I returned to the lectern, and the Masons took their seats. The judge instructed the jury to ignore the last statement by the witness and then told me to proceed.
“Cautiously, Mr. Haller,” she said.
I had gotten what I could from Dr. Debbie. I decided to quit while I was ahead and not draw attention away from the many good points she had just made — including the mention of other cases. That answer had been stricken from the record but not from the memories of the jurors.
“Thank you, Dr. Porreca,” I said. “No further questions.”
When Mitchell Mason wisely said he had nothing further for the witness in re-cross, the judge excused her and told me to call my next witness. I asked if we could take the afternoon break before I brought in my next witness, and she agreed. The courtroom emptied while I went to the railing to confer with Lorna and Cisco.
“What happened up there?” Lorna asked.
“She held me in contempt,” I said. “There’s a hearing after the jury goes home.”
“Oh, great,” Lorna said. “Is she going to put you in lockup?”
“I seriously doubt that,” I said. “It’s civil court. She’ll find some other way of putting the boot in me.”
“It better not be a fine,” Lorna said. “We don’t have any money coming in.”
“Let me worry about that,” I said. “Is Spindler all set?”
“Good to go,” Cisco said. “He’s in the attorney room.”
“Good,” I said. “You can bring him in.”
Cisco headed off and I looked at Lorna.
“Lorna, will you see to it that Dr. Debbie gets back to her hotel and then on the next plane to Tampa?”
“Absolutely.”
“And make it first class.”
“Mickey, we don’t have—”
“She deserves it. The jurors loved her.”
Over Lorna’s shoulder, I watched Cisco go through the courtroom door. I then noticed that Cassandra Snow was sitting in her wheelchair behind the last row of the gallery.
“You’re staying here?” Lorna asked. “No bathroom break?”
“No, I’m staying,” I said.
“Well, knock ’em dead.”
“That’s the plan.”
Lorna headed out of the courtroom and I went through the gate and down the aisle behind her to talk to Cassie Snow.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Field trip?”
“No, I just thought I would come by and watch,” she said. “I’ve been reading articles about the case.”
“Hopefully they’ve been kind to me and my case. I haven’t had a chance to read them.”
“I’ve followed you in the media for a long time and I realized I had never seen you live in a courtroom.”
“Well... I’m sure it’s underwhelming.”
“Not at all.”
I nodded my thanks. I wasn’t sure what else to say and I needed to get back to the table to go over my notes before my direct examination of Professor Spindler.
“Did you just get in big trouble with the judge?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see. How’s your father doing?”
“We talked yesterday. I told him you were on the case.”
“Yes, well, as you can probably see, a trial becomes all-consuming. But we are preparing a habeas package for the district attorney’s office to review. It’s already in motion.”
“I thought habeas is federal.”
“Habeas is federal and state, but it can take months, even years, to get on the docket in either court. We don’t have that kind of time. My plan is to go to the DA’s office first and try to convince them of this miscarriage of justice. If they come on board, we just go to a judge in superior court and ask that the conviction be discharged or for a resentencing that leads to a release. I think it will be the fastest way to go.”
“I can tell you now that if it involves my father admitting culpability, he won’t do it. He will never admit to something he didn’t do.”
“I understand. I’ve known that from the start, and that’s not in the plan. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Do I have to worry about the DA? Isn’t she your ex-wife?”
“She is, yes. But we’re on good terms. We raised a daughter together and we’re on the same page. And I don’t know if you saw this, but part of her platform during the special election was a commitment to review cases like this to restore faith in the system. So this is right up that alley politically, and I think she will be receptive. The bottom line is that your father doesn’t have a lot of time, and this is the fastest way to get him out. You have to trust me, Cassie.”
“I do. Thank you.”
“Of course. And now I really need to get back before court starts again. I have to do some last-minute prepping for my next witness. If you’re planning to stay and want to come up to the front to watch, I’m sure the marshals will accommodate you.”
“No, I’m fine back here. Really. And I can’t stay too much longer anyway.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming to check me out. It’s good to see you, and we’ll be in touch very soon. As soon as this is over.”
“Thank you.”
I got back to the plaintiff’s table and checked on Brenda.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
“I’m good,” she said. “It looked like the judge was mad at you.”
“Well, a little bit, yeah. It’s nothing I can’t deal with, nothing for you to worry about.”
“So what happens now?”
“We have Dr. Spindler from Caltech next. He’ll put things in perspective for the jury.”
“And he’s our last witness? I think you called him the closer before.”
“I did, but he’s not going to be last. There will be at least one more witness. One of the coders on the project. I’ve changed things up and we’re going to go with him.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
“Well, that’s the thing about trials. You’re never really sure about anything.”
It was true. As we neared the end of the presentation of our case, I could not shake the feeling that I had missed something, that I was not prepared. With each witness in a trial, the stress grows. Each is a domino in a line and they have to fall precisely according to design for the overall plan to work. My anxiety now was rooted in my decision to change the design mid-course. Spindler was originally supposed to be my last witness, my closer, but now I was gambling everything on another witness — the coder — and the secrets about him that Jack McEvoy would be able to dig up before court reconvened in the morning.
It was a risky business because I was essentially putting all my chips down on one bet, on a witness I had never met or even asked a single question of. The only thing I knew about him was that I had to destroy him to win the case.
40
Shortly after court resumed, I called Michael Spindler to the stand. After he was sworn in, I spent extra time going over his educational and experiential credentials, firmly establishing him as an expert in the field of generative artificial intelligence. I did this because it would soon become clear to the jurors that Spindler was not an AI naysayer. He believed that artificial intelligence was changing the world for the better. But he also believed in the need for strong guardrails as this brave new world came to be.
“Professor, how long have you been teaching at Caltech?” I asked.
“Nine years,” Spindler said.
“And were you in an academic position before Caltech?”
“No, I was in the real world. I worked for a series of tech companies, the last being Google.”
“What did you do at Google?”
“I ran a lab where we initially developed its artificial intelligence platform.”