Key Witness (76 page)

“Yes,” Stroud answered.

Wyatt was watching and listening with concern. He didn’t know anything about this, but he knew that invoking Charles Murray’s name was not a good thing for his side.

“Was the subject of intelligence and race discussed at this panel?”

“Many topics were discussed at that panel. Intelligence and race was touched on briefly. It was not the theme of the event.”

Windsor stared at Stroud. “Do you subscribe to Charles Murray’s theories on racial differences regarding intelligence?”

“No, I do not.”

“Race has nothing to do with intelligence.”

“Not in my opinion. I’m not an expert in that aspect of intelligence testing,” he added, carefully clarifying his position.

Wyatt winced. Don’t tread water, man. Be assertive, aggressive.

“You don’t think I’m any less intelligent than any other lawyer in this room?” Windsor challenged Stroud.

Wyatt looked at the jury. The black jurors in particular were listening to this with great interest.

“I don’t … no. I have no way of knowing without testing all of the lawyers present, but I wouldn’t think you were less intelligent.” He looked as defensive as he sounded.

“If it is true,” Windsor continued, “that you disagree with Dr. Charles Murray, then why didn’t you call him on these findings of his? If you don’t believe them.”

“That forum was not the appropriate time or place.”

“Have you ever told Charles Murray you disagree with those findings? Publicly or privately?”

“No. It would not be my place to. That’s not my field.”

“You don’t have any moral concerns about it?”

“Objection!” Wyatt said quickly. “Dr. Stroud’s private morality is not relevant here.”

“Sustained.”

The damage had been done. Wyatt could see that on the faces of the black jurors.

Windsor looked at his scribbled notes. “You said that the defendant was violence-prone, but not in a calculated way. Only in a spontaneous way. Is that right?”

“I didn’t say it that way, but that’s the gist of it,” Stroud agreed.

“Then how do you account for the defendant’s attempted armed robbery of that convenience store?” Windsor asked. “Wasn’t that carefully planned and premeditated?”

“Yes, but it was a onetime incident, not a series of them.”

“But it wasn’t spur of the moment,” Windsor persisted. “It was planned in advance and carried out as he had planned it. It only failed, in fact, because of an unforeseen mischance, not because the planning wasn’t thorough.”

“In that case, yes,” Stroud acknowledged.

“So Marvin White is capable of violence, he is capable of planning things and executing them, and he might be smarter and have a better memory than these tests that are designed for white middle-class kids showed. He might have committed these crimes and remembered them later, is that right?”

“All those things are possible, but in my opinion, taking all the factors into consideration, the answer is emphatically no. He couldn’t have committed these crimes and remembered them in the kind of detail that has been ascribed to him.”

Windsor glared at Stroud. “In your opinion,” he finally said belittlingly. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

Grant called for a half-hour intermission before the next defense witness. Wyatt went ballistic during the break. Josephine watched wide-eyed as he tore into his psychiatric expert—she had never seen him lose his temper like this before.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this Charles Murray connection?” he demanded of Stroud. “Christ Almighty, man, I paid you thirty-five hundred dollars, plus expenses.”

“You didn’t ask me,” the psychiatrist answered calmly. He was used to clients venting their frustrations on him—it came with the territory. Not that he liked it, especially when it cost them points. “And I don’t feel my knowing Charles Murray counts as a
connection.
Everyone in academia knows or has met Dr. Murray. You wouldn’t be able to find any expert to give testimony for you if that was the criterion.”

“I asked you if you had any skeletons in the closet!” Wyatt ranted. “You said nothing.”

“Being on a panel with two dozen other people, one of whom happens to be Charles Murray doesn’t qualify as a skeleton in my book,” Stroud said. “But I’m sorry if my testimony disappointed you. I don’t feel good about that, either.”

“You don’t agree with Murray, do you?” Wyatt asked, still bent out of shape.

“No, not in that regard. Although there are plenty of other things he says I do agree with. The man is preeminent in his field, and he enjoys controversy.”

