June 10, 2005
When Legal Transcripts Prove Less Than Verbatim
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN, NY TIMES

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NORWALK, Conn., June 9 - There is no question that tempers flared that day at Norwalk's Superior Court. The question is, what exactly did the prosecutor say when he lost his cool?

One transcript, issued by the court monitor shortly after the May 4 proceeding, quotes Robert Hall, the prosecutor, as calling the defense lawyer, Michael A. Colombo Jr., a "two-faced [expletive]."

A second transcript, issued a week or so later and certified as "true and accurate" by the same court monitor, simply has Mr. Hall calling Mr. Colombo "two-faced."

State investigators were told about the conflicting transcripts while investigating a May 27 incident in the Norwalk courthouse in which a member of Mr. Hall's staff was said to have struck a defendant during a court proceeding.

The transcripts are from a pretrial hearing for a group of women charged with prostitution. By all accounts, Mr. Hall lost his temper during the proceeding and chewed out the defense lawyer. But exactly what he said to the lawyer, Mr. Colombo, depends upon which version of the transcript is read.

Legal experts say that transcripts of court proceedings must provide a verbatim record of what is said in court. So the existence of two transcripts is more than a curiosity. Lawyers who regularly practice in the courthouse said it raised concerns about court integrity.

Mr. Hall's recollection of what he said could not be obtained; he did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Court officials acknowledged in interviews that the transcripts varied. But they chalk up the discrepancy to the inexperience of a new court monitor, not an effort to tone down the prosecutor's remarks. They also say that an audiotape of the proceeding does not back up the longer quote. "It's not on the tape," said Evelyn Mulvihill, the acting official reporter for the Stamford-Norwalk judicial district.

She played the tape for a reporter a number of times. The longer comment is not audible at normal volume.

Mr. Colombo said that he recalled hearing the fuller comment and that he had questioned Elybel Reyes, the court monitor, about the missing word when she delivered the second transcript to him last month. "She said the supervisors told her to take the word out," he said.

But Ms. Reyes, 20, said she was new to the job and became confused. Sitting in the Stamford courthouse on Tuesday with Ms. Mulvihill and Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, the spokeswoman for the Judicial Branch of state government, a teary Ms. Reyes said she was hired by the state on May 2 and had two days of training before being assigned to the May 4 hearing, her first.

Ms. Reyes said that when she was transcribing the tape she had prepared for the first transcript, she could not find the longer comment on it and consulted supervisors. Ms. Mulvihill said that she and two other colleagues listened and could not detect it either.

Nonetheless, Ms. Reyes said that she inserted the longer comment into the first transcript unbeknownst to her supervisors and colleagues because Mr. Colombo told her he was certain it had been said. "I felt that if I didn't put it in there, he would get me in trouble," she said.

She said that her supervisors later asked to see a copy of what she had sent so they could check her work and that she misled them by removing the unflattering word from the copy she gave them.

When Mr. Colombo then asked her for a second certified copy, she said she delivered a revised transcript that omitted the word from Mr. Hall's comment. "In the end, I took it out of there, because it's not in there," Ms. Reyes said.

Mr. Colombo said he knew what he heard and called the idea that he had intimidated Ms. Reyes ludicrous.

Another defense lawyer who was in the courtroom that day on other business said he, too, heard the longer quote said. "I was at that hearing," said Christopher W. Caldwell, who is based out of Greenwich. "That word was spoken."