Courthouse missing trial tapes

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/05/missing_trial_tapes_spawn_an_impasse/


Missing trial tapes spawn an impasse
Stenographer denies she has themBy Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff / March 5, 2009


When they do their jobs right, court stenographers attract little attention. They tap quietly on a shorthand machine at more than 200 words a minute to make a record of testimony or repeat verbatim everything said in court into a tape recorder. But among the cast of characters, they seldom play a starring role.Jeanne Lentini, however, is getting a close-up, and not a flattering one. After working in the state courts under contract for eight years, she left Massachusetts in the spring of 2007 with tape recordings she made of 17 criminal and civil trials, court officials said. Despite demands to provide transcripts or return the tapes, which belong to the state, the officials said, she has sent back only seven recordings and some blank tapes.Transcripts are the lifeblood of the appeal process, so the missing tapes have stymied litigants in 10 criminal and civil cases, preventing them from challenging the verdicts. The individuals range from a former State Police sergeant convicted in 2006 of stealing cocaine from his department's drug unit to a 68-year-old Newton man who lost a malpractice lawsuit against a urologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.Lentini, 60, could soon be facing her own legal problems, although she insists she has sent the tapes back and has done nothing wrong.Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, whose office represents the trial courts in legal matters, wrote Lentini last summer demanding she return all the tapes. Coakley is "currently reviewing the matter" be cause of Lentini's failure to comply, a spokeswoman for the AG said yesterday. And a judge has ordered Lentini to attend a March 26 court hearing to explain why she should not be held in contempt - and face possible criminal charges - for disobeying court orders to return the tapes.Lawyers involved in the untranscribed trials are also taking action. The appellate attorney for the convicted state trooper asked a Norfolk Superior Court judge yesterday to free her client from prison on bail because 2 1/2 years have passed since she requested the transcript."This case is more than just a mere delay," Rosemary C. Scapicchio, the Boston lawyer for the former trooper, Timothy White, said in the motion filed in court. "It is a 30-month delay, and it appears that the missing transcript will never be produced." The judge has referred the request to a colleague on the bench.Court reporters convert their stenographic notes or tape recordings into transcripts and provide them to lawyers, who typically pay $3 a page.Lentini, who lives in Virginia Beach, Va., said yesterday that she has returned all the tapes sought by the courts and is baffled and irritated by claims to the contrary."I thought this was taken care of," she said in a telephone interview. "I sent them all back. I did that last summer."She said further that the court system treated so-called per diem, or contracted, court reporters with such little respect that she plans to send to the state all the tapes she saved from other trials she worked on since 1999 - hundreds of recordings - and reverse the postal charges. Contracted court reporters are authorized to keep recordings from trials for which they prepared transcripts, she said.Lentini said she has no intention of returning to Massachusetts for the court hearing about whether she should be held in contempt.The unusual dispute hardly marks the first time court reporters in Massachusetts have come under fire. In 2003, a committee of judges and lawyers appointed by the state Supreme Judicial Court issued a blistering report saying Massachusetts ranked among the worst states in providing timely, accurate transcripts.The median time for a transcript to be delivered for appeals in criminal cases was 300 days and 141 days in civil cases. The committee headed by Appeals Court Judge Mark V. Green faulted "inadequate resources, systemic inefficiencies, and a lack of effective management."But the allegations against Lentini are extraordinary, say court officials and lawyers involved, because she is thought to have deliberately ignored demands to provide transcripts or return the tapes so that another court reporter can prepare them.In some instances, Lentini was one of several court reporters on a case; the other reporters have provided transcripts for the testimony they heard."These transcripts can't be produced without these tapes being returned," said Joan Kenney, a spokeswoman for the judiciary.Among those who say they cannot file an appeal is William Singer, a Newton man who has been trying to challenge a 2006 verdict in Middlesex Superior Court in favor of a urologist he sued for alleged medical malpractice. Singer said he underwent surgery for a kidney stone but was left with severe blood clots in his legs.He said he paid Lentini $720 three years ago to prepare a transcript and is still waiting. Court officials have told him it might be possible to reconstruct a transcript based on the recollections of lawyers and litigants, but "that's asking people to try and remember what transpired three years ago," he said."The evidence is gone," he added, "and I think I'm entitled to a new trial."Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.