No Way Out (15 page)

Andi was shaking her head.

“I got the stats for that and used the statistical analysis software to hold constant for it.”

“Hold constant?”

“Factor it in. The imbalance is still there when you take it into account. Don’t forget I have the figures from the voting register as well as census data.”

“Wait a minute, you have to be careful how you handle the data. The voting register excludes people incarcerated for
felony
convictions, but those serving time for
misdemeanors
can still vote. However, they can’t serve on juries.”

Andi folded her arms and pursed her teeth.

“Please give me credit for a modicum of common sense. I held constant for
all
incarcerations, including pre-trial detention. The pattern still holds.”

“Pattern?”

“I don’t mean the size of the imbalance stayed constant. Obviously it was reduced when I held constant for those variables. But a statistically significant discrepancy remained.”

“Meaning in plain English that it was too big to be a –”

“Random deviation? Exactly.”

“Okay but you base that on the assumption that the use of driver’s license records would be sufficient to plug the gap left by under-representation of blacks on the voting register. But not everybody drives. Some people use the bus.”

“The DMV also issues non-driver IDs.”

“But only to those who request them.”

“Come off it! There isn’t an eighteen-year-old in the State who doesn’t want to buy smokes or booze. And once they’ve got the ID, they’re registered at the DMV. And that makes them eligible for jury service.

Alex shook his head, not to argue but merely as he struggled to take it all in.

“Okay, hold on a minute, let’s rewind. First of all how are juries chosen?”

“We’ve been through that over and over: from voting registers and car license records. I think they use property tax records too.”

“No what I mean is, once they’ve got the records how do they make the actual selection?”

“Well nowadays it’s done by computer.”

“And how does the computer actually do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, according to what criteria does the computer make its decision?”

“It’s random! That’s the whole idea!”

“Yes,” Alex persisted, “but
how
does something as deterministic as a computer make a random decision?”

He was remembering a discussion with David not long ago. David had tried to explain to him about “pseudo-random behavior in deterministic systems.” Of course David’s area of interest was cosmology and sub-atomic particles. But the discussion had fascinated Alex, even if he hadn’t entirely understood what David had painstakingly set out to explain to him.

“Okay let’s say the Court needs 200 prospective jurors for that week,” Andi began. “And there are a 50,000 eligible people in the district or county. The computer divides a 50,000 by 200 and gets 250. That means they need to summon one person for every 250 in the district. So the computer chooses every 250
^th
name on the list.”

“That’s it?”

“Well no, not quite. If the computer just did that, then it would always choose the first person on the list and then all the other people at fixed intervals. So instead, what the computer does is it creates what’s called a ‘random offset.’”

“Random offset?” Alex repeated.

“Yes. What that means is that it picks a random number between one and 249. Then it counts that number in and picks
that
person as the
first
juror. So let’s say it picks the random number 187 as the random offset. What it does then is pick the 187
^th
person on the list as its first selection and then pick every 250
^th
person thereafter, until it gets to the end of the list.”

“Okay,” said Alex. “But how does a computer choose a random number in the first place? I mean isn’t everything in a computer mathematical and deterministic.”

He was remembering things that his son had told him.

“It uses something called keyboard latency.”

Alex was looking at her blankly.

“That means the speed at which the person at the keyboard types. What the software does is get the computer operator to type on the keyboard at random. It ignores what keys they press, because that might not be random, but it measures the time between keystrokes – or rather the differences in
microseconds
between one keystroke and another.”

“Okay.”

“But it doesn’t take the whole figure, it takes what it calls the least significant bit. That means like the last digit on the list of microseconds – that’s
millionths
of a second. Then the program uses this random input as the seed or initialization vector for the randomization algorithm that calculates a number between – in this case – one and two hundred and fifty.”

Andi paused to catch her breath. Alex paused to take it all in.

“But none of this explains
why
blacks are under-represented in this case,” said Alex.

“That’s exactly my point. If the software does its job properly, then they
shouldn’t
be. But all the stats I’ve looked at show that they are.
That
means that something’s going wrong.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. But the judge did say causal evidence
or statistical
evidence. This is clear statistical evidence!”

“I don’t think we have enough to take it before the judge.”

“Why not?”

“Because if she rejected it once then she’ll reject it again.”

“But it’s different now! Then it was just
one panel
. Now it’s
across the state
for the last five years.”

“That’s going to make it even harder.”

Andi was surprised at this.

“Why?”

“Because if you tell her this, then any decision she makes will have implications for thousands of other cases, not just this one. And I don’t think she’s going to want that sort of responsibility. She’d rather leave it to the Court of Appeal instead of taking it on her own head.”

“So what are we going to do? Just drop it and walk away like we haven’t discovered anything?”

“No but we’re going to need to bolster our arguments.”

“How?”

“By finding some causal explanation for these stats.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.”

Andi thought about this for a moment.

“Maybe if we could find some glitch in the software.”

“Do you have the skill for that?”

“Probably not. I mean I actually tried to learn programming in C++, but I kind of… dropped out of the course.”

Alex pursed his lips.

“If it
is
a software glitch, I think I may know some one who can help.”

“Who?”

“My son, David. He’s a physicist at Berkeley. Get his number from Juanita and call him. Tell him you’re working for me.”

“
For
you?”

“
With
me.”

She rose, resignedly but didn’t leave the room. She just stood there saying nothing.

“Was there anything else?” he asked.

Now was the time to tell him about “Lannosea”, to ask him if he had told anyone about their private conversation when he and Sherman had pressured her into sitting at the defense table. It should be simple enough to tell him about the messages and ask him if he had any idea who could be sending them. But something made her hold back and she wasn’t sure what.

