The defendant had claimed that at the time of the murder he was with a Reverend Hoffman, who then immediately departed for Wales, but this alibi witness could not be found there.

The three of them visit Grodman together; he tells them he plans to write a memoir of his career, and accepts Emmric's offer to draw the illustrations of bodies and the like.

Then Buckley arrests a music-hall singer, Lottie Rawson, who had been heard arguing with Kendall, but it was only a lovers' quarrel and eventually she is freed.

He drugged Kendall so that he would not wake up in the morning, and when he went to "investigate", Grodman stabbed the sleeping killer while Mrs. Benson was cowering outside the door.

During his apprenticeship at Warner Bros. studios, Siegel “set up the montage department” under the auspices of special effects chief Byron Haskin and “the style of his film evolved from there.”[2] Biographer Judith M. Kass writes that The Verdict is exceptional among Siegel’s films for its absence of “overlapping or dissolving clips and cross-cutting.”[3] In his first feature, The Verdict, Siegel deliberately avoided the use of montage, but years of creating montages had been irrevocably stamped upon his style and there are few films which do not display the editing techniques he developed then.

[4]Bosley Crowther in The New York Times was unimpressed; "It is rather hard to figure just what the Warners saw in this antique mystery story other than roles for Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.

"[5] Variety wrote "Stock mystery tale with period background, The Verdict aims at generating suspense and thrills, succeeding modestly.