Hard-hitting software: Unique database helps prosecutors organize evidence

05/23/2001

By Bob Golfen / Arizona Republic

PHOENIX – A Scottsdale software company recently helped convict a former Ku Klux Klan member in the 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls.

A unique database developed by winForce Technology helped the U.S. attorney's office in Birmingham organize the enormous amount of evidence, testimony and historical data that helped convict Thomas Blanton Jr., 62, in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

The bombing was the nation's deadliest single act of violence during the civil rights era.

The database, called winForce! for electronic case investigations database, was created by company founder John Stevens, a former senior assistant U.S. attorney for Arizona. He developed it as a tool for prosecuting his own complex cases.

"In 1985, my first case in Washington on the court side was a massive racketeering case, and we had rooms filled with stuff we had to go through," Mr. Stevens said. "When we finally got convictions, it had eaten up a year of my life and a year in the lives of my colleagues. I said there has to be a better way."

Mr. Stevens, 49, said he began learning the ropes of computer programming when laptops became available for courtroom use.

"I literally taught myself database design and programming," he said. "It was a case of enlightened self-interest."

winForce is designed to not only store and organize all the data needed in a criminal case, but also to continuously update the material with courtroom notes, interviews and testimony. In the courtroom, a single laptop can replace legal assistants running back and forth with documents.

"Lawyers are constantly looking for stuff, and it drives them crazy," Mr. Stevens said. "With winForce, everything is at their fingertips."

Bill Smith, litigation support specialist for the U.S. attorney in northern Alabama, said winForce's software was essential in sorting through nearly 11,000 pages of evidence, some of which was 38 years old.

"I can't imagine how you would do it manually," said Mr. Smith, who discovered the winForce software before the trial at a U.S. Justice Department demonstration.

Mr. Stevens said that the use of winForce in the Alabama hate-crime case is especially gratifying.

"I feel very proud," Mr. Stevens said. "It's the highest purpose to assist in bringing someone like that to justice."

Distributed by the Associated Press.