TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands — With few objections, lax rules of evidence and so far no sidebars between black-robed lawyers and Judge Kenneth Benjamin, the course of justice is moving relatively unimpeded for the four Americans on trial here for the murder of 34-year-old artist Lois McMillen of Connecticut.

The nine-member jury — seven women and two men — was empanelled in less than an hour Monday, the 381st day defendants William Labrador, Alexander Benedetto, Michael Spicer and Evan George were held without bail on circumstantial evidence, which their lawyers and families have characterized as flimsy and sloppily collected by police officers who rushed to judgment.

After a brief opening statement by the prosecution, which indicated its case is based on an alleged confession by Labrador to his cellmate and some physical evidence, the train of testimony left the station and reached a quick and steady pace.

By midday Thursday, the fourth day of trial, the prosecution had called half of the 22 people on its witness list.

Jurors, who pay close attention and both take notes and pass notes among themselves, heard that Lois McMillen left her parent's seaside villa on the north side of the small island alone at about 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 14, 2000, a Friday. McMillen did not return home that night, her mother Josephine McMillen testified, providing the chronology that the prosecution will eventually argue gave at least some of the defendants opportunity to meet Lois McMillen, beat and then drown her.

The jury also heard from a Tortolan cab driver who testified to hearing a car screech and someone screaming for several minutes at about 11:45 p.m. that night in the area where McMillen's body was found lying face down on the shore the following morning. Photos of her body were shown to the jurors, many of whom appeared disturbed by the graphic images.

The prosecution Thursday completed the long process of calling police officers to read into the record the four written statements the defendants each gave voluntarily on the day after McMillen was murdered. All four defendants spent some time with McMillen in the days before she was killed, but all deny seeing or speaking to her for about 24 hours before police believe she was violently attacked on the roadside and drowned in shallow water in Sir Francis Drake Channel.

A few residents of this beautiful, hilly island located 60 miles east of Puerto Rico have drifted in and out of the courtroom, but spectators are not permitted to leave until Benjamin leaves the bench. Some Tortolans stop to peer through the wrought iron gate at the end of the day to try to catch a glimpse of the well-dressed defendants as they are shepherded into a white prison van. The large vehicle with black tinted windows brings the men to court at about 8:30 a.m. each day and returns with them at about 4:30 p.m., taking a 25-minute drive over poorly constructed roads to Her Majesty's Prison at Balsam Ghut.

One Tortolan described the facility, which currently houses about 130 prisoners and inmates, as more modern than the hospital in Road Town, the British territory's capital city in the center of Tortola.

Most of the spectators in the courtroom gallery are journalists, lawyers, private investigators and relatives of the defendants. Josephine and Russell McMillen sit to the left of the center aisle, always occupying the first two seats. Men are required to wear ties in the courtroom, and ladies must cover their shoulders. Several print reporters scrambled Monday to find dress shirts and ties at a nearby strip shopping center.

"I kind of like that. It lends to formality," said Archibald Hodge, a 64-year-old retired orthodontist who splits his time between homes near the McMillen's villa and on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Hodge and his wife, Suzanne Hodge, have known the McMillens for about 20 years and described the proceedings as fascinating. "I'm having a wonderful time with it. I wish people were miked," Archibald Hodge said. "I find it to be remarkably similar to trials in the States. It's quite interesting to watch."

Unable to afford the expense of staying for weeks on a popular Caribbean island at the height of the "high season," relatives and friends of the four defendants double-up in rooms at a resort hotel about five minute's drive from the two-story white masonry courthouse building. Staff at the Prospect Reef Resort have grown accustomed to hosting the defendants' families, lawyers and journalists covering the story.

At night after court, participants and journalists mingle in the hotel lobby or one of the two restaurants there. Invariably, the discussion turns to what happened in court that day and the opinion of the defendant's family that the justice system here leaves a lot to be desired.

"Those American boys, we have to bring them home," said Victor Benedetto, a New York book publisher and father of 35-year-old defendant Alexander Benedetto. "We want justice. They are innocent and they should be liberated."

Senior Crown Counsel Terrence Williams, the lead prosecutor on the case, is expected to call approximately 11 more witnesses before resting the government's case next week. The prosecution's chief witness, a 59-year-old convicted swindler from Texas named Jeffrey Plante, is expected to be brought from his cell in Road Town Police Station late this week or next week to testify that Labrador confessed to drowning McMillen over a dispute over money and because she was "no good."