Court Reporters Quit, Citing Trials of Legal Life

The judge was there. The jury was there. The defendant, witnesses and attorneys were all there. But there were no court reporters.

So for the first time in memory, a criminal case in Santa Monica Municipal Court was dismissed and the accused released without trial because there was no way to record proceedings.

The incident late last month dramatized a continuing crisis at the court. Unlike their counterparts in Los Angeles Municipal Court or Superior Court, Santa Monica Municipal Court reporters are paid on a per-diem basis with no employment benefits such as vacation or sick leave, and some have complained that they were terribly overworked.

Because of these and other reasons, all the court’s veteran reporters have quit, plunging the court’s four divisions into a frantic scramble for ways to provide a record of trials and hearings.

Courts throughout the county and state have long been plagued by a shortage of court reporters--the specialized stenographers whose highly stressful duty is to take down every spoken word at legal proceedings and produce official transcripts.

The case that was dismissed June 24 involved a man charged with misdemeanor assault with a deadly weapon. He allegedly struck a Santa Monica community service officer with his car. The officer, who was not seriously injured, happened to be the daughter of Santa Monica Police Chief James Keane.

The trial had been delayed two days while court personnel handled other felony proceedings. On the third day, when the trial was to begin, Presiding Judge Rex Minter found there were no court reporters and no one who could operate an electronic recording machine.

Because the defendant was being denied a speedy trial, Minter was forced to grant a defense motion to dismiss the case.

“It was pretty bizarre,” said Jerry Gordon, head of the Santa Monica city attorney’s criminal division.

“We were very distressed. It is not consistent with justice to have a case dismissed for lack of an ability to make a record.” (Gordon said his office would file an appeal in the appellate division of Superior Court.)

Two Municipal court reporters quit earlier this year, leaving the bulk of the work to the two remaining reporters. By late June, those two and a newly hired replacement had also left, according to Court Administrator Gerrie Dassoff.

Since then, the court has had to make do with what Dassoff called a piecemeal approach: hiring an occasional free-lance reporter or using tape recorders lent to Santa Monica by Los Angeles Municipal Court.

At first, matters were complicated by the court’s inability to find anybody skilled in operating the recorders--sophisticated devices whose operation requires special training. Finally, the court last week hired Briggs Reporting Co. to provide trained monitors to work the machines.

Minter also said he has hired a new reporter who will start this week, and the court continues to try to recruit others.

But finding replacements is difficult, several sources said, because pay, benefits and general working conditions are better in other court systems--and sometimes the workload is less.

“We were tremendously overburdened,” said Roseanna D’Amico, one of the last Santa Monica Municipal court reporters to leave, after nearly seven years on the job. She is now free-lancing at another municipal courthouse.

D’Amico said Santa Monica reporters had to work 60 to 70 hours a week, laboring on transcripts outside of normal court hours, just to keep up and meet deadlines. Court sessions often dragged on past 5 or 6 p.m., she said.

Like many court reporters elsewhere, the Santa Monica scribes were paid about $176 a day. Unlike many other reporters, they did not receive benefits.

Judges Criticized

But for D’Amico, the issue went beyond simple questions of pay and benefits.

She said the judges did not seem to appreciate the difficulties of the job, such as the need for regular breaks. She said judges often handled their calendars inefficiently, prolonging everyone’s schedule, and that her complaints fell on deaf ears.

“I feel we did the judges a tremendous favor by covering the courts during these several months, but they never acknowledged us,” D’Amico said. “We gave a tremendous amount of loyalty to the judges, and when push came to shove, the judges never gave us loyalty.”

D’Amico said she has sent a three-page letter to the three judges and one court commissioner outlining her position and urging better treatment for court reporters.

Minter denied that the judges were at all abusive of the court reporters and said the long hours are shared by everyone at the courthouse and are a symptom of a generally overloaded judicial system.

“If they work hard, it’s because we are working hard too,” Minter said. “We are very cognizant that it is a difficult job, a highly skilled job (that) takes energy to perform.

Countywide Shortage

“I’ve never indicated the job is not a tough one. Reporters here work harder than in Superior Court, and get paid less, if you include benefits,” he added. “We are not trying to abuse the reporters. As far as I’m concerned, one of the most important things is my relation with the reporters; if they’re not happy, the court doesn’t work well.”

Minter blamed the attrition of reporters at Santa Monica on a countywide shortage of stenographers that makes it difficult for the Santa Monica court to compete. If they don’t go to Superior Court or Los Angeles Municipal Court, he said, they often go into private deposition work, which also pays better and has more flexible hours.

Minter said he has asked the County Board of Supervisors to seek state legislation authorizing the county to provide benefits for reporters.

The county is divided into 24 judicial districts. Santa Monica is one of 23 districts that pay reporters a per-diem rate and do not offer benefits.

Gary Cramer, executive director of the Los Angeles Municipal Court Reporters Assn., said the county could no longer afford to deny reporters their benefits, and that smaller districts such as Santa Monica would have to master the techniques of recruiting.

“The marketplace is tighter now than it was before, so it is more difficult to compete with L.A. Municipal and Superior courts for the court reporting services that are available,” Cramer said.

Tape Recorders

“Santa Monica (the city) is a nice place . . . and many people would see advantages to living out there. There is a need for Santa Monica (Municipal Court) to be more effective in recruiting and retaining court reporters.”

Meanwhile, the use of tape recorders in place of court reporters is generating the same controversy at Santa Monica Municipal Court that it has elsewhere in the state.

Some attorneys and court reporters have traditionally questioned the accuracy of electronic recordings, saying there inevitably will be inaudible or unintelligible sections, such as when two or more people speak at once.

A human reporter can stop the proceedings and ask participants to repeat themselves; a tape recorder cannot.

“When a case goes to appeal, you don’t want questions of what was said or what happened; you want to discuss legal questions,” said Gordon of the Santa Monica city attorney’s office.

“There should never be a question about what was being said in court. . . . (In a recording) you can have a critical point that just isn’t there.”

Some superior courts are using tape recorders on a limited, experimental basis. Municipal courts are allowed to use tape recorders in many proceedings if the judge chooses.

Advocates say using recorders may eventually save money and would help deal with the shortage of court reporters.