High Court of Justiciary

The High Court of Justiciary is the supreme criminal court of Scotland. It works both as a trial court and as a court of appeal. Trials are held in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, and sometimes in smaller towns using local sheriff court buildings, usually before a single judge and a jury of fifteen who can convict by majority verdict. Appeals always sit in Edinburgh without a jury, with two judges hearing an appeal against sentence and three hearing an appeal against conviction. The court is led by the Lord Justice General, who is also Lord President of the Court of Session, with the Lord Justice Clerk as his depute, and its other judges are the Lords Commissioners of Justiciary. Its modern form dates from the Courts Act 1672, and it grew out of the medieval office of the Justiciar. It once sat abroad, at Zeist in the Netherlands, for the trial of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.