Aftermath Introduces | The Expert Witness

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Aftermath Introduces | The Expert Witness

Podcast: Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Host: Wolf Entertainment + CBC
Episode: Aftermath Introduces | The Expert Witness
Release Date: May 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping introductory episode of the new series “The Expert Witness,” host Sam Mullins delves into the unnerving intersection of artificial intelligence and the criminal justice system. The story centers around the small city of Akron, Ohio, where an influx of unsolved murders is suddenly met with a wave of new arrests—all seemingly thanks to an enigmatic AI tool called Cybercheck. This seemingly miraculous technology, however, quickly raises questions about accountability, transparency, and the meaning of justice in the age of black-box algorithms. Through the lens of Maya McFetridge’s tragic story and the experiences of defense attorney Don Malarcic and his team, the episode questions how far we should trust opaque technological solutions in life-and-death situations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Human Cost: Maya’s Story

[01:56–09:03]

• The episode opens with Cheryl Rosbeck, a nurse and mother, recalling her daughter Maya—her personality, dreams, and the heartbreak following her murder at a campus party.
• Despite hundreds of people present and lots of digital evidence, police find no useful leads.
• Maya’s unsolved case is emblematic of a wider violence and backlog of cold cases in Akron.
• Notable Quote:

  "I don't know how there could be that many people. And nobody saw that she was laying, I guess, face down and died all alone amongst all them people."
  — Cheryl Rosbeck [08:53]

A Mysterious Shift: Solved Cases Start Piling Up

[09:03–11:13]

• Suddenly, police begin making surprising arrests in previously hopeless cases.
• Public relief and media attention grow as notorious crimes are "solved" with seemingly little traditional evidence.
• Mullins introduces Cybercheck as the catalyst for these breakthroughs—described as "something powerful, something cutting edge... watching over all of us."
• Notable Quote:

  "At first, those paying attention didn't know what to make of what was happening. What changed was simple. Something powerful, something cutting edge had arrived in Akron."
  — Sam Mullins [10:29]

Skepticism from the Defense Bar: Don Malarcic’s Perspective

[11:13–16:42]

• Don Malarcic, a seasoned criminal defense attorney, discusses noticing Cybercheck mentioned for the first time as evidence in local newspaper reports on murder trials.
• Cybercheck emerges as a game-changing tool that police can deploy without warrants.
• Don expresses wariness at the justice system gaining an unchecked, opaque weapon.
• Notable Quote:

  "And that concerned me. Right."
  — Don Malarcic [15:39]

Juries Swayed by AI

[16:42–17:28]

• Reporter Stephanie Warsmith shares how Cybercheck became the "key" to jury convictions in high-profile trials.
• The technology’s reports are considered decisive, raising alarm for those who don't understand how it works.
• Notable Quote:

  "So she said that cybercheck was key to their conviction in this case."
  — Stephanie Warsmith [17:19]

The Black Box: Inspecting Cybercheck

[20:01–29:18]

• Don tries to investigate what Cybercheck actually does, calling defense lawyers and learning that nobody used expert witnesses because none truly understood the tool.
• Don brings on a digital forensics expert, Greg Kelly, to help decode the Cybercheck report used to pin his client, Jayvion Rankin.
• The Cybercheck report is riddled with inaccessible jargon and offers no transparency in its methodology; it merely asserts conclusions ("intelligence value equals 98.45%").
• Greg Kelly is unable to verify or reconstruct the evidence, because no raw data is preserved: "The black box to me was how do you go from that data to this percentage at the end of the day?"
• Notable Quote:

  "Nothing I've ever seen gives out like some percentage of an opinion on something like that."
  — Greg Kelly [28:19]

The Frontlines: Defense Scrambling to Keep Up

[29:18–32:51]

• Don’s team, overwhelmed by the flood of murder cases and confronting this new tech, brings in young attorney Marie Dicola.
• Marie embarks on legal and public research into Cybercheck, finding no case law or documentation anywhere in the U.S. or Canada.
• Both she and Don struggle even to define what AI or an “algorithm” is, relying on basic internet searches and Wikipedia.
• Notable Quote:

  "Don can't turn on his computer, and we're trying to figure out what an algorithm is."
  — Marie Dicola [35:08]

Larger Themes: Hype, Haste, and Hidden Dangers

[34:50–36:34]

