£1m defence bill for Kriss Donald killers makes trial costliest ever

And once the months of preparatory work by defence lawyers are accounted for, sources close to the case say the final figure is set to top the record 795,000 paid to lawyers who represented eight accused in a drug trial ten years ago.

Kriss was abducted by the gang in March 2004, before being stabbed, set on fire and murdered. The sheer brutality of the killing shocked the country.

Judge Lord Uist, who presided over the trial which saw three accused - ringleader Imran Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq - convicted of Kriss's murder, described the crime as "savage and barbaric" and "an abomination".

At an earlier trial, Daanish Zahid was also convicted of murdering Kriss, while Zahid Mohammed pleaded guilty to involvement in the abduction and to giving a false statement.

The four convicted murderers were jailed for a total of at least 87 years, while Mohammed received a five-year sentence.

Already, 142,032 has been paid out to lawyers involved in the first trial. That sum is set to rise further as legal teams have yet to submit their final accounts to the legal aid board.

The second trial lasted six weeks, with each of the three senior counsel commanding fees of 900 a day. With junior counsel charging 450 a day and solicitors receiving 42 an hour, the amount of legal aid paid to lawyers representing the three accused during the trial is around 150,000.

The added cost of preparation is sending the overall legal bill towards the 1 million mark.

The Crown produced an estimated 14,000 pages of material which had to be pored over by the defence teams.

One senior lawyer told The Scotsman he spent "about 40 or 50 days" working on the case before the trial. Senior counsel can receive several hundred pounds a day for preparing cases.

"This was one of the biggest cases I have ever been involved in because the amount of material produced by the Crown was huge," he said.

Expert witnesses hired by defence teams to question key aspects of the Crown evidence added to the cost.

One well-placed source said: "The legal fees are likely to be well over 100,000 for each of the accused. It could end up as the most expensive legal aid case in Scottish criminal history."

Last night the mounting legal aid bill fuelled further criticism of Scotland's sentencing regime, after it emerged Imran Shahid had committed the murder while he was on early release.

Margaret Mitchell MSP, justice spokeswoman for the Tories, said: "If the criminal justice system had dealt with this earlier then we probably wouldn't be looking at the horrendous costs for that dreadful murder."

THE WAY THE MONEY GOES

LEGAL aid in serious criminal cases may be denied by courts, but it is highly unusual for anyone to be refused help when facing "solemn" charges such as murder, rape and fraud.

Some accused fund their own defence in the belief they will be better represented than with legal aid.

As a general rule, any case in which a person could be sent to prison or have their lives seriously affected in another way, say by losing their job, will be given a publicly funded lawyer.

Criminal legal aid to Scotland's top lawyers - advocates and solicitor advocates - was 6.85 million in 2000-1 and 13.95m in 2004-5.

In civil cases, it can be hard to secure legal aid.