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Friday, March 03, 2006

Courts - More on Unfinished or Lost Transcripts

On Nov. 25, 2005 the ILB had an entry titled "Unfinished Transcripts May Nullify Convictions in Colorado," quoting from an LA Times story about "an Achilles' heel of the criminal justice system — its reliance on fallible humans to create a permanent record of legal proceedings." The story included some examples:

In Florida in 2003, a woman convicted of drug possession won a retrial because the transcribing machine used by the court reporter in her case broke down, which garbled the notes. That same year in Charlotte, N.C., a court reporter's notes were stolen from a courthouse, leading to a new trial for a man convicted of first-degree murder. And in 1998, another court reporter in Arapahoe County failed to finish a transcript of a case that was appealed. The district attorney's office filed felony charges against the reporter, but the reporter moved to Virginia and was never prosecuted.

Many states have moved to replace court reporters with recording devices, arguing that machines are more reliable, and cheaper. But even digital recorders can cause problems. Last year, prosecutors found that a digital recorder omitted an hour of testimony in a murder case in Multnomah County, Ore., and several cases in Naples, Fla., had to be retried because recorders failed there.

Yesterday the Supreme Court of Florida decided a case, Jones v. State of Florida, involving a computer crash that erased part of a trial transcript, ruling, according to this AP story, that the loss was "insufficient reason to order a new trial in a criminal case, [according to] a sharply divided Florida Supreme."

The dissent in the 19-page, 4-3 opinion is written by the Chief Justice and begins on page 9:

I dissent. In my view, Jones has been deprived of his right to meaningful appellate review because of the lack of a complete record through no fault of his own. It is conceded that the court reporter was unable to transcribe the jury selection proceedings because the hard drive on her computer “crashed” and she was unable to read her written notes.

The issue in this case pits the defendant’s constitutional right to meaningful appellate review against the defendant’s burden to demonstrate reversible error. A defendant who has potential grounds for reversal of a criminal conviction should not be penalized when the record of the trial court proceedings is lost in whole or part because of circumstances beyond his or her control. Yet this is the effect of the majority’s requirement that the defendant demonstrate a basis for a claim of prejudicial error. The majority’s requirement imposes an almost insurmountable burden on the defendant to demonstrate that a reversible error occurred during jury selection proceedings that cannot be reconstructed because of a missing record. This creates too great a danger that convictions will be upheld in cases in which reversible errors have occurred.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 3, 2006 02:31 PM
Posted to Courts in general