“No, nothing,” she said, realizing that now was not the time. When she opened the door, Juanita was standing there with a sheet of paper in her hand, poised to knock. Alex looked up as Juanita and Andi slipped past one another.

“We just had an eMail from Leary,” said Juanita.

Leary was the private investigator they’d hired to dig up some dirt on Bethel Newton.

“What does it say?”

She approached the desk and put it down in front of Alex.

“He’s found some dirt on the Newton girl. This isn’t the first time she’s made a rape accusation.”

“The prosecution will show that Elias Claymore is not the respectable man that he poses as,” Sarah Jensen was saying. The sea of faces in the spectator’s section of the courtroom on Tuesday reflected the interest in this case that had lingered beneath the surface for the last two months.

They had been told all about Elias Claymore’s background by the newspapers and broadcast media when the case first broke. Some of them were old enough to remember Claymore from his revolutionary days. But much of what they had been told by the media had faded from their memories. A spate of political crises, tornadoes in the mid-west, violence in the Middle East and stories about wife-beating among the Hollywood glitterati had driven the tales of Elias Claymore from their minds.

Sarah Jensen knew that she was not allowed to bring up Claymore’s priors unless he took the witness stand in his own defense. But her reference to him not being as respectable as he seemed, was a cunningly camouflaged reminder to the jury of Caucasians, five Hispanics and three Asians of what they all already knew.

“You will hear testimony to this effect from the victim herself – the girl whom he raped, who will identify the defendant as the man who raped her. You will hear medical evidence of her internal and external injuries proving that this was rape and not consensual sex. You will see photographs showing the girl’s external injuries, so that you will be able to judge with your own eyes whether the girl was a willing participant or an innocent victim. You will hear eye witness testimony of a man who saw the accused running from the scene of the crime towards his car in which he made a quick getaway. Finally, most irrefutable of all, you will hear scientific DNA evidence showing that the man who raped Bethel Newton was none other than the accused, Elias Claymore.”

Sarah Jensen sat down, keeping her face completely neutral. Alex knew that she had ended her opening statement too close to one o’clock for the judge to let the defense respond now. This ensured that the prosecution’s summary of its case would stick firmly in the minds of the jurors over lunch. It was the oldest trick in the book, and Alex had expected it. But there was very little he could do about it. He just had to pace himself right too, making sure that his own bombshells coincided with the appropriate adjournments.

Four hundred miles away, Eugenia Vance sat before a television set watching the proceedings on Court TV.

After lunch, Sarah Jensen began presenting her case. Andi had been curious as to the order in which she would call her witnesses. In the event, she adopted a fairly conventional approach and called Bethel Newton first. Her approach was gentle, putting Bethel at ease by leading her through the non-contentious events leading up to her encounter with the rapist: the car breaking down, the Mercedes stopping and the man giving her a ride. At all times, Bethel testified in a voice that was quiet but not weak.

“Then he dragged me out of the car, behind the bushes, and clamped his hand over my mouth. I managed to bite him but then he slapped me across the face. I felt a sharp blow and then I could feel blood in my mouth and I realized it was futile to struggle.”

“And then what happened?”

While she paused to compose herself before answering, Andi quickly scribbled a note to Alex saying: “we need to ask her if she knows my eMail address.” Alex looked at her blankly. Andi still hadn’t told him about “Lannosea”. But she knew that she could hardly expect him to probe this area, and risk the judge’s disapproval   , without offering him at least
some
explanation. So she added to the note, the words: “I’ve been getting abusive anon E-mails.” He seemed to take it in very quickly and did not look altogether surprised. He nodded his head gently, as if understanding.

“He started tearing away at my clothes, not so much tearing them off me, more pulling them out of the way. Then he unzipped his pants and pushed them down slightly and then...”

She started to cry. Everyone in the courtroom sat in absolute silence while she pulled out her handkerchief and sobbed into it.

“Take your time Miss Newton.”

“And then he raped me.”

“How did he penetrate you?”

“Vaginally,” she said, in a little girl voice, trying to keep the words barely audible. “From the front,”

“And do you see the man who did this in this courtroom.”

The words seemed to have a toughening effect on her, as if she sensed the opportunity to regain control for the first time in her life. She puts her handkerchief away, no longer crying. Then she leaned forward and looked over at Claymore.

“Yes I do,” she said pointing at Claymore. “That man over there.”

“Let the record show that the witness identified the accused Elias Claymore,” said Sarah Jensen.

“So ordered,” the judge responded.

Sarah Jensen then went through a series of questions to put on record the events that happened afterwards: Claymore running away and driving off, a member of the public calling the police, the medical examination, the DNA sample, the photographs. All of these would be introduced at a later stage. But these questions were to establish foundation for their introduction.

At the end of the sequence of questions, Sarah Jensen looked over at the judge and said “no further questions.”

Then she sat down, trying to look sad or at least solemn, rather than triumphant. Andi noticed that Justice Wagner was looking over at the clock. It was five fifteen.
She had done it again!
She had timed it perfectly to coincide with the afternoon adjournment. That meant that once again the jury would leave the court with elements of the prosecution’s case locked firmly in their minds. This time it was the girl’s tearful testimony, and they would have the whole night to think about it.

Andi had been sure that Sarah Jensen was going to spin out the direct examination for longer, to wring the maximum amount of detail out of Bethel Newton so as to elicit the maximum amount of sympathy. That would still have left Bethel’s testimony in the jurors’ minds. But somehow it would not have been so damaging if they knew that there was more to come.