Venerable courts no tech experts

The PowerPoint slide presentation, first hung with the unsexy moniker of “Presenter,” was invented in 1987 by two guys named Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin.

Smartly renamed, it was then launched by Microsoft three years later, or almost three decades ago, where predictably it became the bane of those condemned to spend their working lives in meetings.

What possible relevance is this, you might well ask, to the triple murder trial of Douglas Garland?

The answer is, the trial was delayed Wednesday – first for an extended morning recess, then for an extended lunch break — because no one could get the system working properly.

Only in the Canadian justice system, rooted stolidly in the mid-20th century, can well-proven and old technology launch a sneak attack — even in a spanking modern building that only opened in 2007.

First, with Calgary Police Const. Derek Alexon in the stand — he’s a forensic officer who took pictures of the house from which Alvin and Kathy Liknes and their grandson Nathan O’Brien were violently removed in what was at first deemed a possible kidnapping — court took a 27-minute break to ready the equipment.

At the break, Alexon was poised to start his lengthy PowerPoint display — diagrams of the house and environs, photographs of various blood pools, smears and drag marks inside, and shots of the various exhibits, such as two human teeth, a dumbbell with blood on it, an earring belonging to Mrs. Liknes, that police had seized.

The presentation was shown on large screens for the public and on small monitors for the lawyers, Court of Queen’s Bench Judge David Gates, and, in the prisoner’s box, Garland.

Seventeen minutes into Alexon’s presentation, lawyers for Garland reported that their client’s monitor wasn’t working.

So a few minutes before noon, court adjourned again.

By 12.17, the judge popped back into the courtroom to announce that the “technical support team” of three needed “a bit more time.” Besides, he noted alertly, it was almost time for the usual lunch break, so court took an early long lunch.

When the trial resumed (only five minutes late), the sucker appeared to be working.

Almost without fail, I say as one who has covered criminal trials in most parts of the country, the Canadian courts treat even familiar technology like a surprise and not particularly welcome intruder.

It’s as though every criminal trial was the first: What, you say the witness can’t be heard? What is this thing called a drop-down screen? What is this PowerPoint?

Across Canada, cases take too long to get to trial — as the Supreme Court of Canada noted in a recent decision that overhauled the law on such delay — and trials themselves often take too long.

It is true that in some provinces, there aren’t enough Crown attorneys, and that there’s a national shortage of higher-court judges.

But it’s just as true that judges and lawyers are noticeably careless with the public’s time, that they enjoy the luxury of starting at 10 a.m. when a good part of the working world is hard at it an hour or two before, and that they cannot seem to function with less than a 90-minute lunch.

This is the culture of complacency the Supreme Court talked about in R v Jordan, that recent case on delay. The complacency extends to technology, even dated technology (many if not most courts in Ontario don’t even have working microphones).

It is also fundamentally disrespectful to the public, the people who, as always, pay the freight.

There is at the Garland trial a decent crowd most days, including many friends and family of the Likneses and the O’Briens. They show up on time, and ready to go; the least the court could do is the same.

The 56-year-old Garland is pleading not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. He was on Wednesday as he always is in the prisoner’s box — alert, attentive and highly engaged.

Often, he almost disappears from view as he bends over so deeply, either furiously writing or reading documents.

The trial continues, in its stately fashion, on Thursday.