David Kessler - No Way Out

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 parte 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.

“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.

“Wouldn’t that be kind of hard? I mean don’t they have… what are they called… Firewalls ?”

“Of course. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But some people have that kind of skill. But they wouldn’t just have to modify the software. They’d also have to find some way to slip it past the firewalls — and that’s probably a lot harder. Firewalls these days are quite sophisticated. A good server would only allow local superuser privileges.”

“So a remote installation would be blocked automatically.”

“Exactly. Anyway, the first thing we need to get the software and see if it has been tampered with — or indeed if it’s merely defective. The problem is that even getting the software might not help us. It could be one of the configuration parameters.”

“You mean like the set up,” Juanita asked.

“That’s right. In fact, that’s what happened in Kent County, Michigan. A configuration error told the database that there was a smaller total pool of prospective jurors and it just cut out the zip codes above a certain number.”

“But then you’d expect it to be just one county; not several, like in this case.”

Andi paused for thought again and then her tone changed as she looked to her left.

“You know something, Juanita. For a legal secretary you’re pretty smart about computers.”

For a minute there was silence and then they both broke into girlish giggles.

“There’s something else I don’t get,” said Juanita. “If some one had tampered with it — or even if it was just plain defective — how come no one discovered it until now?”

They were coming off the bridge now.

“Don’t forget, the only reason I discovered it now was because I noticed that there weren’t enough blacks on what was quite a large panel. Usually the venire panel is smaller to begin with, so this sort of imbalance wouldn’t stand out so visibly.”

“A smart lawyer like Alex would notice it, Andi.”

“From case to case yes. But he’d probably just think of it as bad luck or look for other more mundane explanations. I mean that’s exactly what he did.”

“But you didn’t agree.”

“No and I’ll tell you why not. You see we went to a lot of trouble to get a change of venue and I did a lot of prior research about the demography of the various counties. That meant that I approached the trial with some very specific expectations about the venire. When those expectations weren’t met it stuck out like a sore thumb. And it was particularly surprising because it was such a big venire pool. That meant we couldn’t explain it away as a random deviation.”