Frederick Russell was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide after the car in which he was driving was involved in a crash that killed three college students in the US in 2001.

After he was arrested and released on bail, Russell fled to Ireland, where, using the alias "David Carroll", he put on a fake Irish accent, found a job as a security guard at a women's clothing store in Dublin and started a new life with his girlfriend in Celbridge.

Despite being immediately put on the US Marshals Service's 'Most Wanted List', it was not until 2005 that he was spotted, and it took another year for the Irish courts to make the decision to extradite him. On Monday, finally, his trial began.

From the outset, problems arose. On the first day of the trial the father of one of the crash victims, Rich Morrow, was stopped by sheriffs trying to enter the court with a pocket-knife in his possession. By Tuesday, Russell's defence attorneys were claiming Morrow posed a threat to their client and said they had also received threatening phone calls in which the caller wished one of the attorneys would "experience a loss in his family".

Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorneys also said they had received a harassing email since the case began.

Outside of death threats, the admissibility of evidence was already the subject of heated pretrial legal debate. After consideration, the judge decided that . . . even though the original blood samples have been destroyed . . . the prosecution can still introduce hospital medical records that show Russell's blood alcohol levels to be way over the legal limit after the crash.

He also decided the jury won't find out that several students involved in the crash had traces of marijuana in their systems.

After a marathon four-day jury selection, during which the defence attempted to dismiss every potential juror, the trial finally officially began on Friday morning with opening statements from both sides.

The prosecution said Russell, after a night of drinking, sped down a two-lane highway, illegally passed a car and caused the crash.

In retaliation, the defence built a little model-sized highway and used toy cars to show the jury why one of the main prosecution witnesses . . . the man Russell passed before the crash . . . is unreliable.

The trial is set to continue until 3 November.