The trial in the U.S. of accused terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has entered its second week with testimony from more victims of the pressure-cooker bombs that exploded at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

The jury is expected to hear four months of such evidence, which seems reasonable given that three died, 264 were injured and a 21-year-old man’s life hangs in the balance.

In B.C. Supreme Court on Monday, the trial of a copycat Surrey couple was well into its second month, still on the first witness and the first batch of a library of surveillance footage.

The prosecution estimates it, too, will take four months — although the key witnesses are RCMP officers, the accused are two formerly homeless, alcoholic drug addicts, and there are no victims.

John Nuttall, 40, and wife Amanda Korody, 31, have pleaded not guilty to four terrorism-related charges that involve a supposed plot, inspired by Tsarnaev and his brother, to bomb 2013 Canada Day celebrations in Victoria.

But it was part of a sophisticated sting orchestrated over five months by the RCMP, and no one was ever at risk.

The Mounties took the impoverished pair on weekends to Whistler and the Okanagan to relax; staged a meth-lab emergency in their neighbourhood complete with haz-mat response team as a cover to plant bugs in their apartment; provided food when the couple was hungry; drove them shopping for bomb parts and to pick up methadone; rented a Delta motel room for them to assemble timers and meet other undercover officers pretending to be extremists; and finally, transportation to Vancouver Island and the Legislature where they filmed the two hiding three inert IEDs.

The national police force even provided the black Islamic flag the two used as a backdrop for a video message urging jihad that they hoped would be released on the Internet if they died or were captured.

Later, the RCMP arrested them.

Forget looming questions of incitement and entrapment. Why was this stage-managed operation allowed to continue for so long when the accused seemed as zealous at the start as at the end? And why would a case with no victims and nobody else involved except undercover cops and the two accused require the Crown to play minute-by-minute surveillance tapes for weeks on end?

These new Muslim converts “discovered” Islam in a Lower Mainland camouflage store while on a walkabout in an alcoholic daze.

She looked like a punk rocker in a suggestive tank top and miniskirt; he a six-foot-five Dave Grohl, the frontman of the Foo Fighters.

One of their later problems in making a video supporting Islamic extremism was covering up their tattoos — considered sinful, or haram, by many Muslims.

Their first instinct after embracing Allah was to sober up and go to local mosques asking for AK-47s in order to commit jihad. Needless to say, they were given the bum’s rush and police were called.

Their idea of training for combat was to play paintball and computer war games.

Nuttall hated Canada and wanted to leave, but couldn’t go abroad because he didn’t have a passport. Korody was willing to buy a gun or gunpowder to build a bomb, but she didn’t have any identification. They were troubled, unstable people in need of health and social support.

Flamboyant doesn’t begin to describe Nuttall’s ideas in the days before July 1, 2013, such as storming a nuclear submarine. They were fantasies.