Authors: David Kessler
“Can you describe her appearance?”
“She was bruised and shaken and visibly distressed. Her clothes were in disarray.”
“And what did you do?”
They were using the DOAR Digital Evidence Presentation System, which enabled the lawyers to present audiovisual evidence of a variety of types to the jury, whilst allowing the judge to over-ride anything that the jurors were not supposed to see. The judge, current witness and court clerk all had standard size computer monitors in front of them, whilst the lawyers had laptop computers and additional monitors at their tables. The jury had two huge monitors, positioned on the floor a few feet in front of the jury box, giving them all a clear view.
At any given moment, it was the lawyer conducting his examination who had control of what was displayed, subject to the judge’s override. Control could also be handed over to expert witnesses.
“I took her to the rape suite for a physical checkup and to collect evidence samples. Once at the suite, I had pictures taken showing external bruising to the alleged victim and conducted a forensic medical examination with a view to establishing the cause of her condition and to gather any potential evidence. Specifically, I took clippings from her fingernails and vaginal swabs for future DNA analysis. I placed these in the appropriate containers, sealed them and marked them for chain of custody. I then handed them over to Detective Riley.”
Sarah Jensen pressed the button that showed the pictures on the screens. Alex had stipulated to the pictures, in order to save time and avoid appearing to be unnecessarily stubborn, so there was no need to call the photographic officer who had actually taken the pictures.
“And can you confirm that these are pictures of Miss Newton on the day in question?”
“Yes, I can.”
The pictures showed bruising around her wrists consistent with restraint by a strong hand.
Sarah Jensen pressed the button to move onto the next image. Showing the evidence bags with Dr Weiner’s signature. The doctor was asked to confirm the authenticity of the signature, which she duly did. Later Sarah Jensen would ask the lab staff who had conducted the DNA tests to identify those same markings against the lab’s record log to confirm that this was the same evidence.
At the end of this fairly straightforward direct examination, Sarah Jensen said “your witness,” to Alex and sat down. The prosecutor expected some pyrotechnics on cross-examination, but Alex surprised her and the doctor by rising just long enough to say “no questions.”
The judge announced a twenty minute recess.
“How come you didn’t challenge her over the editorializing about Bethel’s state of mind?”
“The jury already heard it. And it wouldn’t make sense. Our defense is mistaken identity. Why shouldn’t she be visibly distressed?”
Andi shrugged.
In the press section, Martine left to do her report. She didn’t notice that a young black man in the spectator’s section was following her – just as he had yesterday. But then his efforts had merely been designed to learn her pattern of movements. Now he already knew the pattern.
“So, do you think it’ll help?” asked Alex, “or is it a complete waste of time?”
Alex had decided to phone David during the recess, to find out how he was doing with the jury selection software. He had been persuaded by Andi that it was worth looking into. But the question was, could David make any progress in finding any bugs in the software – with or without the help of his friends in the math and computing department?
“Like I told Andi, it might. But it’ll be a lot easier if we can get the source code.”
David Sedaka was in his office in the renovated Old LeConte Hall poring over a huge printout of the source code.
“We have a hearing on Friday to try and get it. But I can’t be sure we’ll succeed. Can’t you just break it down into sections or something and work it out that way?”
“Not from the machine code alone, no. That’s why I need the source code. In the meantime I can decompile it. That means I use a piece of software called a decompiler to reverse the process and create a sort of rough copy of the source code.”
“So why do you need to get the
original
source code if you can do that?”
“Two reasons. First of all, the original source code often has fields and arrays with self-explanatory names like
jurorName
and
jurorList
. When the source code is compiled into machine code, these self-explanatory names are lost and replaced with digital numbers. If you then
decompile
the source code, you don’t get the original names back. Instead you get more technical sounding names generated by the decompiler, like
TextField01
or
Array01
.”
“I see,” said Alex, barely understanding.
“The other thing is that the source code usually has explanatory notes. Those notes can help some one reading the original source code to understand the program. But the notes are ignored by the compiler, or rather discarded completely. So that when you decompile the machine code, it doesn’t recover the explanatory notes.”
“How does the compiler know to ignore the explanatory notes when it’s compiling the original source code?”
“They’re sandwiched between special characters. Those characters flag the compiler to ignore them when generating the machine code.”
“Okay well we’ll try and get the source code at the hearing on Friday. Gotta go now. They’re going back into court.”
“The morning session of the trial got off to a pretty uneventful start today, with police doctor Elaine Weiner testifying about her initial examination of Bethel Newton.”
While David was talking to his son, Martine Yin was delivering her report facing Lake Merritt on the grass triangle between 12
th
and 14
th
Street in front of the main entrance to the Alameda County Court House. To her left and right were other news vans, from other stations, doing their reports.
“Though some observers expected experienced criminal attorney Alex Sedaka to conduct a probing cross-examination, testing Dr Weiner on her recollections of the events, especially after the withering questioning faced by alleged victim Bethel Newton yesterday, Sedaka chose instead to waive cross-examination altogether.”
The white stone façade of the majestic court building provided the backdrop as she continued to outline the events that had occurred in the courtroom minutes before. Her report would be accompanied by pictures by the press artist that had been scanned in the broadcast truck and transmitted to the TV station.
“It is not clear if this marks a change in his courtroom strategy or simply a recognition that some evidence stands on too solid ground to be worth challenging.”
The young man who had followed her yesterday was watching nonchalantly, from the corner of Fallon and 12
th
Street.
“It should be stressed, that at no stage did Dr Weiner’s testimony directly implicate the defendant, Elias Claymore. But it was used by the prosecution to establish chain of custody over the DNA evidence which is to be presented later today.
