The verdict on Sila for the Edgeware road murders was right, but the system is disgraced by the cost, the delay, and the uncertainty in reaching it, more than a year after the killings.

Harry Young, the father of murdered Jane Young, has exploded. His lambasting of the judge in Sila’s trial is well merited, though the judge is merely applying the rules of the system.

Harry was boiling when I met him at Sensible Sentencing’s homicide victims’ conference in Wellington a few weeks ago. There was absolutely no doubt about who killed his daughter, in front of scores of witnesses. If there is one strong finding of the research on what works in reducing offending, it is that justice must be swift, and certain.

Yet a year later the system has preened its way through an elaborate dance with no certain outcome. He’d been told by the judge, the Police and plenty of well meaning other performers in that ritual dance that he would put everything at risk if he even expressed publicly his bafflement and rage.

Who wouldn’t feel for those families, waiting 4 days for the jury to decide an open and shut case, with every passing minute adding to the possibility that the killer would go free.

I support the right of the accused to a fair trial, where guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. I support the jury system. But they are conditions, not purposes. The primary purpose is to deliver justice to wrongdoers, for victims, and for those of us who are merely potential victims. The wrong must be balanced by punishment.

And wrongs must not be compounded by punishing people who are not guilty.

But the processes have taken over. They’re no longer subordinate to those ends.

Sophie Elliott’s father was at the conference too, because Sensible Sentencing is often the only comfort for these desperate people. SST are not funded by the system, so they can say what no one else will. They explain the realities the victims will undergo, while everyone else professionally excuses the inexcusable.

Cathy and I spent several hours with the Elliotts at their home in Dunedin after the graduation ceremony where Sophie’s brother accepted her certificate. My son had travelled with Sophie and another girl in Australia shortly before Christmas. The Elliotts were baffled too. Four court attendances already when there is absolutely no doubt about the circumstances of her murder, yet the process had not even reached depositions. As a lawyer and a former law-maker I think they expected me to come up with some sophistry to justify what was happening to them.

I could not. The system is the work of well meaning, highly educated people who’ve become fools. Being part of the elite, they’re not obliged to focus on the purpose of their processes, so they don’t. They’ll tell each other that the critics simply don’t understand, and no doubt go home each night feeling the smugness of the misunderstood in a righteous cause.

I suspect that the highly intelligent killer is manufacturing a defence of insanity. The mad/bad distinction he’ll rely on is another idiocy sacred to the anointed. They will not weigh against it the insult to victims.

I tried gently to prepare the Elliotts for a lottery, and possible disappointment. But I could not pretend the processes were redeemed by any justifying outcome.

They could be hugely simplified with no added risk of convicting the innocent. But those who serve the processes now have a trained indifference to the real outcomes. People who’ve spent their careers picking holes in arguments are so adept at finding problems they can never be expected to reform anything. They’ll persuade themselves with their professional eloquence that there is grave risk in anything but the status quo.