S37 E2: Don’s Copy | The Expert Witness

Summary

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The Expert Witness from Uncover

S37 E2: Don’s Copy | The Expert Witness

Host: Sam Mullins (CBC)
Date: May 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the arrival of AI technology—specifically, the tool known as “CyberCheck”—as an expert witness in the criminal justice system. Through a narrative connecting cases in Boulder, Colorado, and Akron, Ohio, host Sam Mullins details the growing scrutiny, confusion, and skepticism surrounding this algorithmic “expert,” the man behind it, and the high stakes for defendants, lawyers, and prosecutors. The episode explores how untested technology threatens defendants’ rights and exposes weaknesses in the system's willingness to trust a “black box” AI.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Introducing the Players and Their Dilemma

(00:16 – 02:23)

• Eric Zale (Boulder, CO defense attorney):
  Zale is thrust into a bewildering case in 2021: his client, accused of possession of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), has no such content on his returned devices. The only evidence is a “CyberCheck report.”
• Initial disbelief:

  “There was nothing on the devices, There was no nexus or connection. ... All they had was cybercheck saying, here these images are, and we got them from him. ... This doesn't make any sense to me.” (Eric Zale, 02:23)

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2. Prosecutors Seek Answers From the Source

(03:01 – 06:47)

• Breck Resch (Boulder prosecutor):
  Tasked with handling difficult crimes, Resch is immediately intrigued when local law enforcement touts CyberCheck’s abilities to uncover those who are otherwise “too technologically savvy.”
• Doubts arise:
  She talks directly with the tool’s creator, Adam Mosher, but struggles to understand and verify the actual workings of the AI.

  “I am fairly technologically incompetent. ... The technology really is above a layperson's knowledge.” (Breck Resch, 05:54 and 06:32)

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3. Nobody Understands the Black Box

(07:11 – 10:13)

• Defense attempts to investigate:
  Zale can’t find any peer, public defender, or expert who has even heard of CyberCheck. He retains an investigator.
• Prosecution’s frustration:
  Resch’s requests for transparency go unmet—Mosher gives only “generic PowerPoint presentations.”

  “It was kind of like the emperor's new clothes.” (Breck Resch, 09:47)

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4. Devastating Human Impact

(10:13 – 11:49)

• Defendants’ lives derailed:
  The consequences of a CyberCheck accusation manifest quickly and dramatically, causing loss of employment, family, and public standing—before trial even occurs.

  “When the government shows up and arrests you and a judge signs off on a warrant, everyone thinks you did it. That power of that accusation is immense and life altering.” (Eric Zale, 11:30)

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5. Tracing the Origins of CyberCheck

(11:59 – 13:10)

• Skepticism grows:
  Investigation reveals Mosher and CyberCheck are from a small Canadian company with big claims but little public record.

  “They were claiming technology that, quite frankly, seemed implausible.” (Eric Zale, 11:59)

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6. The Don’s Copy Chronicles: Picking Apart the Testimony

(13:43 – 21:27)

• Don (Akron defense attorney):
  Don receives trial transcripts of Mosher’s past testimonies, not code or technical documents—leading to margin notes full of “WTF” and skepticism:

  “You'll see a lot of WTF when Mosher claims that CyberCheck returns information with an 80% or higher accuracy rating.” (Don, 17:31)

• Ridiculing unverifiable claims:

  “He's using words that are just made up, right? Like cyber profile. I mean, that's a made up word.” (Don, 17:51)

• Mosher’s vague credentials:
  Don highlights the lack of clarity in Mosher’s background and alleged expertise, turning investigation to Mosher’s supposed “satellite offices”—with no leads found:

  “It was like chasing a ghost. ... It was really like trying to grab onto smoke.” (Don, 21:08 and 21:18)

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7. Showdown in the Courtroom: Challenging Admissibility

(21:27 – 26:56)

• Transparency and evidence demanded (Boulder & Akron):
  Defense lawyers request the CyberCheck source code and algorithm for scrutiny; prosecutors claim it is “proprietary.”

