VANCOUVER - Accused killer Robert Pickton has planted his right foot against the wood-panelled wall of the prisoner's dock for about a year, leaving a scuff imprint that's an exact replica of his right sneaker.
As methodically, lawyers for both sides have been hammering together their cases, strategizing the best way to leave an imprint on jurors.
The Crown's decision to start off with the explosive allegations included in an 11-hour videotaped police interview with Pickton was a deliberate attempt to do just that, say experts who keep tabs on courtroom and police tactics.
The courtroom was rocked by allegations that Pickton was seen skinning a woman, talking about how to kill them with windshield washer fluid and being "sloppy" by not cleaning up their blood.
And the tape itself reveals a choreographed 11-hour strategy to push Pickton to reveal as much as possible.
When police launched the investigation into Pickton, it was with the glare of the public eye firmly on their backs.
They'd been accused of mishandling the cases of dozens of missing women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the pressure for an arrest and charges was mounting.
Botching their first interview with Pickton wasn't an option.
When police have a suspect in a major case like this, the interrogation is crucial, says Gino Arcaro, a former police officer who is now working towards a PhD on the science behind interrogations.
Properly obtained confessions have been recognized by the courts as one of the most powerful types of evidence.
"In a case as big as this one, there's no way that interrogation wasn't planned out," said Arcaro, who also teaches in the police foundations program at Niagara College in Ontario.
"The goal is to get a confession within the rules of the law and in a serious case like this, they'll work until they get one."
Though Pickton did not confess to the crimes he's been accused of, the incriminating statements he made have been held up by the Crown as evidence he's responsible.
It took a full day to elicit those statements, with much of the talking done by police officers who gave lengthy monologues about their own personal lives, debated the merits of cherry versus rhubarb pie and waxed eloquent on the freight train of evidence in the case.
Often, their diatribes provoked no more than nods and grunts from Pickton, and even after hammering at him about specific facts, they were met with flat-out denials.
But Arcaro said what was likely at play was a dance by investigators to get the information they came for and not make the single misstep that could render the whole interrogation inadmissible in court.
The crux is not to do or say anything that makes it appear that a statement by an arrested person isn't voluntary, Arcaro said, as the law automatically excludes confessions induced by threat of violence or even promises of a deal.
The safest way to elicit an admission of guilt is to appeal to a person's conscience, Arcaro said.
"Confessions are actually the product of the conscience's desire to strive for stability and balance," Arcaro said.
"You commit a crime, I don't care what human it is, every human has some degree of conscience."
Police use several tactics to appeal to a person's sense of right and wrong, Arcaro said.
They'll draw on personal experience, try to establish a relationship and use key events in a person's life to try and help them understand - and admit - to why they've done the thing for which they've been charged.
Over the course of the 11 hours, officers asked Pickton to think of his late mother and what she'd want him to do in the situation.
They talked about his family farm and the impact the investigation was having on it.
And they wondered aloud if a stabbing incident in 1997 provoked him to commit more serious crimes.
Yet still, Pickton denied being connected to the murdered women.
"When you've tried everything, you stop focusing on did they do it and switch to the reason they might have done it," Arcaro said, adding investigators will also use the suffering of people connected to the crimes to draw a suspect out.
Officers repeatedly asked Pickton to give closure to the families of the dead women and asked him what he'd think if it were his family that was affected.
"Shit happens," Pickton replied.
The interrogation forms part of the umbrella under which the rest of the trial now hangs, said University of Ottawa law professor David Paciocco, who has worked as both a prosecutor and defence lawyer.
"The statement that Mr. Pickton provided gave the jury a general overview and character for the case that the prosecution is going to build on," he said, adding it's unusual for a statement from the accused to come so early in a trial.
"It's a very interesting and, I think, effective tactical move for the prosecutor to do that."
In major cases, both legal teams would have been strategizing for months on everything, including which lawyers will handle what segments of the trial, said Lyndsay Smith, who works as a criminal lawyer in Vancouver.
"You've got to figure out a way to pace the lawyers so that it's an effective use of time," she said.
"But also so that people don't get exhausted. It's a taxing process and I don't think these facts are going to be easy on anybody involved."
Despite laying bare some of their more brutal evidence in their opening statement and following that with the video, anything can happen to a Crown's case over the course of a trial.
"In a case of this magnitude, there's been a tremendous amount of planning and thinking that's gone into the way the evidence is presented," Paciocco said.
"The reality though is no matter how much planning you put into a case almost invariably the case looks quite different when it is finished."