Josephine put a placating hand on her boss’s forearm. “Dr. Stroud did fine, Wyatt,” she said, casting a wary eye in Stroud’s direction. “He testified unequivocally that Marvin couldn’t have committed those murders and then remembered the details the way Thompson said he did. That’s the important thing, and that’s what you’ll remind the jury of during your summation.”

“You’re right,” Wyatt agreed, forcing himself to calm down. Antagonizing his own witness was not a Phi Beta Kappa idea. “Sorry ’bout that, Doc,” he said, offering his hand. “I blew it out of proportion. They tried to rattle me and they succeeded.”

“No harm done,” Stroud assured him. “For what it’s worth, I was sincere about what I said in there. Your guy couldn’t have done it.”

“Thanks.”

Wyatt slumped into a chair after Stroud left. “I shouldn’t have come down on him like that,” he said.

“You sure shouldn’t have,” Josephine agreed.

“I should be coming down on myself,” he groused. “I’m where the buck stops—I can’t take my frustrations out on anyone else.” He looked at his watch. “We’re back in five minutes.” Then he smiled. “Our next witness will make up for Stroud,” he told her. “And then some.”

T
HE SECOND DEFENSE WITNESS
looked like the keyboardist for a grunge band. Tall, lanky, scraggly bearded, he was resplendent in a two-decade-old Grateful Dead tie-dyed T-shirt. His hair, dyed jet-black, was short and ragged. Although he was straight today, he looked like his normal condition was one of being perpetually stoned, part of his essence.

Garrett Green was his name. Twenty-two years old, he was a legendary computer hacker genius in the worldwide hacker underground. Among his most notable accomplishments was breaking into the confidential accounts of three of the world’s largest stock brokerages and transferring $1.5 billion into a series of Cayman Islands banks. The money was never touched—he just did it to prove to his hacker buddies that he could. A week later he transferred the money back, but by then an investigation of one of the brokerages had been started by the SEC (which ultimately resulted in a seven-figure fine), and several high-level managing partners had been canned.

The feds didn’t think his little prank was funny. As he had already caused a ton of mischief by setting viruses into the ATF’s top-secret Unabomber files, the library at the University of Chicago, and Bob Dole’s presidential campaign, they set up housekeeping for him in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

He did his eighteen months, came out, and went to work for a small Internet start-up company. On the side he did private consulting. Wyatt had hired him for his expertise in the areas in which he no longer practiced his clandestine arts, since going to jail again was not in his game plan.

“Nice T-shirt,” Wyatt commented admiringly from the lectern after Green had recited his idiosyncratic resume to the amusement and/or horror of those present in the courtroom.

“Bill Walton gave it to me after I set up a computer system for one of his sons,” Green said proudly. “He’s a major Deadhead, you know.”

Wyatt walked to the defense table, picked up a laptop computer, and brought it to the stand. At the same time, Josephine and Willa, another public defender paralegal Wyatt had borrowed for the day, wheeled in a thirty-two-inch monitor receiver and situated it between Green and the jury, where the witness and all twelve jurors and eight alternates could view it easily.

“What’s this all about?” Abramowitz groused. She knew Wyatt was going to have a computer expert testify as part of his defense strategy that Dwayne might have been fed information, and that he might have accessed it through a computer and modem. She wasn’t prepared, however, for so elaborate a presentation.

“Accessing supposedly confidential information is part of my defense, Your Honor,” Wyatt explained as he handed the computer to Green. “We’re going to show everyone, in open court, how easily it’s done.”

Grant was looking on with interest. He turned to Abramowitz. “Were you thinking of objecting?” he asked her.

She read the tea leaves in his question. “No, Your Honor.”

Green turned the computer on. It hummed to life. Then he hooked up the TV screen to the computer so that the image on the computer screen was transmitted to the larger screen. Finally, he connected a telephone line to his modem port, and handed the other end of the line to Wyatt.

“With your permission, Your Honor,” Wyatt asked.

Grant nodded. Wyatt walked the phone line to the court reporter’s table in front of the bench, on which three telephones had been installed, the outlets situated on the floor underneath the table. Unhooking one of the telephone jacks from its outlet, he. plugged in the computer phone line.

“That should do it,” Green told him.

