Diana Trenchant finished making a note and then said, "Yes, I have some closing words, but first, I want to point out that I was given no opportunity to present rebuttal witness as you did."
Anuse shifted in his seat, then carefully and slowly, as if he were speaking to a retarded person, said, "You misunderstand. They were not rebuttal witnesses. We had them come to clarify things that your witnesses said."
Bull! thought Diana. Aloud, she continued, "They contradicted some of my evidence and I was not given a chance to CLARIFY their testimony with my witnesses."
What is she trying to pull now, Henry moaned to himself, but much to his surprise, Diana pulled her notes in front of her and began her closing remarks.
"Now, for the first charge—that I created false SmurFFs. I have shown that the document examiner erred regarding the 'suspect' SmurFFs they examined. One, at least, was a recognized student written evaluation. Therefore, their opinion on all of the documents is open to question. Several witnesses have testified as to the wrist injury I sustained, showing that I could not have written the two SmurFFs Lyle said he found in the course last year.
"Also, the 'suspect' SmurFFs from previous years are highly dubious as evidence of anything. They are not dated and there has been no discernible chain of custody established. Ian could not even identify them and disagreed with Randy that they were somehow different from the rest of the evaluations received.
"I remind you again that document examiners are not infallible and that only a couple of small examples of my handwriting were submitted to them that were NOT copies. We have just seen that Lyle had other examples of original writing of mine. Why didn't they submit original writing as standards or better yet, authenticate the standards by having them written in the presence of the document examiner?
"In point of fact, none of the writing used as standards were authenticated and this makes them moot.
"The second charge, that I submitted these 'suspect' documents as student SmurFFs, is unproven. That is because none of the student SmurFFs for those years in question can be validated. This is because of the way the evaluation process is administered. Therefore, a chain of custody for the so-called suspicious SmurFF's was not and cannot be established.
"In the 25 years that I have worked at this university, I have never been accused of dishonesty. My work has not been criticized. My teaching ability has always been praised. The biggest criticism that I have received is that I am at times abrasive.