  “I want the algorithms and the information of his software so that I can try to replicate this. ... The prosecutor basically said he won't give it to me because it's proprietary.” (Eric Zale, 21:52 and 22:20)

• Judicial skepticism:
  Judges, initially hesitant, begin requiring Mosher to disclose cases where he’s testified or, in one critical case (Jayvion Rankin), order that CyberCheck’s code be produced for the evidence to be admissible.

  “The judge sided with the prosecutor, but Judge Salamoni was very specific that she wanted a list of the cases where Adam Mosher had testified as an expert, which is ultimately what broke the case apart.” (Eric Zale, 23:24 and 23:36)

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8. Cracks in CyberCheck’s Legal Armor

(24:30 – 27:49)

• Key victory for the defense:
  Don succeeds in getting the judge to demand access to CyberCheck’s innards. Mosher refuses, so his client (Jayvion Rankin) is released from jail—at least temporarily.

  “The only way that she would allow cybercheck to be used as evidence in this case was if the defense could see inside it. ... Jayvion Rankin was free to leave jail and go home. At least for now.” (Sam Mullins, 27:25 and 27:55)

• Broader implications:
  CyberCheck is revealed to be in use against many mostly Black men accused in cold cases, not because of new evidence, but because the AI “pointed in their direction.” (29:14)

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9. Breakthrough and Takeaway

(30:01 – End)

• Media coverage exposes CyberCheck’s reach:
  A news article about Don’s court win triggers a Google alert back in Colorado, connecting attorneys and fueling cross-country skepticism.

  “And the reader smiled as he saw it. Welcome to the party. Don.” (Sam Mullins, 30:07)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |:---------:|-------|---------| |02:23| “All they had was cybercheck saying, here these images are, and we got them from him. ... My initial gut check was that this is something that is not true.” | Eric Zale| |05:54| “I am fairly technologically incompetent. ... It was kind of an uphill battle for me because I wasn't understanding the technology.” | Breck Resch| |09:47| “Neither the detectives nor I nor an investigator was able to actually see what we were being told. It was kind of like the emperor's new clothes.” | Breck Resch| |10:44| “From the beginning, [my client] had expressed his innocence unequivocal.” | Eric Zale| |11:30| “When the government shows up and arrests you and a judge signs off on a warrant, everyone thinks you did it. That power of that accusation is immense and life altering.” | Eric Zale| |13:43| “They couldn't find anything on the Internet to help them figure out what cybercheck was or how it worked, so they had to settle for the only documents that they did have that explained cybercheck.” | Sam Mullins| |17:31| “You'll see a lot of WTF when Mosher claims that CyberCheck returns information with an 80% or higher accuracy rating.” | Don| |21:08| “It was like chasing a ghost.” | Don| |22:20| “The prosecutor basically said he won't give it to me because it's proprietary.” | Eric Zale| |23:36| “The judge ... wanted a list of the cases where Adam Mosher had testified as an expert, which is ultimately what broke the case apart.” | Eric Zale| |24:16| “I'm like, oh, fuck you. I mean, this is your evidence. You want to submit it, you've got to go get it.” | Don| |27:25| “The only way that she would allow cybercheck to be used as evidence in this case was if the defense could see inside it.” | Sam Mullins| |27:55| “Jayvion Rankin was free to leave jail and go home. At least for now.” | Sam Mullins| |29:14| “Other lawyers ... were now seeing it, too. Mostly black male defendants ... arrested on cold case murders ... because CyberCheck had pointed in their direction.” | Sam Mullins| |30:07| “And the reader smiled as he saw it. Welcome to the party, Don.” | Sam Mullins|

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:16 – 02:23: Introduction of Zale and the baffling CyberCheck case
• 03:01 – 06:47: Prosecutor’s struggle to vet CyberCheck and Adam Mosher
• 07:11 – 10:13: Investigation reveals near total lack of information or transparency
• 11:00 – 11:49: Human cost to accused individuals
• 13:43 – 21:27: The saga of “Don’s copy”—attorneys dissect CyberCheck testimony and Mosher’s credentials
• 21:27 – 24:16: Showdown for code disclosure in court, judicial attitudes
• 24:30 – 27:55: Successful legal motion: AI evidence excluded/unavailable, defendant freed
• 29:14 – 30:07: Broader use of CyberCheck and legal challenges emerge across jurisdictions

