court transcripts...

Pat10

this may sound silly but does the quality of a court transcript detoriate over time?

234

In what sense. I assume that you mean reoprted judgments rather than the actual transcripts which are usually only available to those involved in the case. Of course the quality of a printed volume of court reports will deteriorate but many are now stored electronically and accessible on various websites.
If you mean the quality of a judgment in terms of its precedence value then of course it will be more dificult to apply the principle from a 19th century judgment to modern circumstances but there is generally more recent case law interpreting the old judgment which can help.

Pat10

Sorry, I was very vague in explaining what I was asking - Court cases are reported on by a stenographer who from what I gather records the case by shorthand and also by audio recording.

Should'nt the audio recording still be in good condition after say 6 years if a transcript had to be done up. I am looking for other views on this.

234

Pat10 wrote: »

Sorry, I was very vague in explaining what I was asking - Court cases are reported on by a stenographer who from what I gather records the case by shorthand and also by audio recording.

Should'nt the audio recording still be in good condition after say 6 years if a transcript had to be done up. I am looking for other views on this.

Ok, now I see. I'm afraid I don't know to be honest. However, if the audio recording is stored digitally then there shouldn't be much of a problem. Anyway, would an appeal not be barred after 6 years?

Pat10

Anyway, would an appeal not be barred after 6 years?

Correct. You have 6 years to make an appeal. And in order to make that appeal you have to rely on the transcript for the case being appealed. I am only talking about 4 years here.

I would have thought that because transcripts are so important when making an appeal that the equipment used to record the case would be of very good quality and reliability.

234

I'm afraid that my knowledge runs out at this point. Hopefully somebody else can help you.

coylemj

If good quality tape media is used then the shelf life would be around 20 years. The biggest problem with tape and longevity is managing to hang on to a serviceable device that can read the recording, the media itself normally outlives the machinery that can read it. Take the case of floppy 5.25" diskettes which were the medium of choice for the early PCs, there's probably millions of them lying in filing cabinets and bottom drawers all over the world but try finding a machine to read one of them!

For this type of data you'll find that the original tender specifications called for a guarantee that maintenance for the recording equipment be available for a given number of years after the data is recorded, thereby ensuring that recordings can be played back for at a minimum that number of years after the recording was made.

Jo King

Not every case is transcribed. Only the criminal trials at the circuit criminal court, Central Criminal court and Special criminal Court are transcribed as a matter of course.
I have never heard of 6 years being the time limit for an appeal. Most appeals are limited to periods as short as 8 days.