Key legal question
Whether the Federal Criminal Court sufficiently reasoned the reduction of appointed counsel's fee and thereby respected the right to be heard.
Extracted holding
No. A mere comparison with co-defence counsel's hours did not explain which detailed billed items were deemed excessive, so the fee reduction lacked constitutionally adequate reasoning.
Extracted reasoning
When a detailed fee note is filed, the court must at least briefly and intelligibly identify which claimed items it does not compensate. The later explanation about train travel still did not convincingly justify excluding 55 hours of travel time entirely.