Even so, newspaper reports of the expense to the State of notorious trials are grossly exaggerated.
The entire cost of the first Thaw trial to the County of New York was considerably less than twenty thousand dollars, and the second trial not more than half that amount.

To the defence, however, it was a costly matter, as the recent schedules in bankruptcy of the defendant show.
Therein it appears that one of his half-dozen counsel still claims as owing to him for his services on the first trial the modest sum of thirty-five thousand dollars.

The cost of the whole defence was probably ten times that sum.

Most of the money goes to the lawyers, and the experts take the remainder.
It goes without saying that both prosecutor and attorney for the defence must be masters of the subject involved.

A trial for poisoning means an exhaustive study not only of analytic chemistry, but of practical medicine on the part of all the lawyers in the case, while a plea of insanity requires that, for the time being, the district attorney shall become an alienist, familiar with every aspect of paranoia, dementia praecox, and all other forms of mania.