Judge Gold makes it official. “Ladies and gentlemen, ordinarily you are entitled to know how an expert performed his or her work,” he says, facing the jury. “However, in this case, I side with the national security concerns and therefore rule that this witness need not divulge the steps that led to his conclusions. You are not to make any negative inference regarding the work performed by this witness based on my ruling. Instead, trust that he did this work in a professional manner, and that the information retrieved from Lauren Wright’s phone that has been presented here is, in fact, the information that was contained on that phone.”

With that green light, I spend the next hour going back through the key text messages. Obviously, Izikson has nothing to add substantively to Lauren and Dana’s correspondence, but I lay the foundation that each one was indeed found on Lauren’s iPhone, and that the time stamp is accurate, as are the sender and recipient information.

And then, at last, the moment that all of this has been leading to is at hand. The introduction of the last text message Lauren Wright ever received and sent.

There are eight screens around the courtroom, which makes it look a bit like a sports bar. Instead of a football game, though, the TVs project the text that is at the heart of the prosecution’s case.

NEED TO SEE YOU ASAP!!! DUCK POND. I’M ALREADY HERE. PLEASE COME! IT’S URGENT!!!

And underneath is Lauren’s response.

BE THERE IN 5

“Does Ms. Wright’s phone indicate who sent the message asking that she meet at the duck pond?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“And who sent—”

“Objection,” Burrows says.

His tone is halfhearted. He’s only objecting for the record, so that he preserves this issue for appeal. He knows it’s going to be overruled, which it is.

I want the question and answer to be in sequence, so I repeat the question. “Mr. Izikson, once again, who sent this message to Ms. Wright? The message requesting that she meet at the duck pond?”

“Dana Goodwin sent it,” Izikson says.

When it’s Burrows’s turn to conduct his cross-examination, he handles Izikson in the shortest amount of time possible. In fact, he asks only one actual question, although Burrows rephrases it numerous times.

The point he’s trying to make, of course, is that no amount of security expertise can ascertain who authored a text. All anyone knows is the device it was sent from.

I had instructed Izikson not to fight Burrows on that. As a result, he concedes that he didn’t see who actually typed the letters into the phone. All he knows is that it was sent from Dana Goodwin’s phone.