• The city and victims’ families are eager for solutions—Cheryl notes that police boast having paid for prestigious Canadian AI to close cases.
• Yet, there’s a rising unease: if police and prosecutors themselves don’t fully understand the tool they’re using, can it really deliver justice?
• Mullins warns that AI, especially when unchecked, holds grave dangers in critical areas like the courtroom.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "This report was saying that Big Brother is here, the eye of Sauron is watching you. And most concerning of all is that this omniscient beast is available to police without a court order or a warrant."
  — Sam Mullins [29:45]

• "I'm like, bullshit. This is total bullshit."
  — Don Malarcic [30:41]

• "Some people get anxious when the fight's coming. Like, I like it. What's the old adage: Don't wrestle with a pig in the mud, because at some point, you'll both be covered in mud, and you realize at some point, the pig likes it."
  — Noah Munier [30:54]

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |---------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:56 | Introduction to Cheryl and Maya’s story | | 05:44 | Cheryl recounts the moment of learning about Maya’s death | | 09:35 | Transition to the city’s murder wave and backlog | | 10:29 | The sudden surge of arrests; Cybercheck’s emergence | | 11:13 | Introduction to Don Malarcic and his perspective | | 14:21 | First cases using Cybercheck as evidence in court | | 17:19 | Stephanie Warsmith explains jury impact of Cybercheck | | 20:01 | Don investigates lack of expert witnesses in trials | | 26:06 | Don consults Greg Kelly (forensics expert) | | 28:13 | The shaky foundations and unexplained certainty of reports | | 29:45 | Team’s realization: Surveillance, AI, and black box concern| | 32:33 | Marie Dicola joins the investigation | | 35:08 | The team’s scramble to understand AI and algorithms | | 36:30 | Warning on the unchecked power and hype around AI |

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Tone & Style

The episode is both suspenseful and intimate, combining chilling real-world consequences with dry humor and skepticism from seasoned attorneys and determined young staffers. Sam Mullins’ narration balances empathy for victims with critical inquiry into the ethics and unknowns of algorithmic justice. Interviews with Cheryl Rosbeck offer poignant grief, while Don and team provide dogged, sometimes exasperated insight from inside the legal trenches.

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Conclusion

“The Expert Witness” launches with a stark, human-centered look at the risks and allure of using AI in criminal investigations. As technology becomes the new “expert witness” in courts, Mullins and his subjects raise urgent questions about transparency, fairness, and how justice is defined in the era of algorithms.

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Recommended Next:
If you found this episode compelling, Episode 2 is now available in the Uncover feed—just search for “Uncover” wherever you get your podcasts.

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Transcript

[Nina Khrushcheva / Max Kennedy]

I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of US President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history, the story of the Cuban Missile crisis, how close the world came to nuclear war, and what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sam Mullins]

This is a CBC podcast. What happens when AI enters the courtroom? And who's accountable when AI gets it wrong? Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I'm a writer and podcaster, and I created the critically acclaimed podcasts Chameleon, Wild Boys and Sea of lies from CBC's On Cover. And I want to tell you about my brand new podcast. It's called the Expert Witness. The small city of Akron, Ohio, was drowning in unsolved murders until one day, something happened. And suddenly, those cold cases started to get closed. A groundbreaking Canadian AI technology was coming to the rescue. Tracking criminal behavior to bring justice where humans had failed. But as the cases stack up and charges are laid, two lawyers grow skeptical. Human cracks begin to appear in this mysterious new technology. Can the doubters open up this black box and reveal its true workings before it takes hold across the world? Right now, here's the first episode of the Expert Witness. Have a listen. Cheryl Rosbeck always knew what she wanted. She wanted a girl.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Everybody that I know of, my friends have daughters. All of them have daughters. I wanted to be a girl, Mom. I always wanted to have a girl.

[Sam Mullins]

Cheryl's worked in the same maternity ward for almost 30 years, so she has witnessed people being gifted. Her literal dream almost every shift. When she got pregnant for the first time, she thought that she could will a girl into existence. But when the baby came, it was a boy. A blessing, but a boy. When she got pregnant for the second time, she prayed. She wished. Come on, girl, girl, girl. In Christmas 2002, her prayers were answered when not only did she get to have a girl, she had Maya. At first, Cheryl got to dress Maya up in the baby girl outfits that she'd found in the store. But even early on, it was clear to see that Maya liked to make her own decisions.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

By the time she hit two, she was bossy. A lot of attitude. Yeah, she bossed around the neighbor kids. Yeah, she had a real strong personality.

