Local courtrooms 1st to embrace remote court reporting

Sierra Vista Herald ^ | Eric Petermann

[SandRat]

Cochise County is the first in the country to utilize a new technology that addresses a challenge facing a growing number of trial courtrooms.

Remote court reporting, which allows a stenographer to record court proceedings from a remote location, has been in use at the Bisbee courthouse since May, Superior Court Administrator Eric Silverberg said Tuesday.

The new process solves a continuing “demand and supply” problem, Silverberg said, which has limited the number of stenographers available to cover court proceedings. On May 9, the county launched a pilot program to test its remote recording system in Judge Terry Bannon’s courtroom. After that effort proved successful, officials agreed to install the system in Judge John Kelliher’s courtroom, which is currently being completed.

[Mr. K]

why would you need to?
Just record the whole thing

[Flick Lives]

At some point in the not-to-distant future, I can imagine a Siri-like device which would automatically generate the written transcripts. Of course we’re not quite there yet with trusting voice recognition technologies like Siri at that level. Sometimes Siri really botches up and comes up with the oddest word choices.

[lee martell]

I think the Stenographer is there to create and present a legally approved version of all that was said. Sometimes, a recording can blur or muffle someone’s courtroom response.

The blur or muffle may also be due to a strong accent if english is not their first language. Example; Did the defendant say “Rarish” or “Relish” or “Reddish” or Wettish?
This is probably not a common career option nowadays.
It takes a certain type of literal-based mind to be good at this.

[bigbob]

I wondered about that when watching “the People vs. OJ Simpson”. All the change we’ve seen from no smoking in offices to the impact of the internet yet the court reporter still uses a stenotype machine today. If voice recognition hasn’t matured to the point where it is 100% accurate they can always feed the output from a jillion courtrooms to a big center in Bangalore where thousands of Indian analysts would review and correct the record (applying their perfect English-speaking skills of course ;-))

[PistolPaknMama]

why would you need to? Just record the whole thing

The court reporter would need to remain in possession of the recording because he/she has to certify that the transcript is a true transcript.

[Ellendra]

Lots of places do for non-criminal hearings. I’ve transcribed a number of them.

[Mark]

But...But where is the UNION input on this discussion?

[JoeFromSidney]

Years ago I organized a conference to be held on an Air Force Base. I borrowed a court recorder from the JAG office to create the proceedings of the conference. She was really good, but the engineering terms threw her. I had to go over the transcript to correct them before we could publish the proceedings. Without her, though, we'd never have been able to publish the proceedings.