Officials seek to replace reporters

A Hamilton County official wants to replace court reporters with recordings.

CINCINNATI (AP) — Audio or video transcription machines may soon replace human court reporters in Hamilton County courtrooms, bringing it into line with other southwest Ohio counties that have embraced the new technology, officials said.

The county’s potential switch to automated court reporter systems, fiercely opposed by some municipal court judges, comes as county commissioners try to erase a projected $30 million deficit in the 2008 budget.

County Commissioner Pat DeWine said the court reporter system is antiquated and costly. The county’s 41 court reporters cost $2.2 million a year, he said.

Audio recording systems, which cost roughly $60,000 per courtroom, are being rapidly adapted in the region, he said. Neighboring Boone, Campbell, Kenton, Warren, Clermont and Butler counties use audio or video recording equipment, or a blend of technology and live court reporters.

“Hamilton County is the only county in the region that refuses to adopt modern technology in our courtrooms,” Dewine said.

This is the second year in a row the county has attempted to cut the court reporter system. Last year the county briefly ended the program but reinstated it when municipal court judges threatened to sue.

Unreliable

Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge John Burlew said audio machines are unreliable and potentially inaccurate.

“They have yet to make a machine that says, ‘Talk one at a time,’ ‘I can’t hear you’ or ‘That’s unclear,”’ he said.

In Clermont County, 25 miles east of Cincinnati, the common pleas court switched to recording systems in 2002, retaining one human reporter to monitor the recording equipment, court reporter Kathy Simpson said.

It’s worked fine so far, she said. The court still uses live court reporters for death penalty and grand jury proceedings. She said the equipment, backed up by two servers, has never failed.

Nearby Butler County also uses a blended system, but judges there have mixed feelings about it, said Common Pleas Court Judge Keith Spaeth.

“There’s no question that having a live court reporter is wonderful,” he said. “But it does come with a price tag. The question is, does the county want to pay for it?”

Court transcripts are used for a variety of purposes: Defense attorneys and prosecutors use them to cross-examine witnesses, judges use them to remind themselves of details in long-running cases, and lawyers use transcripts to help form appeals cases.

Nationally, recording equipment is often used in smaller jurisdictions where there is not a great deal of transcript demand, according to Marshall Jorpeland, a spokesman for the Virginia-based National Court Reporters Association. In complicated or high-profile cases, a live person is usually preferable, he said.

The association’s membership has dropped steadily in the past decade from 28,297 members in 1998 to 23,253 in 2007. Jorpeland said it wasn’t clear that the decrease is due to courts shifting away from live reporters.