[Sam Mullins]

Cheryl's dream of dutifully brushing and braiding her daughter's hair every day before school Just wasn't meant to be.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

By the time she was seven, she's like, no, I just wasn't doing any good. She did her own hair.

[Sam Mullins]

Maya had big plans for her hair. It turned out she started dyeing her

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

hair when she was 11. It was always a different color and probably blue was the most common.

[Sam Mullins]

It's very easy to spot Maya in the school photos, church photos, travel photos. She's the girl with the blue hair. She was one of those kids whose math homework always had art in the margins and she drew flowers all over her first car. Whether it was her hair, her vehicle, or her skin, she got her first tattoo at 15. Everything could always be made to be more Maya. Now, Maya was at the worst age to be when Covid hit her. Class was the one that was fully robbed of having a senior year. They didn't get to have a prom. They didn't get to go have a campus tour of college. But Maya knew that when things opened back up, she wanted to go. So after getting a last minute scholarship, she made each one of her high school teachers a personalized painting to say goodbye. And she headed to the art program at the University of Akron. Cheryl and Maya pulled into the parking lot in the minivan, got her dorm room set up and hugged each other goodbye. And if we pause here, it's easy to see why this kind of farewell makes us cry in movies or insurance commercials. It really has the juice. Your child is your wish for the world. And when you place them like a delicate piece of origami on the shore of the world as it is, you hope that the waves that launch them are gentler than they were for you. Maya was a strong kid and was more resilient than the average 18 year old. Yeah. Cheryl took solace in this thought as she pulled away and headed back for home. So Cheryl originally dropped Maya off at the University of Akron in mid August. And exactly one month later was Cheryl's birthday. Like many birthdays before it, Cheryl was working the night shift at the hospital. But this night, something weird was happening on her phone.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

We have a ring camera and at the time I had it set up so it would alert me if somebody rang the doorbell.

[Sam Mullins]

Cheryl had originally installed the ring camera because Maya was known to sneak boys into the house. But now Cheryl squinted at her phone screen, wondering who would possibly ring our doorbell at 5am and I see this

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

man come in and I didn't know what. It wasn't somebody I knew. And I'm trying to listen to the cameras and it's not working, and I have patients I have to take care of. It was, like, kind of a busy night. And something's, like, wrong. I know something's wrong, and I don't know why.

[Sam Mullins]

There was no audio, so she could only watch what was happening as this strange man walked into the house and started looking at the family photos on the wal.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

The man kept staring at the picture. So I knew he didn't know my family. And I was trying to think, what is wrong? And next thing I know, I see my husband coming down the side. I could see what was going on, but I couldn't hear. And then he took my husband away.

[Sam Mullins]

Cheryl's mind swirled with confusion as she continued on through the rest of her shift, wondering, was that my husband's friend? Is my husband in some sort of trouble?

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Something weird was happening. I felt sick, and I'm telling the other two nurses I was working with, something's not right at my house. Somebody came to my house and took my husband away. I don't know, like, either something's wrong with him or something's wrong with his friend.

[Sam Mullins]

And then suddenly, a short time after that, Cheryl looked up from what she was doing, and there was her husband. And with him was the man who had entered their house. In the light of the hospital, she could see that he was a police officer. And when her eyes honed in on his badge, she read the word that delivered the worst news she'd ever received in her life before he even opened his mouth.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

The officer has got a badge, and it says Akron. Immediately, I knew something very bad happened if they came in person.

[Sam Mullins]

The officer asked if there was a place they could sit down to talk,

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Preferably, like, a quiet place. And I keep thinking, okay, this is really bad. Sat down. The officer sat here. I sat here. And he said three sentences. Your daughter was at a party last night. There were shots fired. She did not survive. And I let out the worst scream.

[Sam Mullins]

There was a house party that spilled onto the street with hundreds of kids near the university campus. At some point, bullets tore through the night, and Maya McFetridge and another partygoer Alex Beasley, were killed. The police talked to dozens of kids who were there. But despite there being hundreds of kids with hundreds of phones making videos, dancing, goofing off, fighting, the police told Cheryl they had nothing.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

I don't know how there could be that many people. And nobody saw that she was laying, I guess, face down and died all alone amongst all them people.