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Episode Takeaways

• Blind trust in AI in criminal justice is rife with pitfalls. Even officials and legal experts find the technology and its creators opaque, untestable, and suspicious.
• The legal consequences—social, professional, personal—for the accused are dire, even before trial.
• Transparency and adversarial scrutiny are critical. Judges begin to demand “source code” and proven expertise before allowing such technology into court.
• CyberCheck’s application is broadening across cases, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups, especially Black men in cold cases, absent new evidence.
• Grassroots reporting and cross-jurisdictional cooperation are helping defense attorneys challenge the evidence and connect the dots.

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Original, candid language and the skeptical, darkly witty tone of the episode are preserved throughout.

Transcript

[Breck Resch]

Support is available 24.

[Eric Zale]

7 with VRBoCare.

[Breck Resch]

We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help. Because a great trip starts with the right support.

[Sam Mullins]

This is a CBC podcast. We begin somewhere completely different with a different guy who lives in the mountains in a parallel universe called Colorado.

[Eric Zale]

My name is Eric Zale. I am an attorney in a small two person law firm in Boulder, Colorado.

[Sam Mullins]

Boulder is over 1000 miles away from Akron and is an even further distance culturally from Summit County's stack of unsolved murders.

[Eric Zale]

There isn't a ton of violent crime. There's not a lot of, like, homicides and home invasions and robberies and sexual assaults and stuff. That's kind of why I'm here. Just trying to raise a family and, you know, not work too hard.

[Sam Mullins]

So this is Eric Zale, small firm, doing important work. Lots of mountain biking. All right. His entry into our story begins in 2021, when someone he'd never met before called him up out of the blue

[Eric Zale]

and was under investigation for possession of child pornography.

[Sam Mullins]

Zale took the case. His client turned over his computer and smartphone to the cops, and when they were given back to him, there was

[Eric Zale]

no child sexual exploitative material on the devices.

[Sam Mullins]

But then, surprisingly, rather than drop the charges, the police arrested him and he was named in the press.

[Eric Zale]

In the affidavit for the arrest warrant, they had talked about cybercheck and I had never seen that before.

[Sam Mullins]

Zaelle was sent a full cyber check report by the prosecution. So he read it and tried to make sense of it.

[Eric Zale]

Based upon this report, they had procured evidence that my client had accessed certain CSAM or child sexual exploitative materials.

[Sam Mullins]

It was baffling to him, not because of what it alleged, but because it was the only thing they sent.

[Eric Zale]

The cybercheck report was the sole piece of evidence in my case. There was nothing on the devices, There was no nexus or connection. There was nothing. All they had was cybercheck saying, here these images are, and we got them from him. And when I saw that, I was like, this doesn't make any sense to me. I probably would have used some profanity. But my initial gut check was that this is something that is not true.

[Sam Mullins]

I'm Sam MULLINS and from CBC's uncover, this is the Expert Witness episode two, Don's Copy. In 2021, Megan Resch, who goes by the name of Breck, was a prosecutor in Boulder, Colorado.

[Breck Resch]

I prosecuted there for a little over six years, but I've been practicing for about 15 or 16 at this point.

[Sam Mullins]

And Breck's particular beat in the prosecutor's office was an especially heavy one, with the most monstrous crimes imaginable.

[Breck Resch]

I was doing sex assaults, child crimes, things like that.

[Sam Mullins]

Difficult work made all the harder by bumping into the same issue again and again on her cases.

[Breck Resch]

It's not as easy as raiding somebody's home and finding a thumb drive with hundreds of images of csam.

[Sam Mullins]

These online predators were getting too good at covering their tracks.

