Authors: David Kessler
Alex kept his eyes on the road, but when he turned to check his blind spot she saw that the neutral expression had given way to feint trace of an embarrassed smile.
“You bastard,” she said coldly.
It was too quiet for anger; too lacking in intensity for passion. It was revulsion; the sort of revulsion one might feel towards an old piece of decomposing food. She turned her face to the road, unable to bear the sight of him any longer.
“We’re up against a century-old stereotype,” said Alex, “the black man as sex-driven predator who goes hunting for white women to violate. We have to counter that stereotype any which way we can – even if it means fighting dirty.”
“You’re still living in the past, Alex. That stereotype died with
To Kill a Mockingbird
. It’s been replaced by another stereotype, and one that’s no less pernicious: the lying woman who consents the night before and then screams rape the morning after.”
“The trial of Elias Claymore crossed an important milestone today as alleged rape victim Bethel Newton was subjected to a grueling cross-examination by defense co-counsel Andromeda Phoenix on the second day of the trial.”
Martine Yin was standing in front of a news camera giving her report, while a group of women behind her demonstrated outside the court building, shouting slogans demanding justice for rape victims.
“Cross-examination had been expected to last several days, but appears to have been cut short to avoid creating any more sympathy for the alleged victim.”
Andi was watching the report via the internet on the computer at her desk in Alex Sedaka’s law office when she heard a knock on her door.
“Come in,” she said, not looking up.
The door opened and Juanita walked in with two ice cold cans of diet coke.
“Oh hi Juanita.”
“How are things going?” asked Juanita, pulling up a chair and practically yanking the ring out of her diet coke can.
“Okay. Still slogging away trying to make sense of these demography and jury stats.”
“I thought you’d put that on the side.”
“Alex wants me to. He thinks we can break the prosecution case with old-fashioned courtroom methods. But I’m not so sure. And in any case there’s something not quite right going on. And I want to know why.”
Part of the cause of Andi’s obsession was the feeling that some one was operating against her in the background. All her efforts at demographic analysis seemed to have come to nothing when she walked into that courtroom and looked at the jury panel. To add to that, the obscene messages she had received had both angered and frightened her. She sensed that there was an enemy out there trying to stop her – and she was determined to stand up to that enemy.
“What exactly are you hoping to find?” asked Juanita.
“Well firstly, I guess I want to rule out any other explanation. But the more I look the more obvious it seems that the other explanations don’t work.”
“Maybe you just haven’t considered the right one.”
“Like what?”
Juanita shrugged and her eyes squinted as she gave Andi an awkward, embarrassed smile.
“Like whatever you haven’t thought of. If I knew, then one of us would have thought of it and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Great!” said Andi at the wry humor.
“What did David say, when you phoned him?”
“David? Oh Alex’s son. He told me about some case in Kent County, Michigan a few years when they found a glitch in the software that had been running for eighteen months. It excluded the higher number zip codes – which just happened to be the ones with the black population.”
“And what was the outcome?”
“Well I looked up the case and it turned out that the Michigan Jury Commission determined that the error was accidental so it didn’t result in any successful challenges to convictions. But I did a broader internet search and found that the Grand Rapids area has been plagued by other problems concerning minority representation in jury pools. They found things like greater laxity of standards in requesting jury exemption from black applicants than whites and also problems with which they were summoned to appear at.”
“And is it possible that that’s what’s happening in Alameda?”
“Well first of all it isn’t just Alameda. It’s… not exactly every county in the state, but certainly quite a few of them. I mean I haven’t yet been able to check all the counties, but I’d say around a third of the ones I’ve checked seem to have the same problem. The stats vary but it’s all to within one standard deviation.”
“It’s strange that it should be only a third.”
“Well no, that’s the other thing. You see not every county uses the same jury selection software. I’ve checked up online and there are at least four companies that supply jury selection software. I mean software for the courts, not the software that lawyers use to help with the voir dire.”
“And?”
“Well I was wondering if maybe the ones who are having the problem are all using software from just one of these companies and the ones who aren’t are using software from the other three. In other words, maybe one of the companies is selling defective software.”
“Have you checked it out?”
“I’ve tried to. But it seems that nobody in the court administration knows what software they’re using and nobody knows who
does
know – at least nobody I can get on the phone.”
“Well I mean somebody must know! And they can’t just refuse to tell you.”
“Well the problem is no one seems to know. They’d have to go back through the court admin financial records, to when the software was purchased. And no one wants to be bothered with that. Also the courts are exempt from the California Public Records Act, except for statements of itemized expenditure. So I requested statements from every county in the State from five years ago. Hopefully we’ll find it listed. But they have up to ten days to comply. And some of them have even written back to invoke the statutory fourteen day extension And that’s time we can’t afford. So far only one of the counties has got back to me.”
Juanita smiled.
“And is it one that has the low minority stats or one of those that doesn’t?”
“One that doesn’t.”
“So why don’t you presume that the problem is with software from one of the other three companies – I mean not the one used in the county that got back to you?
“That’s exactly what I
do
think. But until I’ve got responses from the others I don’t know
which
and that means can’t prove anything.”
“No but can’t you in the meantime, analyze the software from those three other companies? Or get David to?”
“I got the impression that David didn’t really have the time. He only agreed to help because his father wanted him to. Besides, there’s still the problem of
getting
the software. We still don’t know which of the other three companies its from. And whichever, it still comes from a
private
company. That means its proprietary, and using the Public Records Act will be a problem.”
Juanita thought about this for a moment.
“They’re a government contractor. Surely they’re still subject to an CPRA request?”