[Sam Mullins]

Maya's name was printed up, slid into a file, and placed on top of a stack of unsolved cases on the corner of a desk somewhere at the Akron police station. And this stack of cases is where this all begins. In this stack are people young and old, of all backgrounds, taken by senseless gun violence, torn from their loved ones, ahead of their time. Just like Maya, all of these cases had gone cold.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

The city of Akron is being rocked

[Sam Mullins]

by violence with no justice for their families. This violence has neighborhoods on edge and Akron police on overtime. But soon something unbelievable would start happening in some of the least hopeful cases, the ones where there were few leads, witnesses, in fact, hardly any evidence to speak of. The police started making arrests.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Relief in Akron after police say they arrested a man and charged him with both murder and a brutal robbery.

[Sam Mullins]

Suspect accused of killing Akron 18 year old Nakia Crawford was indicted for murder.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Today, the U.S. marshals Service closed in on a hard case for the city of Akron.

[Sam Mullins]

More than two years later today, an arrest finally made in connection to the shooting death of a baby in Akron.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

The suspect is now in police custody. Finally, questions are being met with answers.

[Sam Mullins]

At first, those paying attention didn't know what to make of what was happening. What changed? What changed was simple. Something powerful, something cutting edge had arrived in Akron. And now crimes with no witnesses had something else. A thing was watching over Akron, watching over all of us. Something that had the potential to change the world. I'm Sam MULLINS and from CBC's uncover, this is the Expert Witness. Episode one, the Thing.

[Don Malarcic]

So I'm, you know, I'm 57. My kids tell me every day how old I am and all the things that I do that nobody does anymore. And one of those things is I read the newspaper.

[Sam Mullins]

Don Malarcic is a criminal defense attorney in Akron, Ohio.

[Don Malarcic]

There were lots of Malarcic that needed a lawyer. There was never a Malarcic who was a lawyer. I'm the first one.

[Sam Mullins]

Don is trim and has a nice tan in February. And when you spend time with him, you'll notice that he's perpetually in the state of either tying or untying his tie, depending on whether he's just heading to or returning from the courthouse across the street. Thirty years into his career, Don Malarcic is a creature of habit. He still writes all of his motions by hand. He shows up to the office before the sun rises, even during the pandemic, when he seemingly had the entire downtown to himself. And every morning, he's already awake when he hears the familiar thud of the paperboy's tossing hitting the front door.

[Don Malarcic]

I Still get the actual newspaper delivered to my mail every morning. And that is my quiet time.

[Sam Mullins]

Akron is a small city blessed with that rarest of unicorns. A quality local paper, the Akron Beacon Journal, has a reputation for punching above its weight with its journalistic rigor. And for Don flipping through in his breakfast nook, it gives him an idea of what's coming down the pike. And during the first two years of the pandemic, Don could tell that there was a lot coming.

[Don Malarcic]

Crime exploded, and we had a lot of murders here in Akron. I usually have one, maybe two murder cases coming out of the lockdown. I had 12 murder cases.

[Sam Mullins]

The whole system was overloaded, and nothing was moving through the courts.

[Don Malarcic]

And we got to get through these cases.

[Sam Mullins]

So this is where Don was at in late 2022, when one day, reading his paper like he always does, flanked by his dogs in his breakfast nook, he caught the first glimpse of the thing that was coming.

[Don Malarcic]

I remember reading about the Black case.

[Sam Mullins]

Adairus Black was on trial for the murder of 18 year old Nakia Crawford. Nakia had been out running errands with her grandmother when she was shot at a red light. Her grandmother survived, but didn't see who was in the car that had opened fire into hers. In the police investigation, they were unable to find a witness to the crime. There's no DNA evidence or fingerprints or surveillance footage that tied a suspect to the shooting. And for a time, the case was collecting dust on that pile where Maya's would end up.

[Don Malarcic]

But then I remember reading about the Black case and hearing this thing called cybercheck.

[Sam Mullins]

The newspaper said prosecutors emphasized evidence presented in the case from cybercheck, a new technology that had somehow seen the suspect at Howard and North streets at the time of the shooting. There are lots of ways that you can place a person at the scene of a crime, obviously. And Don thought he'd seen them all, but this was new.

[Don Malarcic]

And then a couple weeks later, another case, the Maddie case, came out.

