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cblatchford@globeandmail.com

Slender, interested in basketball and music, and just turned 15: With that spare description of a boy who was murdered in his own high school did the trial in the Jordan Manners shooting yesterday begin in a Toronto courtroom.

This is modern Canadian justice, where even such a shocking killing is rendered sterile, the poor victim barely given a nod, all in the name, presumably, of a prosecution so measured that no one will ever again be wrongfully convicted - or at least not because a Crown attorney thundered inappropriately and inflamed a jury.

The minimalist description of the dead boy came from prosecutor Aaron Del Rizzo in a 10-minute opening statement.

It was the entirety of what he had to say about the boy who died at the foot of a set of stairs near a janitor's room at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, a single bullet hole in his chest.

Just minutes before, phys-ed teacher Tracey Galbraith testified later yesterday, she ran into Jordan on her way to the third-floor computer lab. Ms. Galbraith didn't use the term but by the sounds of it, Jordan was flirting with a couple of girls in the stairwell; he was leaning against a rail, facing the girls, who were seated on the stairs.

Ms. Galbraith asked what classes they were all supposed to be in, the girls dutifully bolted and Jordan went up the stairs ahead of her. The last she saw of him, he was walking down the hall.

The hole in his chest was so small - the 25-calibre bullet left a tiny burned-looking mark barely visible at the top of the zipper of his jacket - that at first, no one knew what had happened.

Only when his jacket was removed could another tiny hole be seen in his black T-shirt, and then another in his red-and-blue basketball singlet, and then finally the hole in his chest.

The bullet went through Jordan's heart, pierced a lung and lodged inside his body: No exit wound, no blood.

Yesterday was the start of the case against two young men accused of first-degree murder in Jordan's death on May 23, 2007.

The two, C.D. and J.W., were 17 at the time and thus can't be identified under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. They have pleaded not guilty.

It was a shocking crime, only the second time in Ontario that a child was gunned down in his own school, a place of supposed safety where young people are in the care of adults, while classes were going on.

The first occasion happened almost exactly 32 years earlier, in May of 1975, when a student at Brampton's Centennial Secondary School, Michael Slobodian, went on a shooting rampage that left one teacher and a student dead before he turned one of his weapons on himself.

In the Brampton incident, the shooting happened about 11:35 a.m.; in the C.W. Jefferys case, the shooting happened at about 2:17 p.m.., shortly after the start of what is known as "Period 5".

The first witness was Greg Schofield, a crime-scene tech with the Toronto Police. He produced and was questioned about a schematic sketch of the school. The next was Toronto Police Sergeant Paul White, a forensic identification officer who, among other tasks, shot a video of the school that was played for the jurors - amid lingering shots of familiar long halls and rows of lockers, yellow crime-scene tape at one end.

Sgt. White also testified that among the identifiable fingerprints found on stairwell doors was a single print from one finger and a partial palm print of J.W., hardly surprising, as his lawyer Don McLeod pointed out, since he was a C.W. Jefferys student.

Jordan was found with the gimcracks of modern adolescence - a cellphone, an iPod, a silver necklace with a cross, $90 in cash - and beside him, a can of Dr. Pepper.

Perhaps the most instructive feature of Canadian crime-fighting circa 2010 was a short video played during Ms. Galbraith's testimony.

Shortly before she ran into Jordan on the day of his death, she also spotted one of the accused, C.D., in a hall, and asked him to remove his hat; he did, with perhaps just a bit of attitude, she said.

Three days later, she gave a statement to homicide detectives, saying basically all of this. At the end, she was shown a photo lineup - and not the sort you may imagine, either.

Twelve photographs were placed in 12 numbered envelopes. As one of the detectives explained, Ms. Galbraith was to shuffle the envelopes like a deck of cards, take them one by one, look at each picture inside, sign and date each one - and, if she recognized anyone, say how, and then hold up the photograph for the video camera.

The detectives, the one explained, would turn in their chairs and look away from her, so that if and when she held up the picture of someone she recognized, they would not see the photograph.

Then they turned away from her, and Ms. Galbraith went through the pictures, identifying the eighth one as C.D., whom she saw in the hall the day Jordan was killed.

Against all odds, the real-life principals of Law & Order Canada, undoubtedly following all the correct legal principles to the letter, have managed to render murder dull.