"Mr. Battaglia controls that pretty well," I said, knowing that my boss played the press like a Stradivarius.

"When Amber left you that evening, what time was it?"

"A little after midnight," Ackerman said. "She arrived at eleven o'clock, I'm quite certain of that."

"There'll be a record of when she signed out."

"Probably so."

"And you, did you leave with her?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no. I see where you're going with that, Ms. Cooper. No, no. Even if I walked her out to get a cab, which I may have done. I sometimes did that, as a gentleman would. But I'm sure I went back to my office to lock up."

"Did Amber tell you where she was going?" I asked, my hand on the doorknob as I tried to escort Herb Ackerman from the room.

"She was meeting someone for a drink. She was mad at her boyfriend, I know that. I think she was planning to meet someone at another bar. Maybe she was trying to make the man jealous. Amber knew just what buttons to push.

Today we're going to travel back in time," I told the jurors.

Sixteen people in the box, twelve regular jurors and four alternates. There were an even number of men and women, a racially diverse mix of New Yorkers, but only four of the group had been born at the time Kerry Hastings was raped.

There were few spectators in the room. The trial of an aspiring rap star who had shot up a Midtown nightclub when the manager tried to throw him out had drawn reporters to the courthouse across the street.

That was good news for Hastings, who had no interest in reliving her assault so publicly. But I couldn't ignore the presence of a young man who glared at me from the front-row bench. I recognized him from yesterday's pack of Latin Princes. He had passed through the hallway metal detector, which gave me some level of comfort, but I knew he wasn't there to root for my case

"The events that the witnesses will describe to you took place in the early morning hours of July 10, 1973. You will meet Kerry Hastings," I said, outlining some of her background in my opening statement for the people who would soon hear her story, "who was twenty-two years old on the night that Floyd Warren changed the course of her young life"

"Let me give you some context of the times during which these crimes occurred. The president of the United States was Richard Nixon," I began. I had tested the almanac listings of that year on my summer intern, a college student. She didn't seem to know who Spiro Agnew was, so I left out the fact of his resignation and the subsequent Saturday Night Massacre. The ceasefire ending the involvement of American ground troops in Vietnam didn't register very well either, in light of more recent military engagements"

"A first-class stamp cost eight cents, Elvis-Elvis Presley, not Costello-was a sellout nearby at the Nassau Coliseum, and The Godfather won the Oscar for the year's best movie," I said, making eye contact with the several jurors who had listed film as among their favorite hobbies in the voir dire questions.

And I nodded at number six, the bus driver who spent most of his afternoons at an Off-Track Betting parlor in his neighborhood, when I told them that Secretariat had captured the Triple Crown, the last time that feat had been accomplished in horse racing.

I told them what the prosecution case would prove, in colder, more clinical terms than the excruciating details they would hear from the mouth of Kerry Hastings. I read to them the charges-rape and sodomy, burglary and robbery-in the indictment returned by a grand jury, what used to be called a "blue-ribbon panel" of carefully selected citizens during the thirty-year reign of District Attorney Frank Hogan

"We will prove these charges by the testimony of witnesses who will tell you what they experienced through each of their five senses: what they saw, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled on that unbearable morning-and in the days and years that followed"

"You will hear from police officers, a doctor, and forensic biologists. You will see crime scene photographs and physical evidence that you can examine yourselves-things that will take you back to the tiny room in which these life-threatening acts occurred." I was standing in front of the jury box as I turned to the defendant and his counsel. I started to walk toward Gene Grassley, knowing that the sixteen triers of fact would follow my movement, would look at Floyd Warren when I pointed at him and accused him of the crimes

"You will hear from police officers-now retired-who responded to the 911 call made by a neighbor when Kerry Hastings's muffled screams pierced the warm night air. They will both tell you how they chased this defendant from the front door of Ms. Hastings's building, as he crossed the street and vaulted a chain-link fence, trying to escape them but getting caught less than a city block away. He had six dollars in his pants pocket, and there was a serrated steak knife that he had discarded on the ground in the course of his flight."

I watched as the jurors looked at Warren. He was dressed in a denim shirt, with an orange macramé kufi cap. He met their stares head-on, shaking his head from side to side. He no longer looked able to scale a seven-foot schoolyard fence

"And while Kerry Hastings's case grew cold, while justice stalled, science kept moving forward with a revolutionary technology called DNA." I gave the jurors the bare bones of the people's case. I wanted to pique their interest, engage them on the victim's behalf, and impress upon them the facts we would present

"And I will stand before you at the end of this case, when I have proven Floyd Warren's guilt beyond any doubt, and ask you to convict him of each of these crimes with which he is charged."

As I took my place at counsel table, I noticed that two more of the Latin Princes had entered the room. There were no words emblazoned on their chests today, just the image of a dagger, half covered in blood, on the black background of the T-shirts. A court officer stood behind my chair, facing them.

I tried to concentrate on Grassley's opening.

His remarks were short and he spoke in generalities, urging each of the jurors to keep an open mind. He knew that my evidence was overwhelming, and he was up against the dazzling science of genetic fingerprinting

You may call your first witness, Ms. Cooper."

"The people call Kerry Hastings, Your Honor."

One of the court officers went to the side door that led to the witness waiting room. When he came back in, every head but mine turned to Hastings, to inspect her, as she walked into the well of the courtroom, approached the stand, and was sworn in.

I rose to bring my notes to the lectern. I could see now that there were eight gang members in the room, along with a handful of my colleagues. It worried me that the group would try to stage any kind of outburst while Kerry Hastings was testifying.

For almost fifteen minutes, I took her through the basic information of her background-her education, her training, her impressive résumé of publications and academic awards. Her poise and dignity belied the anger that she had described to me, the anger she had carried internally for three decades. This jury was meeting a mature adult, robbed of a life she had planned for herself when her youthful dreams were shattered by Floyd Warren's brutality.

I had her describe how she went to sleep the night she was raped and what had awakened her.

"I heard a noise on the fire escape. My bed was right next to the window, and because it was such a warm night, I had left it open."

As she answered my questions, the young man in the front row began to cough.

"What kind of noise was it?" I asked her.

"It sounded like something rattling against the metal grating. That's when I opened my eyes."