[Sam Mullins]

A man was shot eight times in a barbershop chair, mid haircut and same thing. Another case where it looked like it was going nowhere when suddenly they arrest a guy named Salamadi, who is now being prosecuted using this thing, Cybercheck.

[Don Malarcic]

I'm like, what is this thing? So I started asking other lawyers in the community in the Summit county area, have you ever heard of this thing, Cybercheck? And nobody else really had.

[Sam Mullins]

From what Don could tell, it was a tool that the police didn't even need a warrant to use, meaning they could use it wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted.

[Don Malarcic]

And that concerned me. Right.

[Sam Mullins]

When you've been a criminal defense attorney for as long as dawn, you become, forgive me, defensive. You become accustomed to the feeling of not just being cornered, but of being outmatched in your cases.

[Don Malarcic]

It's not a fair fight. It's not even close.

[Sam Mullins]

It's always the defense versus the whole machinery of the state. Local cops, state agencies, prosecutors, the feds. They're all coming at you with every tool at their disposal. So it makes sense that when there's talk of them bringing yet another weapon to the fight, that Don's first instinct is to whack it out of their hand before they can use it. Especially when he read that this mystery tool led to speedy convictions. An Akron Beacon Journal reporter was able to interview one of the jurors.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

I covered the trial, and I knew someone on the jury.

[Sam Mullins]

Stephanie Warsmith covered the court beat for both murder trials that first used cybercheck, the Adaris Black case and the Salamati case.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

I've been a reporter here at the Beacon for 26 years.

[Sam Mullins]

In the Salamati jury box, Stephanie spotted one of her neighbors. And so that's good, because then I

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

can be like, hey, you know, can you talk to me after the trial's over?

[Sam Mullins]

After the guilty verdict, Stephanie swooped in to ask this neighbor what had happened in the jury room and be like, did that cybercheck evidence make a difference when you guys were deliberating?

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

So she said that cybercheck was key to their conviction in this case.

[Sam Mullins]

When Don first read about this, it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not only was this thing already in Akron courtrooms, but it was proving to be powerful enough to flip a jury from not guilty to guilty. Don needed to man his battle station. He needed to get to the office.

[Nina Khrushcheva / Max Kennedy]

I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of US President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, how close the world is came to nuclear war, and what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb. Kennedy and KHRUSHCHEV. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sam Mullins]

Can I help you? Come on in. The door is open.

[Marie Dicola]

Sam. Hi.

[Sam Mullins]

Nice to meet you. Thanks so much for meeting us. Nice to meet you.

[Marie Dicola]

You can come on in here. We could. I could show you around our office. Office.

[Sam Mullins]

Real Quick. Domarsic's office features pop art with images of Muhammad Ali, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and one canvas simply says, not fucking guilty. But pulling focus from the wall hangings are the floor to ceiling windows framing downtown Akron. The streets struck me as quieter than they should have been, given the size and ambition of the 20th century skyscrapers. But this is a city well past its heyday. If you've ever heard of Akron at all, it's probably because of LeBron James, the kid from Akron. Or maybe you know it as Rubber City. Through Don's window, you can see a 12 foot bronze statue of a rubber worker. The city of Akron used to be known for its innovation. It was a place where you could witness things no one had seen before. It was the first city to ever use a police car, an electric one, no less. The Goodyear blimp made its maiden voyage above the city in 1899. And in 1938, Akron hosted the world's first women's mud wrestling event. So it's with all of this in mind that we watch Don at his desk in his office, start to call around to try and get a handle on this latest new thing that had shown up in Akron.

[Don Malarcic]

So I found out who the defense attorneys were on both of those cases, and I called and said, what is this cybercheck thing? And one of the attorneys for the black case called me back and said, yeah, I don't know, man. I'd never seen it before. But it was really powerful. It was really compelling. In fact, the jury said, if it wasn't for cybercheck, we would have acquitted your client. And my first question was, well, okay, well, who was your expert that you used to kind of combat this forensic technology? The lawyer said, well, I didn't use one. I'm like, what are you talking about? Well, I didn't really know what this technology was, and I thought I could do a good job cross examining the expert, but I didn't use one. And then I talked to the second lawyer on the second case, and I got the same response. Well, I didn't use an expert. And I said, why?

