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that such 'mega-trials' can have on the operation of the rest of         [PP8]
the criminal justice system. Wood (1992) explains:

   A single trial tying a Judge and courtroom for a period in excess of
   six months, now a common occurrence, has a devastating effect on the
   remainder of the civil and criminal lists. The blowout in the
   "Romanian" trial, which lasted nine months, alone forced the
   postponement of 132 short trials in the District Court, and its cost
   to the community was estimated by the trial judge to have been $5.5m.
   A considerable part of the budget of the Legal Aid Commission of New
   South Wales was consumed by it.
   
Such delays have a particularly severe effect on other defendants who are
forced to remain in custody pending trial for longer than would otherwise be
necessary, and, of course on the 'mega-trial' defendants themselves. Wood
(1992) also argues that it is unreasonable to expect jurors to surrender up to
a year or more of their time, and that there is a risk that the jurors best
qualified to understand the evidence will be excused in the process of jury
selection. The costs of all the parties involved, and the Court, in operating
a fully staffed criminal trial court in New South Wales has been estimated
recently to be $2,000 per day (Wood (1992)), or $70 per minute of hearing
time.


The causes


Despite this agreement on the nature and severity of the problem of complex
criminal trials, there is a general lack of empirical evidence as to the
causes of this complexity, failure and delay. Wood (1992) comments :

   What, regrettably, is lacking is an empirical study of the anatomy of
   one or more actual trials to identify why they became complex, what
   obstacles were stuck, which techniques to reduce obfuscation and delay
   worked, and which did not...'.
   
The NCA Conference has recommended that the AIJA consider funding such an
empirical study (NCA Resolutions (1992), Resolution 38).

Wood (1992) identifies twenty three suggested causes of these problems, only
four of which are likely to be amendable to amelioration through use of
information technology:

   (xiii) difficulties in the formal proof of multiple transactions of a
   routine commercial kind, of documents, and of continuity of exhibits;
   (xiv) difficulties in reducing evidence of many separate events into a
   picture comprehensible for the jury;
   (xv) difficulties in explaining complex commercial transactions to a
   jury;
   (xvi) difficulties in keeping juries focussed on many issues and in
   separating the evidence between counts and accused;
   
Three more concern pre-conditions for effective use of information technology:

   (ix) insufficient machinery for pre-trial preparation ...
   (xii) the constraints of the hearsay and best evidence rules
   particularly in respect to the use of glossaries, summaries and
   charts; ...
   (xxiii) the absence of any sanctions and/or incentives for reducing
   the complexity and length of the trial.
   
The Trials Working Party (1992) identified a dozen somewhat different causes,
including two to which the use of information technology might be relevant:


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