Jelesic's monitor, like those on the desks of the judges, lawyers, stewards and witnesses, displays evidence being referred to by either side. What brings the evidence to the monitor is a souped-up overhead projector called a visualizer but more fondly known as Elmo after one company that makes them, Elmo Europe of Germany. From its place next to the witness stand, Elmo doesn't actually project but transmits to the computer monitors a live image of a piece of evidence placed on its surface—a map, say, or an article of clothing.

The early post-World War II building that houses the Tribunal required retrofitting, particularly for security, but also to accommodate courtrooms. The judges and technology staff worked together to design the most efficient courtroom possible. They studied other courtrooms around the world and developed policies for the use of technology. For example, they found that in most courtrooms a great deal of time is spent handing out exhibits and flipping through pages, which could be alleviated if the exhibits could be called up on everybody's computer screens at once by the court steward.

The courtroom R&D was conducted at the time of the O.J. Simpson trial in the United States, which ironically influenced ICTY planners because they recognized the parallel with their proceedings: high visibility and gruesome content. In fact, the clunky computers used in the California courtrooms inspired the Tribunal's design team to lower the monitors into the surface of the desks, enabling courtroom personnel to see over the tops. It was very important to the judges that the technology not dehumanize or dwarf any of the participants.

When the trials began in 1996, the ICTY courtrooms were the most technology-rich working courtrooms in the world, using both off-the-shelf and custom-made software. Besides displaying exhibits to all parties simultaneously, the system features a real-time court-reporting product from LiveNote, a Philadelphia-based software company, which immediately makes available the stenographer's transcript in English. The transcript is searchable so that, for instance, a lawyer can check back through testimony to discover conflict or corroboration between witnesses. Also, using LiveNote in conjunction with a program called Premier Power, judges and lawyers can annotate their copy of the transcript or mark passages with keywords for reference later in developing verdicts, opinions or further questions. LiveNote programmers modified the commercially shipped version for the Tribunal in order to display time coding. That makes it simpler to make redactions from the transcript when needed for witness protection. (For example, if the sex of a witness is supposed to be unknown, but a judge accidentally uses a gender-specific pronoun, that will be edited out.)