“You are now connected to the world via this phone line, right?” he asked Green. “World Wide Web, Netscape, Microsoft Explorer, E-mail, whatever.”

“That’s right.”

“The same connections that I or any other computer user with an on-line service can access, correct?”

“Correctamundo,” Green told him.

“What about information I’m not supposed to be connected to?” Wyatt asked. “How easy is it to access that kind of information?”

“No
problema
.” The reformed hacker turned to Judge Grant. “Would you give me your Social Security number?” he asked. “I could do this demonstration with your address and phone number, but this will save me some steps and condense the time.”

“I’m not going to get into any trouble, am I?” Grant asked lightly.

“Not unless you’re running some kind of illegal scam, Judge,” Green said with a grin.

“I think I’m clean,” Grant said. “I hope I am,” he added, as the courtroom broke into laughter. He recited his nine-digit number.

Typing fast, Green brought up a program and entered Grant’s Social Security number into his machine. A few seconds elapsed; then the computer started spewing out numbers that simultaneously came up onto the big screen.

Wyatt was watching with interest. So were Abramowitz, the other prosecution lawyers and staff, and the jury.

Green paused in his typing and looked at the television screen. “You have a Citibank Visa Gold Card, an American Express Gold Card, a MasterCard with First National Bank of Wilmington, Delaware, a Sears credit card, some gasoline credit cards, and some others too mundane to mention. Also an ATM account at Richardson Savings and Loan here in town, that can be accessed through Star and Cirrus.”

Grant gaped at the screen. “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath.

“Do you have your wallet on you?” Green asked the judge.

Grant reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his billfold.

“Check your Amex card against the screen,” Green told him.

The judge extracted his credit card. Green read the account number off the screen. “A match?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Last month you charged six hundred thirty-eight dollars and forty-seven cents on that account.” He read off the various purchases and services from the account.

“I thought these accounts were confidential,” Grant said, both upset and intrigued.

“They’re supposed to be. But they leak like a sieve. Any ninth-grader who’s computer-wise can do this stuff. And they do, all the time. Privacy’s a thing of the past.” The whiz typed some more data into the computer. “Let’s get up close and personal.” Looking at the screen, he told Judge Grant, “As of this morning you have fourteen hundred twenty-five dollars in your basic checking account and thirty-two hundred thirty-five dollars in your savings account. I assume you only keep small amounts in those accounts because they don’t pay interest, yes? Those are the correct amounts, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Grant answered. “I’m sure they are.”

Green typed in some more directions. “All righty now!” he crowed. “Now we are getting somewhere. Your PIN number, Judge, is five-four-three-three-three, and I have figured out your code on the magnetic tape on your bank card. So now, your money”—typing in some more data—“is my money.”

On the screen the numbers in Grant’s bank accounts went to $0.00.

The courtroom erupted with a tumultuous hubbub.

“What the hell! Where’s my money? How did you do that? Quiet in here!” he yelled, gaveling for silence.

“Your money’s in a safe place, Judge,” Green promised him. “In fact”—he typed in some more commands—“it’s in your account. Now you see it, now you don’t.”

And there on the screen the money was miraculously back in Judge Grant’s accounts.

“Now I’ve seen it all,” Grant marveled.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet, Judge,” Green forewarned him. He typed in yet more commands. “I just canceled your PIN number, in case some wise guy listening in decided to rip you off. We’ll give you a new one later in private, when I’m done here.”

Abramowitz stood up. “This is fascinating, Your Honor, but I fail to see the relevance of any of it. This is a murder trial, not a computer magic show. I must object to any further displays of this kind.”

“Sit down, Ms. Abramowitz,” Grant told her. “I know exactly where this is going, and I’m going to grant Mr. Matthews wide latitude in presenting this portion of his case. Please proceed, Mr. Green,” he told Wyatt’s colorful witness.

Wyatt stood at the lectern and watched with enjoyment and building excitement. He didn’t have to do a thing—Garrett Green the slacker hacker was doing all the work for him.

Green looked over at him. “Could I have that information sheet you showed me the other day?” he asked Wyatt.