[Breck Resch]

You are going to have people that are very technologically savvy and look at it on the dark web or share it in these forums that otherwise might not be downloaded on your computer.

[Sam Mullins]

But then, in the fall of 2021, Breck heard her colleagues talking about something new that could catch these guys when they least expected it.

[Breck Resch]

And so that was why cybercheck was so attractive.

[Sam Mullins]

Some local police in Longmont, outside of Boulder, had signed up for this new thing capable of finding the predators operating deep in the dark web and that it could connect their actions to their real life identities.

[Breck Resch]

It seemed to provide law enforcement with the ability to make that connection. It's like, oh, my gosh, this is great. This is exactly what we need.

[Sam Mullins]

But Brett couldn't help wondering, was this something she could actually use in court?

[Breck Resch]

I started to kind of dig down and see what cybertruck was all about and kind of educate myself a little bit more about it.

[Sam Mullins]

When she got into it, Breck learned that the investigators had been working with the creator of the tech himself, A Canadian named Adam Mosher.

[Breck Resch]

He's accommodating. He's charming, I guess, be a good word. He's very easy to talk to.

[Sam Mullins]

Over the coming weeks, Breck and Moser would sit and talk on video calls.

[Breck Resch]

He was, to his credit, quite patient in explaining cybercheck and what it meant.

[Sam Mullins]

Mosher appeared on her screen to be a man in his 40s. His voice was gruff, an unmistakably Atlantic Canadian. He was bespectacled, bald and available, always available to answer anything that Breck threw at him.

[Breck Resch]

Adam Mosher and I probably had, between zoom calls and phone calls, we probably spoke over a dozen times because, to be candid with you, I am fairly technologically incompetent. So it was kind of an uphill battle for me because I wasn't understanding the technology.

[Sam Mullins]

If Breck wanted to use this thing in court, she needed to at least sound like an expert on it. But even with her own private tutor, Breck kept coming away from their conversations, still not fully grasping what she just heard.

[Breck Resch]

I think it's difficult to understand and sit through this technology is not easy to break down and really understand. At least for me, the technology really is above a layperson's knowledge.

[Sam Mullins]

Breck cut herself some slack. The world of open source information and AI is not easy stuff for a novice to get right away. So she continued on, diligently writing her questions down for her next call with Moser. Meanwhile, in a different part of town, Zael was looking at the same report Breck was.

[Eric Zale]

So I started just kind of calling around. I called a friend of mine who was a state public defender, then a federal public defender and is an expert in federal child pornography. Then I asked all my friends, basically in the metro area, not just in Boulder, but in Denver and elsewhere, if anyone had ever heard of it. And no one had ever heard of this before,

[Sam Mullins]

Zael wondered, was Longmont Police Department policing a sleepy population of less than 100,000 people really the world's first crime fighting unit? To wield a game changer like this, it seemed unlikely.

[Eric Zale]

And so that's when I retained an investigator and an expert.

[Sam Mullins]

Zael brought them up to speed and they set out.

[Eric Zale]

So we started to look into CyberCheck because no one had heard of it. So we were really starting from scratch.

[Sam Mullins]

Across the aisle, Breck was considering hiring an investigator herself. After having interacted so much with Mosher, she began to notice some concerning patterns.

[Breck Resch]

He's very easy to talk to. He is also someone that makes promises and doesn't keep them.

[Sam Mullins]

Mosure has his own version of how things went down here in Colorado and elsewhere, but that's for later. For Breck. In this moment, though, it felt like whenever she needed something tangible from MoSure, the same thing would happen.

[Breck Resch]

She continued to tell me, yes, I'll send that to you tomorrow, or I'll send you this or I'll send you that or I'll send you that specific Zidio that I found and never did.

[Sam Mullins]

When she'd follow up or express concerns,

[Breck Resch]

I kept being given generic PowerPoint presentations and printouts generally showing Fiber Check's capabilities.

[Sam Mullins]

She'd hang up the phone from Mosher and be like, we just spoke for half an hour and I gained nothing.

