The trial of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic could run for years and cost many millions of pounds.
That, though, will be a justifiable outlay for someone accused of such despicable offences as this man.
Simple cases of murder or rape can be tried in a few weeks but, where the charges concern genocide and crimes against humanity, they are necessarily highly complex.
There are often hundreds of witnesses in cases like this and tens of thousands of pages of evidence.
The accused, of course, must have to right to answer all the points against him and to cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution.
It is no answer to say that he did not give his victims a chance. That is for a court to decide.
Even if, like me, you think he is guilty, you cannot just give him an instant punishment - that brings his accusers down to his level.
You could take a suspect like Mladic, put him up against a wall and shoot him.
But a society that did that, a society without due process and proper trials, would have no right to say it was better than a tyranny.
Criminal justice does not have to be slow. In 1812, on a Monday, John Bellingham shot and killed British prime minister Spencer Perceval in the House of Commons.
He was committed for trial at the Old Bailey immediately, tried on the Friday and hanged the following Monday.
No-one was jumping about in the background speaking up for a more meaningful due process - although it was thought important to have the criminal trial.
But that was 200 years ago - today, due process is seen as indispensable.
The key change came after the Second World War - the captured Nazis could have just been summarily executed. That, though, would have just been saying that "might is right", that whoever wins can do whatever they want.
The Nuremberg trials showed that the allies put due process and law above the brutality of the lynch mob.
Mladic appeared at the International Crime Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague earlier and said he was "defending my country" when faced with charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
He had been the most prominent Bosnian war crimes suspect still at large after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic.
The former Bosnian Serb leader was arrested in 2008 after 11 years on the run.
The International Crime Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is a United Nations international court of law, situated in The Hague, dealing with war crimes that took place during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s.
It costs £184.78m ($301,895,900) to run and employs 988 staff members representing 82 nationalities.
The ICTY says on its website: "The budget is not small. However, the expense of bringing to justice those most responsible for war crimes and helping strengthen the rule of law in the former Yugoslavia pales in comparison to the cost of the crimes."
