cases from the Court Archives never touch your score.

What moves your total is the streak: the number of days in a row you have called the daily case correctly. Every day of streak you bring into a case adds 10 points to a correct verdict, up to a cap of twenty days — so a long run is worth three times a cold start. A wrong verdict resets your streak to zero, and so does missing a day.

The judicial ranks

Your points add up over every case you have ever heard, and they carry you up the bench — named for the courts a Canadian judge actually sits on, from a first appointment to the Chief Justice of Canada.

The robes are real: the dark green sash of an Ontario justice of the peace, the red sash of the Ontario Court of Justice, the Superior Court's gold sun badge, the black gown and red sash of a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and the Supreme Court of Canada's own black-and-red design, worn by all nine judges.

Each promotion is marked with a Robing Ceremony: you are robed in the regalia of your new rank and seated on the bench. From then on your robes appear beside your Judge name, on the leaderboard and beside your score, which also shows how far you are from the next rank.

There is no easy pile and no hard pile. Every case is chosen the same way — for cases where a careful reader could reasonably go either way. If the answer were obvious from the facts, it would not be in the game.

Where the cases come from

Cases are drawn from reported Canadian decisions: Supreme Court of Canada judgments, appellate rulings and trial decisions from courts of record. Every case is a genuine published court decision, decided under Canadian law by a Canadian court — this is true crime, not legal fiction. Facts and arguments are condensed for gameplay without changing the underlying case or its outcome; nothing is invented for effect. The original decision and its citation are revealed only after you render your verdict.

Legal terms of art are tap-to-define as they come up in a case, so you do not need a legal background to play.

Other ways to play

Common questions

Play today's case