[Breck Resch]

He never actually provided anything of that substance at all. What I was getting was a very general overview of what it should be doing. And I never actually got any results that helped me verify that the information was legit.

[Sam Mullins]

It got to the point where Breck was forced to take a step back and be like, am I the only person that can't figure out how this is useful. So she brought on some help. And it turned out it wasn't just her.

[Breck Resch]

Neither the detectives nor I nor an investigator was able to actually see what we were being told. It was kind of like the emperor's new clothes.

[Sam Mullins]

Everyone's like, check out the new fit on the emperor, bro. That man is nude.

[Breck Resch]

Yeah. Certainly a red flag started to go off.

[Sam Mullins]

While the prosecutor's office were butting up against the realities of its shiny new thing, Eric's client, John Doe, was butting up against the reality that no matter how this turned out, his life was forever changed. Imagine one day out of the blue, you find out that the police are investigating you. And not only that, but they are investigating you and they're accusing you of. Of this kind of crime. For viewing these kinds of images of

[Eric Zale]

children from the beginning, had expressed his innocence unequivocal.

[Sam Mullins]

You have a job and a partner and children and a community. But suddenly he was in the media. They're publishing your photo.

[Eric Zale]

Boulder is 100,000 people, right? I mean, everyone knows everyone. And an accusation of being in possession of child pornography is because everyone thinks you did it, right?

[Sam Mullins]

First you lose your job.

[Eric Zale]

He had work issues as a result

[Sam Mullins]

of this, and then you lose everything else.

[Eric Zale]

He was kicked out of the house, couldn't see his kids, and all of

[Sam Mullins]

this happens before you've even faced a trial.

[Eric Zale]

That's just the simple reality, right? When the government shows up and arrests you and a judge signs off on a warrant, everyone thinks you did it. That power of that accusation is immense and life altering.

[Sam Mullins]

If all of this could be done on the merit of one report, Zael and his team wanted to get get to the bottom of where exactly it came from.

[Eric Zale]

So basically we found out it was a small Canadian company, it had a couple of people, and they were claiming technology that, quite frankly, seemed implausible.

[Sam Mullins]

Zale's belief that Mosher and his company were bogus continued to grow. But he didn't have anything to prove it. But then someone on Zale's new defense team did a very small, very smart thing that would prove to be tremendously useful. He set a Google alert for the word cybercheck. What if a marginal gain unlocked greater performance? What if an insight in data could change everything? At Aramco, our focus on detail helps us deliver reliable energy to millions across the world. Because margins aren't marginal. They're where we can truly push the limits of what's possible. Aramco, an integrated energy and chemicals company. Learn [e-mail] earn your Applied Bachelor's Degree

[Breck Resch]

in as little as 3 years fully online with Unity Environmental University. Gain cutting edge skills in less time with less tuition while learning on your own schedule. Visit unity.edu career edge to get started.

[Sam Mullins]

It won't shock you to learn that the copy machine is the rhythmic beating heart of any law office. When some of my friends became lawyers in our 20s, I used to imagine them center stage, starring in a courtroom drama every day, staring the jurors in the eyes, imploring them to consider their carefully spun story, or eviscerating a bad guy on the stand. You can't handle the truth, etc. Etc. But over the years, usually over a shared pint, my lawyer friends will paint a much less sexy picture for me. When I ask them how their work's going, they'll say, imagine reading documents. And while you're reading the documents, a paralegal will wheel into your office more boxes of more documents, all of which are required reading, none of which are enjoyable reading. And imagine this plays out into infinity. Or at least until a landslide of bankers boxes and highlighted packets mercifully will landslide toward your desk, burying you, taking your life, Obviously. I met most of my lawyer friends at theater school back in Akron. Don and Marie were about to create a document landslide of their own. They couldn't find anything on the Internet to help them figure out what cybercheck was or how it worked, so they had to settle for the only documents that they did have that explained cybercheck.

[Don]

All I had at that point was Adam Mosher's transcript from both of those murder trials in Summit County.