[Sam Mullins]

This is the kind of thing that drives Don Malarcic nuts when he hears about a lawyer choosing to go it alone when their client's life is on the line to him, it's inexcusable. Don's firm has a reputation for its

[Don Malarcic]

vigor, fortunately, have never had a client sentenced to death. And between us, we've had 40, 45 capital murder cases,

[Sam Mullins]

and you get a record like this not from being brighter or harder working than other places, but by being more willing to ask for help when you need it.

[Don Malarcic]

It's really sad the number of times I have seen defense attorneys just fail at the basic, fundamental tenets of the job.

[Sam Mullins]

Tenets such as get an expert.

[Don Malarcic]

It's one of those fundamental flaws that gets their clients convicted and oftentimes sentenced to death.

[Sam Mullins]

Does it cost money out of your pocket to get expert witnesses when you need them?

[Don Malarcic]

No, not a dime.

[Sam Mullins]

Does it cost you time?

[Don Malarcic]

Yes, it costs lots of time,

[Sam Mullins]

Like it or not, to become a criminal defense lawyer. A lot of these cases begin with you at your desk, looking through crime scene photos.

[Don Malarcic]

They are scenes of violence and pain and death. People ask all the time, you know, how do you do this? How do you represent those guilty people? My answer is always the same. Look, if I do my job and everybody else does their job, the right thing is going to happen.

[Sam Mullins]

To stomach these grisly images, you need to have faith, faith in the system. And Don does have that, and he had it when he was first flipping through the crime scene photos for his client, Jayvion Rankin.

[Don Malarcic]

Jayvion Rankin is a very young man charged with murder, and it was essentially a drug deal that had gone bad. You see the crime scene photos where the individual was shot seven times in a car at close range, and they're gruesome pictures.

[Sam Mullins]

But when Don first went to see Jayvion in jail, any preconceptions he had about him from these photos went out the window.

[Don Malarcic]

They bring him into the jail, and he's in change, and he's in his jail uniform, and he's just this big, lurpy, tall, skinny dude. And my wife teaches eighth grade, and he looks like one of her students. I'm like, oh, my God. He's just 110 pounds soaking wet, probably 6 foot 3. And I'm like, are you Javion? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my first impression was, he's just really a kid.

[Sam Mullins]

This is the reality of defense work. Behind the violence is always just a person, and whether you like them or not or believe them or not, they're vulnerable and they need your help.

[Don Malarcic]

So that's kind of how I met Jayvion and why I got passionate for his case.

[Sam Mullins]

Don was also getting to know the holes in the government's case against Jayvion. And it looked like this was going to be a pretty straightforward acquittal.

[Don Malarcic]

The prosecutor didn't have any witnesses to put my client, Jayvion Rankin, in the car at the scene of the Murder. So they were struggling.

[Sam Mullins]

Struggling, that is, until a full 24 months after first arresting Jayvion. It happened,

[Don Malarcic]

lo and behold, one night about two months before the trial. I get an email, and it's from the prosecutor. And it is a Cybercheck report.

[Sam Mullins]

Don was finally invited to the dance. Jayvion Rankin's CyberCheck report is 14 pages, the vast majority of which focuses very little on Jayvion and the crime he was accused of. It begins with the glossary of terms, things like case, ask, data elements, dark web, cyber profile, fuzzy hashing. The report then gives a more detailed overview of the thing, which it calls a platform, saying cybertech relies on machine learning and artificial intelligence that scour the Internet to make real time and historical connections between pieces of data. It gets more impenetrable from there. Display metric SDK providers. Iocbs, which stands for indicators of criminal behavior, are cyber assets. Domain name service entries, reputation authority scores, correlated cyber offenses. After you carve your way through the language and jargon that seems completely unhuman, you can grasp what the report is really saying. Basically, I've been watching you and I saw what you did. After months of wondering what one of these things would look like, it was finally in Dawn's hands.

[Don Malarcic]

The first thing I did was I reached out to Greg Kelly.

[Greg Kelly]

I am the senior director for digital forensics for Archer Hall.

[Sam Mullins]

Do you hear that, young lawyers? The first thing he did was reach out to an expert and he basically

[Greg Kelly]

said, you know, this is a murder case. We need to figure out what this program does, how it does it, what the holes are, and so on.

[Sam Mullins]

Greg is a digital forensics expert, which basically means that if there's a court case in which a computer or cell phone or any traceable online data is pertinent to a crime, Greg and his team of. It's so hard not to say nerds here. Greg and his team of professionals will be able to identify and preserve that data. Greg spent some time with the report that Cybercheck had spat out condemning Jayvion Rankin. Unpacking the technical jargon.

