Stenographer Error Gives Convicted Florida Murderer New Trial

[Quyen]

By Katie Kindelan | ABC News Blogs – 13 hours ago

A Florida man convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison will get a new trial, all thanks to a court stenographer who erased the entire transcript of his murder trial.

Randy Chaviano, 26, of Hialeah, Fla., was convicted by a jury in July 2009 of fatally shooting Charles Acosta, who came to his apartment to buy drugs.

Chaviano appealed his conviction to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami.  When it was discovered that hardly any transcripts of his trial proceedings existed, the court last week threw out his conviction and life sentence, and ordered that he get an entirely new chance to go before jurors.

Any traces of Chaviano's trial all but disappeared from the Miami-Dade courthouse's records, officials say, because the court reporter for the case, Terlesa Cowart, failed to capture the trial on paper.

Cowart, a courts spokeswoman told the Miami Herald, put the trial transcript on an internal disc instead, and then erased the data from the stenography machine's memory disc.

She did back the disk up on her computer, but a virus on the computer later erased all of her notes.  All that remained was a transcript of one pretrial hearing and the trial's closing arguments.

"The rest is lost forever," Chaviano's attorney, Harvey Sepler, wrote in court documents.

For now, court stenographers in Miami-Dade are required to use machines that capture their work both on paper and the internal disc used by Cowart.

The county is currently pushing, against the wishes of stenographers, to replace the old human, paper and disk model with digital recorders instead.

The firm that employed Cowart at the time of the trial, Goldman Naccarato Patterson Vela & Associates Inc., told the Herald their employee had a history of not bringing enough of the paper stenographers use to chronicle the proceedings.

Cowart has since been fired from the firm.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney's office apologized for the error:  "The overturning of a murder conviction always means terrible pain for the victim's family and frustration for prosecutors and police officers.  Overturning a murder conviction because of a court reporter's problem creates a brand new level of pain and frustration," a spokesman told the Herald.

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O . . . M . . . G . . .

Just sounds fishy to me:  She had almost no paper notes, erased the writer's memory disk AND the dog virus ate her homework!!!

"The firm that employed Cowart at the time of the trial, Goldman Naccarato Patterson Vela & Associates Inc., told the Herald their employee had a history of not bringing enough of the paper stenographers use to chronicle the proceedings." -- Then why did the firm continue to give her work???!!!

[Mary Jo Cochran]

I worked for Bob Rose in Pinellas County years ago.  He didn't provide us with enough supplies.  We had to splice paper together, or worse, ask for paper from one of the other officials.  We also had to have our own ink.  The other officials provided ink.  The other officials also gave their reporters jelly beans and a refrigerator with soda.

 

He had a reporter who was moving back to New Jersey.  He let her take her notes.  There was an appeal in a criminal case. The reporter was "unresponsive" - meaning no reporter and no transcript notes.  Bob Rose lost his officialship like overnight.  An arrest warrant was put out for the reporter.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

Reporters like this make us all look bad.  If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!!  

In this day and age with all the technology out there of cloud computing, thumb drives, etc. there is no excuse for not having this job backed up.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

So I presume that this was a freelancer covering court proceedings.   Right away we know the court reporting system in this jurisdiction is in chaos with, I suppose, officials being fired to "save money" and lawyers hiring court reporters from agencies.

Secondly,  WHAT A HORROR, all because of half-assed and an extremely cheap, stupid, and lazy way of doing things.  At the end of each day out of the house, all new work files, including audio, get backed up to a flash drive.  Those files are then copied onto a home computer (desktop being best I believe).  Desktop computer gets backed up nightly to 2 external hard drives and to Carbonite.  Flash drive files are the only files that ever get deleted.  And of course sometimes laptops on the job go kaflooey and audiosynch is compromised, which is why I use two digital recorders on the job as well.   The audio files from the digital recorders are copied to desktop and, like everything else, backed up to Carbonite and external drives.   

Paper is totally irrelevant here.  What an embarrassing mess.

[Mary Jo Cochran]

The main problem I see (and I know you all have far more experience and realtime than I do - dang, those initials you all have get to me) - Florida requires no certification.  It was a problem back in the 80's when I was active. 

 

If the courts no longer have official or deputy court reporters, then  the attorneys are hiring from private agencies.  Lately I have gotten several calls to take hearings in the courts. I declined.  Any reporter going into the courts should have to meet a minimum of requirements, minimum being RPR, working at least two years, - something to set them apart from the regular Jane (which right now is me).

[Quyen]

T.S., I don't necessarily agree with your comment re California.  There is no "slashing of steno jobs," even though officials have been laid off from the courts.  It is more of a "shifting."  Attorneys are now hiring reporters for court cases directly through court reporting firms instead of reporters being provided by the court.  Many of the officials laid off from court now work for court reporting firms, doing the same thing they were doing for the courts, reporting trials/court proceedings.

Certification of court reporters is not irrelevant; it establishes at least some level of competency.  I think every state should mandate certification.  Sure, there will be a few incompetent reporters who eventually slip through the cracks at some point, but in states where no certification is required, any Joe Schmoe could say s/he can do the job, and I feel that leaves the door wide open for things such as this to happen more often than in states with certification.  I don't have any facts to prove this, but just my opinion.