[Sam Mullins]

When Don went to his copy machine to print out the first two transcripts, he had no idea how many trees this cybercheck chapter in his life would ultimately kill. He didn't know that he'd lose a whole corner of his office to an imposing stack of boxes angrily labeled in Sharpie Cybershit. When it began, it was just with the first 70 pages and a prosecutor asking, could you please introduce yourself to the jury? My name is Adam Mosher, M O S H E R and I'm the CEO of a company called Global Intelligence. I have a copy of this court transcript, the first ever conviction that used cybercheck. Adaris Black, now in a cell for the rest of his life. This copy was given to me by Don. It's Don's copy. I know because it says in big block letters, Don's Copy.

[Don]

Because the last thing I want to do is give my copy with all my curse words on it.

[Sam Mullins]

To the judge, Don needs somewhere to put his feelings. And that place is Don's copy.

[Don]

And it's an expression of how pissed off I am as I'm reading this

[Sam Mullins]

in the margins of Mosher's testimony, as he explains how cybercheck works, Don's pen is emphatically writing the questions he thinks the defense counsel should have asked. Crucial questions like says who? And what the hell? Like when Moser claims that his AI product is better and faster than human investigators. Gtfoh Mosher goes so far as to say, if you have a thousand intelligence analysts and you put them in a room for 30 days, they will come up with this exact same information. F off. Don couldn't believe these statements went unchecked.

[Don]

You'll see a lot of WTF when

[Sam Mullins]

Mosher claims that CyberCheck returns information with an 80% or higher accuracy rating.

[Don]

You know, what the fuck?

[Sam Mullins]

According to who?

[Don]

Sometimes a question mark and an exclamation

[Sam Mullins]

point, completely made up number. Don writes in all caps, and if

[Don]

I'm really pissed off, it's in red. He's using words that are just made up, right? Like cyber profile. I mean, that's a made up word.

[Sam Mullins]

It wasn't just the pseudo tech word salad that raised Don's eyebrows. It was Mosher's origin story. As the prosecutor asked him questions with the intention of presenting him as a credible witness, a very fuzzy biography began to emerge. This Canadian, who no one had ever seen before, claimed to have spent the last 20 years of his life in the, quote, cyber forensic space. He mentioned that he had a police college background and that he'd spent, quote, a lot of time at various institutions honing his skills, accumulating what skills, where, how, what Don underlines in his copy. While Don's copy is an exercise in giving something your least generous read. When I read it, it struck me a little differently. To me, Mosher does seem to speak ably, articulately even. Maybe he doesn't have a gift for breaking things into layman's terms for a jury, but he speaks exactly like what he says. He is a texavant who'd made something that the world had never seen before, something capable of scouring the entire Internet, which would retrieve only the pertinent morsels of information and then lay the goods at his feet like a hound to its master. The tech was inside baseball. But Mosier, at least from Don's perspective, was something he could get started on. A physical human. He could be looked into. So Don flipped through his Rolodex to hit up one of his overqualified PIs.

[Don]

Former police officer, former employee of the Summit county prosecutor's office, was a private investigator for us.

[Sam Mullins]

How can this Mosier dude, who claims to have worked extensively with law enforcement, have no trace of anything about him anywhere?

[Don]

I said, here's Mosier. Here's his cv. Help me out, man. What's going on?

[Sam Mullins]

By this point, Don had read and re read the transcripts of Mosher's testimony from the murder trials a dozen times. And each time, there would be new details that would pop for him.

[Don]

Mosher, for instance, said that he had, like, a satellite office in Indiana. And I said to my investigator, go find this place. Is it a real building? I mean, what the fuck is going on? Are there employees? Are there people there? What is it? And who is he? There have to be some employees. Someone bumps into Moser in the elevator, find that person and talk to them.

[Sam Mullins]

So with his notebook, the investigator set out to see what he could find. But when he came back to Don, it was with a shrug.

[Don]

It was like chasing a ghost.

[Sam Mullins]

The PI explained that even when he did manage to track down people in Moser's orbit, he. He couldn't get anything out of them.

