taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (07/14/86)
An interesting tidbit from the newsgroup "mod.legal"; A Macintosh computer was recently a star witness in the first-degree-murder trial of Sagon Penn, who was charged with the shooting deaths of two San Diego policemen. The defense contended that shots had been fired in self-defense as Penn attempted to escape a brutal beating by the police. The defense's case centered on a 2.3-second tape sequence recorded by the police dispatcher that contained the voices of citizens complaining of police brutality; the voice of the dispatcher; and, faintly in the background, six sounds that both the defense and prosecution agreed could be gunshots. Determining the exact timing of these shots was critical to Penn's claiming of self-defense. Defense attorneys hired speech expert Tito Poza to assist in analysis of the brief tape sequence. Poza used a Macintosh with the Mac-ADIOS audio digitizer and MacSpeech Lab signal-processing program (both produced by GW Instruments of Cambridge, Massachussetts) to locate and time the gunshots and represent the data graphically on the Macintosh screen. According to Poza, "I knew the only way I could get my specialized findings across to the jury was to play the critical section of the tape to them over and over, with millisecond timing .... [With the Mac] there were none of the false starts you get with an ordinary tape recorder." Although a verdict in the case had not been reached at press time, Poza said that the attorneys, the judge, and the jury were impressed with the Macintosh technology and its contribution to the analysis of important evidence. (above, without permission, from A+ Magazine, August '86, page 16, column News and Views, by Frederic E. Davis) [Commentary: My first reaction upon reading this message was that George Orwell would have been highly interested. My second thought was that maybe there will be a market for people who can duplicate existing software but changed to ensure that it has the 'correct' output (e.g. the alleged "gunshots" occurred AFTER the phone rang, or whatever). The most disturbing thing about this article was the closing line "the attorneys, the judge and the jury were impressed with the Macintosh tech- nology..." it's just a precursor to courtrooms where testimony is processed by computer and available for review in the jury deliberation area, and then what's to stop someone breaking into the system and altering testimony records? Etcetera etcetera -- Dave]