I agree with you and (since the Groklaw reporter said the jury were smiling
and nodding much more for Dr. Parr's testimony that for Dr. Mitchell's) I
suspect the jury did too. Dr. Mitchell's testimony and the Oracle
cross-examination of Dr. Parr relied confusion tactics such as establishing
invalid/irrelevant associations in the mind of the jury (i.e. overemphasizing
the name of Dalvik's Simulate [class/method?] that called the pattern matching
class.method to do the actual array initialization) or the whole "dynamic"
execution argument. Oracle and Mitchell twisted word meanings to an extent that
would make a contortionist from Cirque du Soleil's Kooza jealous.
What
concerns me is that a significant portion of the use of expert witnesses in
court is effectively as an Argument from Authority. Dr. Mitchell holds a senior
faculty position in Stanford, a university with an august background in computer
science and computer engineering that served as an incubator for many Sillicon
Valley firms and entrepreneurs (MIPS, Google, and many others) and jurors in
San Francisco are likely to be aware of that. Thus, Dr. Mitchell has copious
amounts of authority, and it may be difficult for some jurors to set that aside
and look at his testimony dispassionately. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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