[Don]

He was so elusive, and we really couldn't get much traction. It was really like trying to grab onto smoke.

[Sam Mullins]

Meanwhile, in Boulder, Eric Zale finally went to see Breck Resch in the prosecutor's office to offer her his professional opinion.

[Eric Zale]

I think I told the prosecutor that he's a grifter.

[Breck Resch]

When you have a defense attorney who says your expert is a total fraud, and you kind of chuckle and say, okay, like, you need to provide me a little bit more information than that.

[Sam Mullins]

And Eric's like, no, you need to provide me with more information.

[Eric Zale]

I want the algorithms and the information of his software so that I can try to replicate this. Because the report that you've given me, I don't believe that he has the ability to produce this based upon what he's claiming.

[Sam Mullins]

You're saying that you can prove that my client went to these parts of the Internet to look at these types of illegal materials, and you did this through legal means? Prove it.

[Eric Zale]

Then the prosecutor basically said he won't give it to me because it's proprietary.

[Sam Mullins]

Wait, even the prosecutor's office hasn't been shown how it works. So Zael was like, screw this. I'm going to the channel judge.

[Eric Zale]

And I said, hey, judge, they need to give me not just this report, which is, like, prima facie implausible.

[Sam Mullins]

Lawyers Love their Latin.

[Eric Zale]

They need to give me the backstory to the report. I need the data, and I also need a bunch of other stuff as well. I need to know what other cases this was used in in the country, because I need to look up to see what happened.

[Sam Mullins]

And also we need to figure out whether or not Mosher has ever been in a courthouse before.

[Eric Zale]

I need to know if he's been qualified as an expert.

[Sam Mullins]

The judge was mostly unmoved.

[Eric Zale]

She said, you don't get the algorithms. You're not entitled to it at this stage.

[Breck Resch]

The judge sided with the prosecutor, but Judge Salamoni was very specific that she wanted a list of the cases where Adam Mosher had testified as an expert,

[Eric Zale]

which is ultimately what broke the case apart.

[Sam Mullins]

Meanwhile, in Akron, Don and Marie were working on the case of teenager Javion Rankin and had been having some very similar conversations in their parents parallel universe.

[Don]

Give me the software, give me the algorithms, give me the AI that Adam Mosher says does this incredible feat of putting my client at the scene of the crime. I need to examine it. The response we got was from the prosecutor's offices. Well, he doesn't work for us, so we don't have it.

[Sam Mullins]

Oh, you don't have the thing that places my client at the murder scene.

[Don]

I'm like, oh, fuck you. I mean, this is your evidence. You want to submit it, you've got to go get it. And they just refused.

[Sam Mullins]

By now, it's early summer, 2023, more than two years since Javion Rankin had been sat in a cell. And now a hearing on his case was scheduled that was to be attended by the judge, the prosecution, Don, and a surprise case guest.

[Don]

So I was in my office. Everybody was remote. No one was in the courtroom. And I said, I don't even know if they're going to bring Moser to this hearing, and if they do, should I cross examine him? And Noah was like, no. Why are you going to give that person an opportunity to speak?

[Sam Mullins]

Keep it simple. All you need to put out there is that this tool is unproven and untested. Get Cybertek thrown out. Get Jayvion home. Mosher appeared on the screen with his background blurred and scanned very plausibly as the CEO of an AI tech company, the perfect mix of tech geek and mirthless, measured law enforcement agent.

[Don]

And they just start asking Adam questions.

[Sam Mullins]

As Moser spoke, Don felt that familiar WTF energy that had so possessed him in the margins of of Don's copy.

[Don]

Every time he would move on to a New topic. It didn't really pass the smell test.

[Sam Mullins]

Noah and Marie shared an eye roll as they listened to Mosher.

[Don]

It's like digital gobbledygook speak.

[Breck Resch]

The intelligence loop cannot be broken. It can only be completed.

[Sam Mullins]

What does that mean?

[Don]

If the tools are a quiver and this is an arrow, none of it

[Breck Resch]

makes any sense to me.

