JBS>Maybe there will be a trial although the Hell's Angel trial named below was dismissed.
Innocent until proven guilty. Ha! This court is patterned after the Camp Zeist courtroom for Pan Am Flight 103 accused.
Barry
VANCOUVER -- A $7.2-million courtroom built for the Air-India bombing trial will end up saving taxpayers money, officials with the office of the Attorney-General said yesterday. The officials led journalists on a tour of Courtroom 20, a high-tech, high-security courtroom that boasts 25 computer monitors and two kilometres of data cable. Huge bullet-resistant Lexan windows separate Courtroom 20 from the public gallery, which seats 149. Three big-screen monitors relay the courtroom activities to the spectators. The $7.2-million price tag is just a small part of the massive costs of the Air-India trial. Last month, a former lawyer for one of the defendants estimated that legal-aid defence lawyers' bills alone will amount to $36-million. That figure doesn't include what has been spent already on legal aid since the first two accused were arrested in October, 2000. Nor does it include payments to a team of more than a dozen senior Crown prosecutors, a cost that is being shared by the federal and B.C. governments. Then there's the estimated cost of the 16-year RCMP investigation that led to the charges -- $30-million. The government knew that the new, state-of-the-art courtroom was going to be "a fairly costly project," Julian Borkowski, technical co-ordinator for the project, told reporters yesterday. But the high-tech gear is money well spent in the long run, he said. "The purpose of the technology is, bottom line, to save us money," said Mr. Borkowski. Mr. Borkowski said studies have shown that similar high-tech innovations have cut trial times by 35 to 45 per cent. For example, he said, an exhibit that took 13 minutes to view in a conventional courtroom could be viewed by jurors and lawyers on individual TV screens in three minutes, he said. The jurors in the new courtroom will view exhibits on individual flat-screen LCD monitors. Because they're used to watching TV, they will understand the evidence better, which will make for shorter deliberation times, Mr. Borkowski said. He added that the courtroom will see plenty of use once the Air-India trial is over. "We have some trials with 25 lawyers and indications are there are going to be more trials like that in the future," Mr. Borkowski said. The Air-India trial is scheduled to start March 31, 2003. Inderjit Singh Reyat, Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik are accused of planting a bomb on Air-India Flight 182. The flight crashed June 23, 1985, killing all 329 passengers and crew. Vancouver's courtroom is still cheaper than the $19-million facility that was built in Montreal to house a high-profile Hells Angels trial.