[Greg Kelly]

What the report would do is first build someone's cyber profile.

[Sam Mullins]

A cyber profile, Basically, this is Jayvion Rankin. This is his phone number, his email addresses. These are the social media sites that he uses and the websites that Rankin's profile is interacting with.

[Greg Kelly]

That was part one. And then part two was it would say that that cyber profile was identified somehow. Communicating.

[Sam Mullins]

Communicating with something, another device, both when and where a corporation crime occurred. So the report said, basically, this person's Cyber profile was bouncing off of this nearby WI fi router at the time and place of the crime. And then when it cross referenced with something called indicators of criminal behavior, it was determined that that cyber profile was likely involved in the crime. And then it went even further than that. It would assign a degree of likelihood,

[Greg Kelly]

the percentage probability that someone's cyber profile was in a certain place at a certain time.

[Sam Mullins]

Jayvion Rankin's intelligence value equals 98.45%.

[Greg Kelly]

Nothing I've ever seen gives out like some percentage of an opinion on something like that.

[Sam Mullins]

How did the report glean any of this information? It says that this is the cyber profile of Jayvion Rankin, but it does not say how they tied any of this information to Rankin. Because the CyberCheck report collected no evidence, it doesn't show its work.

[Greg Kelly]

So for example, if it found the identity of someone on a Facebook page, it didn't preserve that Facebook page. It just said, yeah, here's the link. And as we found going through it, we might, you know, we'd click on that link and Facebook page is gone.

[Sam Mullins]

How could anyone verify any of this information?

[Greg Kelly]

Well, that's actually where the whole battle started is because we had nothing to check. The black box to me was how do you go from that data to this percentage at the end of the day? Like, how is it built? What happens?

[Sam Mullins]

Don rushed down the hallway to get a gut check for from his colleague Noah Munier, who couldn't believe what he was seeing.

[Noah Munier]

If this was real, this would be a life defining technology that would change all law enforcement across the entire world. It would change everything. Like when DNA became real, it was always true, we just couldn't find it right once we found it. So same thing, it changed all cases.

[Sam Mullins]

This thing was saying that it knows where we are at all hours, how close we are to each other. It knows our movements not just online, but in physical space. And not just our movements today, but yesterday, last month, last year, last decade. For as long as there's been an Internet, all of it is considered the footprints of our quote, cyber profile. This report was saying that Big Brother is here, the eye of Sauron is watching you. And most concerning of all is that this omniscient beast is available to police without a court order or a warrant.

[Noah Munier]

I mean, this would be, it would be done, you know, it would be a changing the world situation.

[Sam Mullins]

But don't had a different reaction.

[Don Malarcic]

I'm like, bullshit. This is total bullshit.

[Sam Mullins]

Don had no way of knowing whether it was BS or not, but he had his gut, and he had Noah.

[Noah Munier]

Some people get anxious when the fight's coming. Like, I like it. What's the old adage like? Don't wrestle with a pig in the mud, because at some point, you'll both be covered in mud, and you realize at some point, the pig likes it and the pig.

[Sam Mullins]

But unfortunately for Don, this particular pig, in this particular moment, had all the mud he could handle.

[Noah Munier]

We all had so many murder cases because they were just getting stacked up. So I think I had, I don't know, 14 or 15 murders pending.

[Sam Mullins]

Noah couldn't help, so it became apparent that it was time to throw something to the new kid. The extremely new kid. Seriously, Is that kid even old enough to work here?

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Yeah.

[Marie Dicola]

So my name is Marie dicola, and I am an attorney at the Ohio defense firm in Akron, Ohio.

[Sam Mullins]

Marie is an attorney now, but at this point, she was just a paralegal, yet to be assigned to a task in the office.

[Marie Dicola]

The first assignment he gave me in this office was Cybercheck.

[Sam Mullins]

When Marie was a teenager, she was obsessed with, uh, oh, true crime podcasts and documentaries. Obsessed. So much so that she began to wonder if there was a way to be immersed in this stuff all the time.

[Marie Dicola]

I really thought about, you know, do I want to be a detective? Do I want to be, you know, what? Do I want to be where I can be in this field?

[Sam Mullins]

When she was first hired by Ohio defense firm, Marie would sit at her desk waiting for. For her chance to shine. And then opportunity was knocking, or rather, it was shouting down the hallway, marie, get in here.

