Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1) by Aaron Pogue Page B

uncertainly to Eva. "What can I help you with?"
    The prosecutor smiled reassuringly. "Defense has argued the unfairness of a bench judgment against a criminal with a ninety-two percent confidence. Specifically, she suggests that treating a ninety-percent confidence as a guilty verdict implies one in ten of our convicts are, statistically speaking, innocent." In spite of the informal setting, Eva was addressing Katie as though she were on the witness stand, and that eased Katie's nerves. She knew how to respond to that. "Can you comment on this?"
    "Of course." Katie turned to the judge. She hadn't been there for defense's speech, but she knew how it had gone. This was, as the judge had said, a routine argument. "A Jurisprudence confidence score is not  a raw assessment of guilt. Despite how it might sound, a ninety percent confidence against a suspect does not mean there's a ninety percent chance he's guilty."
    She clasped her hands in front of her. It was easier to make the speech from the comfort of a chair. She felt like a professor lecturing, and that role had never suited her. "Rather, the Jurisprudence Project specifically compiles and analyzes available, definitive evidence against a suspect. The necessary and relevant criteria for individual crimes are...complex, but they are set in case- and trial-law. A one hundred percent confidence represents a theoretical, perfect preponderance of evidence against a victim—a case in which every possible incriminating record is available and positively identified, usually with an unbroken history of years. In fourteen years in law enforcement, I've never seen a perfect confidence. I am assured it's a technical impossibility."
    The judge nodded. "Have you ever seen a ninety that was wrong."
    Katie laughed. She shook her head. "I...can't say that I have. Honestly, I've never seen anything over a seventy that I believed was wrong, but I'm not a judge."
    He smiled, tight-lipped, and nodded for her to go on.
    Eva led her with, "Tell us about this case."
    "First, I'd like to address the 'ten percent innocent' angle." Katie said. She'd only learned this figure a few months ago, and as far as she was concerned it put the nail in the coffin on the entire appeal. "For you to find a population large enough to trigger a false positive—and by that I mean anything over a confidence of seventy , not ninety, because seventy is the general standard for an indictment. Anyway, for you to find one false positive for the most lenient of felonies, you would need more than two hundred million innocent people. Jurisprudence compiles massive quantities of relevant data, positive and negative, and weighs probative value of every element, correlated to every other element."
    Eva turned to the judge. "The chance of a false positive in this system is lower than the margin of error on DNA evidence—considered one of the most accurate methods of identification prior to the Jurisprudence Project." She turned back to Katie, "As to the particulars of this case...."
    Katie nodded, and pulled out her handheld more for show than anything else. She knew the details by heart, but it looked more convincing if she seemed to be reading them. "Immediately prior to his death, as recorded by Hippocrates, the victim made an aggravated outburst that triggered authority and emergency responses through Hathor." She met the judge's eyes. "Specifically, he said...well, it's rife with obscenity, but the essence of his outburst was, 'Oh, no. Oh...lord, no. You can't do this to me. Help! Help!' a string of expletives, and then the clear sound of a gunshot. This recording coincides with a spike and then rapid crash of the victim's monitored vitals. Emergency services were automatically dispatched through Hippocrates, but the victim was dead on arrival. Based on several key parameters, Jurisprudence flagged the incident for review as a probable homicide."
    The judge nodded. Katie went on.
    "Concerning the ninety-two percent