A Seamless Six-Month Criminal Retrial with Delium
For a six-month criminal retrial, court administration took full control of evidence management in Delium, ensuring seamless, efficient proceedings without external support.
The Challenge
A high-profile criminal case, involving an Inquest, Trial, Appeal, and Inquiry spanning from 1995 to 2012, was set for Retrial in 2018. The evidence was diverse, including audio, video, photographs, and thousands of pages of transcripts from prior proceedings.
Legal teams and court administration had been managing evidence in Delium since the 2012 Appeal and were determined to run the retrial without external specialist support. To prepare, court staff received training on new Delium features, including direct instruction for the Judge. Additionally, a Delium affiliate worked with Court Administration to optimise the courtroom setup.
Both prosecution and defence teams had access to private Delium cases for pre-trial preparation and received a single training session in the months leading up to the trial.
Delium Strategy
During the trial, both parties extensively used Delium’s Publish List functionality to organise and call up evidence. Each adopted a different methodology for structuring their evidence:
One team created bundles by issue, with subfolders for each relevant witness:
- Issue 1
Witness 1
Witness 2
Witness 3
The other team structured their bundles by hearing day, with subfolders for each witness:
- Day 1
Witness 1
Witness 2
Witness 3
Delium’s flexibility allowed both approaches to function seamlessly. The Court-appointed operator accessed each party’s Publish Lists and could display evidence in one click as Counsel referred to it.
Ultimately, the six-month trial ran smoothly without any need for external support or additional training.
The Benefits
- Fully self-managed – Legal teams and court staff ran the entire trial independently using Delium, eliminating the need for external operators.
- Seamless evidence presentation – Publish Lists enabled quick, structured access to evidence, reducing delays.
- Customisable workflows – Delium supported different methodologies for organising evidence, allowing each party to work in their preferred manner.
- Reliable and efficient – The trial ran without technical disruptions, reinforcing Delium’s stability in high-profile cases.
Reflections from Participants
- “Delium has been bulletproof; it has evolved in interesting and useful ways since I first started using it.”
- “One word – Faultless!”
- “Everything has gone incredibly smoothly from a technical perspective, and the parties are totally on board with preparing examination lists in advance, making the presentation process much more manageable.”
- “Counsel are starting to see how efficient things can be when they prepare their publish lists in advance and can be confident the required document will be available when they need it.”