[Marie Dicola]

I remember I came into Don's office, and he said, they're trying to use this thing called Cybercheck. It's total bullshit. I don't really know how it works. I don't think anyone does, but I just need help in research and whatever.

[Sam Mullins]

Help in research and whatever.

[Marie Dicola]

And I was like, yes. Like, okay, this is my chance to get in with Don Malarcic.

[Sam Mullins]

It was mysterious and murder adjacent and therefore right up her alley. The boss's original ask was simple enough. What the hell is

[Marie Dicola]

was just this abstract thing that we were still just trying to figure out what it even was. I was thinking, certainly this has been used somewhere and in Ohio, because if the Summit county prosecutor's office is using it, where did they get it? There has to be a trail of it somewhere.

[Sam Mullins]

So Marie got to do her favorite thing. She sat down with her laptop with a mystery to solve.

[Marie Dicola]

So I started my research using, like, LexisNexis and Westlaw. Which are legal research platforms, like for attorneys. And I typed in Cybercheck, thinking, you know, maybe there'll be a case somewhere in Ohio. And there wasn't anything. So I expanded my search. Okay, what about in the United States? And there wasn't anything.

[Sam Mullins]

Nothing anywhere in America.

[Marie Dicola]

Because there had never been a case that had used Cybercheck.

[Sam Mullins]

So that could only mean one of two equally troubling things. Either this thing is being used everywhere, but is being kept under such an unprecedented amount of wraps and NDAs and top secret security clearance that it's invisible, or Akron is the only place this thing exists.

[Marie Dicola]

And, you know, that's why when I took to Google and I was googling, what is Cybercheck?

[Sam Mullins]

The parent company seemed to be called Global Intelligence. And also of note, the company appeared to be based not in Silicon Valley or somewhere you would expect, but Canada. Weird.

[Marie Dicola]

And, you know, trying to find employees that worked there and articles in Canada and anywhere and anything.

[Sam Mullins]

There was nothing in Canada either.

[Marie Dicola]

I remember being frustrated. Like, dang it,

[Sam Mullins]

Don had been doing his own research, and he'd also failed to find out anything. Could they actually be facing something totally new? So they got into it together.

[Marie Dicola]

Don and I were Googling, like, what is artificial intelligence? What is AI? What are algorithms? I mean, we're on Wikipedia. We don't know. I mean, Don can't turn on his computer, and we're trying to figure out what an algorithm is. I mean, it's like we are. Like we have no idea what we're talking about.

[Sam Mullins]

It's charming to think of those halcyon days of three years ago when you could Google something like, what is AI? Back when, One, that was a reasonable thing to not know, and two, AI wouldn't be the thing answering your query. This was the moment before picture Don and Marie huddled around the computer screen, laughing to themselves about how out of their depth they were. And then there was Noah, down the hallway surrounded by mountains of boxes and murder case files, the physical embodiment of the backlog the city was was dealing with. Every desk of every person in the whole Akron criminal justice pipeline was cluttered. But at the police station, things were starting to move. And the police were contacting people like Cheryl, Maya's mother, to tell them that good things were about to happen in their loved ones cases they apparently paid for exposure.

[Cheryl Rosbeck / Stephanie Warsmith / Other Interviewees]

Expensive AI stuff from Canada to solve this crap.

[Sam Mullins]

AI is dangerous when it goes unchecked. You can never take AI at face value, ever. That's coming up on this season of Uncover. You've been listening to the expert witness from cbc's uncovered. The series is produced by raw for cbc. The show was written and hosted by me, sam mullins. Our producer is david waters. The series was developed and reported by david waters and jessica hatcher. Our editor is veronica simmons. Coordinating producer is emily kinnell. Mix by garrett tiedemann at raw. Deborah dudgeon is the head of podcasts. The production executive is letitia kidza souza. Special thanks to emma wood and olivia bouton. Additional audio from 19news 3news, news 5, cleveland, cbc news, wkyc, wso, ctv and wbrz at cbc. The executive producers are cecil fernandez and chris oak. Tanya springer is the senior manager and arif noorani is the director of cbc podcasts. That was the first episode of the Expert Witness. If you like what you heard, Episode two is waiting for you right now in the Uncover feed. Just search for Uncover wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow the feed so you don't miss an episode. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.