I was involved in a trial back in 1996 and I was sitting with a number of the lawyers after the trial was over. One of the lawyers talked about a previous year in which he had done 12 homicide trials in a calendar year.
It simply doesn't happen anymore because of the complexity of the voir dire in each case, the charter challenges, and the admissibility of evidence.
In a complicated trial, we then ask jurors to be beyond a reasonable doubt on certain facets, but on a preponderance of possibility on other evidence. We have made the process very complicated.
However, I think the part that creates the most complications is the length of the trial. In the good old days, a homicide trial was three, four, or maybe five days long. The Daniel McNaughton trial, the infamous insanity case, was a three-day trial. Now, we take these trials and put them out over five or 10 months, as you heard from the witnesses two weeks ago.
That increases the repetitive exposure to this gruesome testimony, to the evidence, to the videos, and to the physical exhibits to the testimony. That makes it much more demanding on juries, and I think it gets to the point where we are expecting too much from some individuals.