“Martine Yin,
Eyewitness News,
Alameda County Court House.”
She smiled at the lanky cameraman, but noticed that he was looking unhappy.
“Okay we had some cloud cover bang in the middle there. It may have screwed up the lighting. Do you think we can do the bit about waiving cross examination again?”
“We haven’t got time. They’re going to start again, any minute.”
“Okay in that case we’ll get a bite to eat and get back here for the lunch-time adjournment.”
And with that the cameraman and soundman got into the van and drove off. Rather foolishly Martine decided to walk across the grass to get back to the court building. However, even though she was wearing practical shoes, all it took was one misstep and she ended up losing her balance. It was not exactly flat on her face, but rather awkwardly on her side, taking it on her left arm. To their credit, the other news crews didn’t laugh or even smile. They just looked away with embarrassed smirks on their faces. Martine sensed their reactions and felt a stab of anger, or at least irritation. But she took a deep breath and rose above it.
She looked at her left sleeve. There was no mistaking it: the mud was visible on the blue, and wiping it would make no difference She could do the report in her blouse and snooker waist coat. But then she looked at her matching blue skirt and saw that it too had traces of mud. She could get them to do the lunch time report medium close or mid shot. She might even have time to put in a call on her cell phone to get them to bring a change of clothes.
But then she realized that her face and makeup were also a bit of a mess. She had her purse checked in at the court cloakroom. And they had makeup in the van. But she realized that she needed a complete change. She had a change of clothes in her car. But that was parked at the parking structure two blocks away. There was a kind of pecking order for parking cars in the vicinity of the court. The judge’s park there cars around the court itself. The lawyers tended to park in the parking lot of the nearby Oakland Museum. Reporters, witnesses and relatives of those involved in the cases parked in the parking structure two blocks away. That was where Martine would have to go during the lunch-time adjournment to change in her car.
But then she realized another problem. At the lunch time adjournment, all the other reporters would do their reports immediately. If she delayed hers to walk two blocks, take the elevator up four levels, change and then walk back, she’d be filing her report a lot later than the rest – and well away from the hour that a headline story like this merited. Also, if she rushed, she’d be glistening and nervous. The glistening could be taken care of with makeup, but not the nervousness.
She could phone the camera crew and ask them to stop by at the parking structure and tell them what to get. But she’d still have to change in the van and that would take time. Also, she didn’t feel comfortable now. She wanted to change immediately.
She looked at her watch again. She still had seven or eight minutes – and they never return from the recess bang on the dot. She knew that if she walked briskly, she could get to her car, freshen up, change clothes and still be back before they got to the substantive questions. They always started off with preliminary questions to establish the experts credentials and she knew that this time would be no different.
So she set off down 12
th
Street for the parking structure, two blocks away, unaware of the man who was walking a few yards ahead of her.
“All rise!” said a bailiff as the judge returned. When the judge was seated, the others followed suit.
Alex was tense when the court reconvened after the short recess. He knew that they were now about to hear the crucial make-or-break portion of the prosecution’s evidence.
“Are you ready to proceed, Ms Jensen?” asked the judge.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor. “My next witness is Doctor Victor Alvarez.”
A bailiff opened the doors to the witness anteroom and said: “Call Victor Alvarez!”
Victor Alvarez, a man in his sixties with an air of the academic about him, entered the courtroom. He was in fact the Technical Leader of the DNA section of the Ventura crime lab and had done the analysis himself because it was such a high-profile case. He was sworn in and then asked a few preliminary questions to establish his qualifications and the fact that he worked at the lab where the DNA profiling was done. This was followed up by a detailed explanation of what DNA is, using the DOAR Digital Evidence Presentation System to illustrate his testimony with a series of diagrams and pictures – all delivered in his “wise old expert” tone.
He explained that DNA is made up of four so-called “bases,” referred to by the letters A, C, G and T, and that these bases formed pairs, but only in a very specific ways.
“A always pairs with T,” he explained, “and C can only pair with G.”
When he fell silent from this preliminary explanation, Sarah Jensen was ready to move on.
“Now could you explain how you use this to identify the source of the DNA?”
“There are certain particular sequences of DNA that vary a lot from one person to another. It is these sequences that we use for DNA analysis in criminal detection.”
“And how do you do this?”
“We look for something called Short Tandem Repeats, or STR for short. These are short sequences of DNA, normally of length two to five bases. These short sequences are in turn repeated between six and fifteen times at particular locations or loci. For example, a sequence like
–
”
He clicked to show the next chart. It showed a sequence of letters:
G-A-T-A-G-A-T-A-G-A-T-A-G-A-T-A-G-A-T-A-G-A-T-A
“That’s a sequence of
four
bases at a location known as D7S280. In this case there are
six repetitions
of the sequence G-A-T-A. Such a repeated sequence is called an allele. At each location you have a pair of alleles – as we call them – which might be either the same or different. So a person might have the GATA sequence six times in one allele and eight times at the other. Or they might have identical sequences at both alleles.”
“And how does this help identify the person?”
“Well different people have different numbers of repetitions of
that particular
sequence. In this particular case it can vary between six and fifteen repetitions.”
“But between six and fifteen means only ten possibilities?”
“Yes indeed.”
“So there must be lots of people who match that particular sequence?”
“Yes indeed. But we don’t look at just that one sequence. We look at thirteen
different
sequences. For any
one
sequence, many people may have the same number of repetitions. But once you start looking at all thirteen different sequences at different locations, then the likelihood of two people having the same number of repetitions as each other in each of the various sequences is extremely small. But the problem is that sometimes the amount of DNA in the evidence sample is extremely small.”