“They’re a contractor to
the Courts
and like I said, the courts are exempt from the act, apart from expenditure statements.”
“Maybe it would quicker to buy copies of the software from the various companies?”
“Probably would. The trouble is then all we’d have is the executable – or at best the object code.”
Juanita was shaking her head.
“Now you’ve lost me.”
“We need the source code to figure out what’s going wrong, if anything.”
“Oh I see.” Juanita was actually more knowledgeable about computers than she liked to let on. She had just taken a moment to get up to speed with Andi’s remark. “But isn’t it possible to – what’s that word – decompile it or something like that?”
“It is. And I can probably get a freeware decompiler online. But the output from a decompiler is so cryptic that it takes an experienced computer programmer to understand it.”
“And you’re not an experienced programmer?”
“Unfortunately not,” said Andi. “Barely more than a beginner.”
Andi raised her eye brows quizzically.
“Oh sorry, I guess I should explain. I started a course in C++ programming, but dropped out.”
“I’m sure David can help.”
“Until we’ve got the software, that’s a moot point. Also it’s not like off-the-shelf software. It’s very expensive and you pay for the number of seats.”
“Seats?”
“The number of parallel users. That means they’ll want to know where and in what manner we’ll be using it. And what are we going to tell them? ‘We want to analyze your software to see if it has a defect that causes African-Americans to be under-represented on juries.’?”
Juanita smiled.
“I see what you mean. The thing I don’t understand Andi, is how come you got the demographic jury data so quickly, if they’re so slow under the Public Records Act.”
“That’s easy. A lot of counties have already compiled their own demographic reports to monitor these things for internal admin purposes. The data was already out there. It was just a case of tracking it down on the internet.”
Juanita leaned forward conspiratorially
“You see I was just wondering if we could somehow get a copy of the software and present David with a
fait accompli…
get him to haul ass.”
Andi realized that Juanita was trying to be helpful. And maybe she was right.
“Do you think Alex would be ready to fork out for a copy of the software?”
Juanita smiled.
“Maybe as a last resort. But let’s try something else first.”
“What?”
“Are you in court this afternoon Andi?”
“No. The judge has some other business to clear up so we’ve got the afternoon free.”
“Private business or court business?”
There was an eager smile on Juanita’s face. It left Andi feeling awkward.
“Court business I assume.”
“So she’s still in the court building.”
“I assume so. Why? What do you have in mind?”
“Give me a moment.”
She picked up the phone and called a number.
“Hallo is that the Clerk to Justice Wagner… Yes I wonder if you can help me. My name is Juanita Cortez and I am the secretary to Alex Sedaka in the Elias Claymore case. I was wondering if you could find out from Justice Wagner if she would consider an ex parté emergency motion from the defense for a court order to obtain the software used by the court for jury selection” There was a long pause, and indistinct voices were heard in the distance. “Yes we can obtain the executable program from the court itself, but the source code would have to come from the supplier I assume… yes we can be there in person in half an hour! Thank you.”
Juanita put the phone down, here eyes gleaming.
“She’ll grant us an order for the executable from the court and schedule a hearing for the source code from the company that supplied the software. It’s called
LegalSoft
. But she’ll have to give them forty eight hours notice of the hearing.”
Andi’s face lit up.
“Yes!”
“We’d better get going now Andi.”
Andi stood up and grabbed her purse. “And on the way, I’ll tell you my theory about what’s really going on – if I can trust you.”
Martine Yin had wrapped up her reporting from the Claymore trial for the day. The court wouldn’t be reconvening in the afternoon and the TV station would simply run her earlier report again in the evening and on the late night news, filling in any additional details from the studio. She had hung around the court for a while, talking to some of the other reporters. But it was clear that nothing more was going to happen that day.
She had decided not to call Alex at the moment. By mutual agreement they had put their relationship on hold. It wasn’t just the conflict of interest in this case. It was the realization that based at opposite ends of the State, it just wasn’t going to work. It was ironic that now, when Martine was in the Bay Area and geography was no longer a problem, they had to avoid each other for ethical reasons.
So now she was making her way to her car, parked in the parking structure a couple of blocks down from the courtroom between Jackson and Madison, feeling somewhat down and dejected. She was missing Alex’s company and frustrated at having to stay away from him even now. Perhaps if she had felt in a better mood, she would have been more alert. But as it was, she simply walked, barely aware of what was in front of her, let alone what was behind.
Consequently, as she made her way to her car in parking structure a couple of blocks away, she didn’t notice that she was being followed by a young man – a young man whose excitement was growing at the prospect of what he was planning to do.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009 – 13:30
“So let me get this straight,” said Juanita. “You’re saying that you think it’s not a glitch but deliberate tampering?”
“That’s right. And it goes back for the last five years.”
They were crossing the Bay Bridge into Oakland, on their way to the Court Administration Building in Oakland. Juanita was at the wheel.
“But what does that mean? That it’s an inside job? Some one in the software company?”
Andi threw her head back, considering this.
“Possibly.”
“Well I mean, like, what else could it be?”
“Maybe some one created a different version and switched it for the original.”
“What like some one who worked at the Court?”
“At this stage we need to keep our minds open.”
“Yes, but… hold on a minute Andi. Anyone working in the court would only be working in
one
county. They’d have an opportunity to install it in one county but not a third of the counties in the state.”
“No, that’s why is aid we should keep an open mind. But you’re right that’s not a likely explanation. But maybe somebody hacked in to the computers at the courts?”
Juanita seemed to ponder this in the dim light of the lower section of the bridge as heavy traffic thundered overhead.