Transcripts in the legal system

Abstract

Transcription plays an important role in many parts of the legal process. For example: • transcripts provide a lasting public record of courtroom proceedings; • transcripts provide a convenient reference to evidence gathered via formal processes, such as recorded police interviews; • transcripts provide interpretation of evidence consisting in surreptitious recordings, such as telephone intercept or listening device product. Such artifacts are all called "transcripts", but there is a significant difference in their status. On the one hand, the accuracy of courtroom transcripts is accepted as a cornerstone of the legal process, seldom questioned by either defence or prosecution. On the other, the correct transcription of audio evidence can be the subject of vigorous but ultimately unresolvable debate. Consider, for a famous example, David Eastman's whispered soliloquy, recorded by a listening device in his house after the 1989 shooting of Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester in Canberra. Did it contain the words "I killed Winchester", or was it rather "I kept watching her"? There is no way to be absolutely certain. Between these two extremes lie many points on a long continuum of accuracy and verifiability. In using transcripts of various kinds, it is clearly desirable that they be treated appropriately according to their location on that continuum. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.