programming skills, along with his mathematical background and training. Also, he had a network of contacts on whom to call for assistance.
“We’ve got a hearing to get the source code on Friday. The software company’ll fight it vigorously and if they lose, they’ll appeal. So anything you can get from the executable will help. We might get the source code, but when is anyone’s guess.”
“I’ll decompile it right away, but I don’t expect to have time to look at it before the weekend.
“Whatever help you can give us,” said Andi, “I’ll appreciate.”
Thursday, 20 August 2009 — 10:10
The prosecution’s first witness on Thursday was Dr Elaine Weiner, the doctor at the sex crimes and domestic violence unit who had examined Bethel. She was in her late thirties, but she exuded an air of confidence, like some one who had testified in court before and wasn’t intimidated by it. Of course, the real test would come when she faced cross-examination. But she showed no sign of one who was looking forward to the experience with dread. Quite the contrary, she gave Alex a brief, challenging eye contact that almost seemed to suggest that she was looking forward to crossing swords with him.
The first questions that Sarah Jensen put to Dr Weiner, established her qualifications, occupation and the fact that she was on duty on the sex crimes and domestic violence unit that night. Then the questioning turned to the facts of the case.
“And could you describe the events that occurred at ten fifteen of that morning?”
“Well at about that time, a girl whom I now know to be Bethel Newton was brought in by Detective Bridget Riley.”
“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.
Thursday, 20 August 2009 — 11:00
“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
“Two reasons. First of all, the original source code often has fields and arrays with self-explanatory names like
“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.”
