A convicted murderer will get a new trial after a Florida court stenographer accidentally erased the trial transcript. This can either save him or hurt him, but to get a retrial because of a paper jam!?!? This guy is lucky. Click below to read the rest of the story.
Randy Chaviano, 26, will go before a jury for a second time in connection with the fatal shooting of a man who police say came to his apartment to buy drugs.
An appeals court threw out Chaviano’s July 2009 conviction and life sentence last week after it came to light most of the court transcripts had been destroyed.
“The overturning of a murder conviction always means terrible pain for the victim’s family and frustration for prosecutors and police officers,†Miami-Dade State Attorney’s spokesman Ed Griffith told the Miami Herald.
“Overturning a murder conviction because of a court reporter’s problem creates a brand new level of pain and frustration.â€
The stenographer, Terlesa Cowart, was supposed to have captured the entire criminal trial on paper as well as on an internal disc but she ran out of paper so there is no hard copy of the proceedings.
She transferred the court records to her computer and erased the stenography machine’s memory disc.
But a computer virus wiped out everything.
Cowart was subsequently fired from the firm she was working for, Goldman Naccarato Patterson Vela & Associates Inc., and her former employer said this was not the first time she had run out of paper during a trial, according to the Miami Herald.
When lawyers began searching for the transcripts as part of the appeal case they found that only one key pretrial hearing and the closing arguments existed.
“The rest is lost forever,†defense attorney Harvey Sepler wrote in court documents.
Chaviano was found guilty of the 2005 murder of Carlos Acosta.
Cops say an argument erupted between the two men and Chaviano shot and killed Acosta, then planted a gun on the corpse.
Chaviano’s attorney argued that his client acted in self-defense.
A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder with a weapon and armed drug dealing and he was later sentenced to life in prison.
