The Trial

 While Credit Manager for Belk, I got a visit from a process server.  He gave me a document wanting records from our credit files for a particular Belk charge customer.  I called the legal department at our corporate office, who told me to comply with the request.
 It seemed that a woman from the Upstate had been raped in Columbia at a downtown motel.  She said that the man stole her wallet with her credit cards.  One of those cards was from Belk.  The request was for any activity on the card after it was stolen.  The trial was coming up, and I was called to testify.  I contacted the Greenville Belk store to get a copy of her credit application, which had her signature on it.  I then checked the records of charge sales from the date they told me of the crime to a few days out.  I found a purchase on her card from the day after her rape.  I got the receipt and compared the signature to the one on her credit application.  What I found was that a purchase had been made for a dress in her size and a Belkie Bear, which was a white teddy bear.  She had a small child at home.
 It was time for the trial, which was in the Richland County Courthouse.  I was called to testify on what I found.  The defense tried to destroy the credibility of the woman by saying her card was not stolen, when in fact she had used it the next day after the rape.  If she was lying about her card being stolen, maybe she was lying about the rape.  The lawyer for the woman called a professor from USC to testify on DNA.  This was the first trial in Richland County (and maybe SC) to use DNA technology.  He told the jury a lot of scientific stuff that went right over the head of those on the jury.  No one understood what he was talking about.  Even when the professor said that it was a three billion to one chance that the rapist didn't rape the woman, the jury still didn't understand.  So, when the verdict was read, the jury found the rapist not guilty.
 About eight months later, the man was to be tried again on a separate charge relating to the rape of the woman.  Once again, I was called to testify.  They gave me the court records of my testimony from the first time, and I basically read my earlier testimony in open court.  Then, the lawyer for the woman asked me one question:  "Were you personally there when these items were purchased?"  I said, "No", and the lawyer concluded that I could not assume that the woman actually bought those items.  I did not see her with my own eyes.  They then called the same professor from USC, and this time he explained DNA in a more understandable way to the jury.  The new jury found the rapist guilty, and he went to jail.
 I felt badly for the woman, because it turned out that the reason she had lied about her Belk card being stolen was that she wanted to hide her purchases from her husband.  She testified on the stand that she did in fact buy those items and hid them in the trunk of her car until she could sneak them into her house.  I also felt badly, because my testimony had helped sew doubt in the minds of the jury about what had happened to her.  Thankfully, the new jury understood DNA, so my testimony didn't matter as much the second time around.