Ok so as promised, I finally have a moment tonight to now sit and write out my experience and observations in court this morning. (Sorry this may be a long post)
First of all, LB's mom was there with a few of her family/friends. It seems that she has been to every day of this trial which I highly admire. Especially since she has already sat through LB's earlier this year. The gallery was fairly full, I would say about 3/4 full. It was neat to actually see AC there not far from me tweeting and typing away a mile a minute to update everyone outside the court. I don't know how he does that so well but I am guessing it takes a lot of practice over the years.
I was there for the testimony of the KW Airport manager (sorry I am blanking on his name at the moment). Reading back AC's tweets of the exam-in-chief and the cross exam of this witness, he did fairly well detail wise. One thing that wasn't explained well in the tweets was a question Pillay asked in cross exam and then was readdressed by the Crown. (I obviously can't remember the wording so I will paraphrase as best as I can) In the exam-in-chief, the witness said how every time he spoke on the phone with WM, conversations always started by asking WM how he was doing because of WM's back injury. Pillay asked the witness basically "How well did you know WM on a personal level?" To which he said "Not that well". Pillay then asked "Were you aware that WM was laid up in bed and bedridden most of the time because of his back?", to which the witness replied that he doesn't remember ever being told that WM was bedridden or pretty much in bed all the time. When Lockhart got up to re-cross this witness he asked one question, "When you spoke to WM in your last conversations how did he respond when you asked how he was doing?" The witness replied, "He said he was starting to feel better and was really happy about that". I think this conversation was kind of missed in AC's tweets. Anyways, to me it clearly showed that Pillay was trying to paint WM as some guy that was stuck in bed 24/7 and miserable. Lockhart cleared up that no, WM was actually starting to feel better and was feeling positive about that.
DM was in the prisoner box and through the whole exam-in-chief of the airport manager, DM was typing away continuously on his laptop. He looked up from his computer for much of the cross examination and seemed to be observing and listening much more at that point. I never noticed DM looking towards the gallery at all when I was there. Having been to the LB trial, I noticed a bit of a difference in his appearance today. I would classify DM's hair during the LB trial as sort of shaggy length, whereas today it was quite a bit shorter. More the length it was in his mugshot. The braid behind his ear is quite long now, maybe two inches longer than what I remember.
I was present for the beginning of the cross exam of the scene reconstruction expert witness(sorry, I can't remember any names tonight apparently). He (the witness) seems very organized as it took him a minute or two to get out all his file folders and organize them on the little desk in the witness box. He is a confident man, while not at all cocky or arrogant. I got the sense that he knows he is a well-qualified expert witness, and wasn't nervous at all to be grilled by Pillay.
Phew, sorry that was really long, I am impressed if anyone read all of that! All in all, I am glad that I was able to get a little bit of time to witness a piece of this trial.