[Don]

And it's these protracted analogies and so you never really get the thing.

[Sam Mullins]

Eventually, Don couldn't help himself.

[Don]

I knew I had to jump in and get in the ring with him and try to figure out what the hell this thing was. I was really kind of winging it. And I realized very quickly that Adam can't answer a yes or no question. It's impossible.

[Sam Mullins]

Don would ask a question and Mosher would just start monologuing again.

[Don]

I would stop him and say, adam, do you remember the question I asked? And sometimes he wouldn't even remember the question. I know as someone who's been cross examining people for 30 years, that that's a sign that they're lying.

[Sam Mullins]

It was a risk to cross Mosher, but this was exactly how Don hoped it would go.

[Don]

So now I'm watching the judge and I see the judge getting a little bit irritated, and now I know I'm onto something.

[Sam Mullins]

But then, with Mosher flailing for all to see, the hearing came to an abrupt end. And Don stood unsteadily, not knowing if any of the spaghetti he'd just thrown into the virtual courtroom would stick. The good news came shortly after Judge

[Don]

Rowlands said she was going to grant the motion to compel and order Adam Mosher to provide his software.

[Sam Mullins]

The only way that she would allow cybercheck to be used as evidence in this case was if the defense could see inside it. If Don was given full access to its source codes and algorithms, and Mosher was steadfastly refusing. And even better, while the prosecution was making an appeal, what must happen is

[Don]

the defendant, the accused, must be released on the signature bond.

[Sam Mullins]

Jayvion Rankin was free to leave jail and go home. At least for now. When you're a defense attorney, the victories can feel cruelly infrequent. But this, this was a good one. In Don's view. The police threw some weird Canadian technology at him, and Don was able to dikembi mutombo it out of here. Jayvion Rankin had to wear a judge ordered ankle monitor, but he was out. This was the system working, right?

[Don]

Okay, we gotta be done, but we're not.

[Sam Mullins]

Time would reveal that the Rankin case was but one shiny star in the galaxy of what Summit county had planned for their shiny new AI tool. The tell was sitting right there. Why did they appeal the judge's decision to throw cybercheck out? Why did they let someone charged with aggravated murder walk with a signature? Because they had big things in the queue.

[Don]

By this time. I have a second murder case, DeShawn Coleman. And I get a cybercheck report in that case, too.

[Sam Mullins]

And DeShawn Coleman wasn't the only defendant in Akron with a Cybercheck report appearing in his case file. A felon with a violent criminal history all over town. Other lawyers, like the attorneys for Philip Mendoza, Martell King, Ledley Lopez, Bobby Lee Bell Dier, Ray Antonio Miller, Rita Case, and Demonte and Demetrius Carr, were now seeing it, too. Mostly black male defendants who'd been arrested on cold case murders not because of new witnesses, DNA evidence, or the emergence of a new motive, but because CyberCheck had pointed in their direction.

[Eric Zale]

It wasn't until they utilized the new

[Breck Resch]

AI technology that they were able to arrest him.

[Sam Mullins]

But as luck should have it, Dawn's local newspaper did something that set off a very fortuitous chain reaction. They published a story about this Jayvion Rankin win. And that story acted as a flare, which set off a Google alert in a small office in Colorado set for the word cybercheck. And the reader smiled as he saw it. Welcome to the party. Don't. John Malarcic. You've been listening to the expert witness from cbc's uncover. 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 boutton. Additional audio from 19news 3news, news 5, cleveland, cbc news, wkyc, wsoctv, 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. Hey, guys. Sam here. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode, but between now and then, consider listening to one of the many excellent Uncover seasons that came before the Expert Witness. My personal favorite is the Village, which is season three. In it, host Justin Ling explores the numerous cases of missing and murdered men in Toronto's gay community dating back to the 1970s. You can find the village wherever you're listening to me now by scrolling back in your Uncover feed, or by finding the dropdown menu with all the Seasons. And make sure to follow us while you're at it. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.