10/11/2026
From Brian Staley -
If I am elected Judge of the 270th District Court, the court will use a court reporter. Currently, the court uses a recording device, without a court reporter.
I am sometimes asked what I would change or do differently if elected, and this is one item. I know this may not be of interest to those who don't practice in this court, or may seem a bit dull, but it's one example of how I would improve practices in the 270th.
A friend of mine who is a court reporter sent me the following several months ago, and I agree with it, so here is why a court reporter is important:
The official record is the backbone of the justice system. It must be complete, authenticated, and certified by a human being, not left to a passive device that cannot raise its hand, cannot be cross-examined, and cannot be held responsible when it fails.
Replacing certified shorthand reporters with digital recording systems is not a modernization. It is an abdication. A recording device cannot authenticate a record. It cannot intervene. It cannot certify accuracy. It simply runs, (and that’s hoping the person tasked with pushing the button remembers to turn it on), captures whatever happens and hopes for the best. In today's courtroom, that is not good enough.
The most catastrophic failure of digital recording is also the most basic: the record does not exist when it is needed.
When that happens, appellate courts cannot do their job. Cases get delayed, dismissed, or sent back for entirely new proceedings. A certified court reporter actively prevents this in real time. A recording device does not.
Digital systems are passive. They record overlapping voices with no correction, capture "uh-huh" and nodding with no clarification, and allows simultaneous crosstalk among parties, which misses words that cannot be clarified.
A live court reporter stops the proceeding because every word matters.
Post-production transcription makes it worse. Turnaround times balloon. Transcriptionists — sometimes working in other countries — struggle with legal terminology, regional accents, and the rapid back-and-forth of live litigation. AI-assisted transcription has not solved this. It has only made it faster to produce an inaccurate transcript.
Meanwhile, judges and attorneys get no real time read back, no immediate clarification, and no ability to verify testimony in the moment it matters.
When a digital system fails silently mid-proceeding and no one notices, the loss is permanent. There are no notes to fall back on, no professional who was paying attention. And when something goes wrong, who answers for it? The clerk? IT? A third-party vendor?
Court reporters bring and pay for their own equipment, troubleshoot when something goes wrong, and leave with a certified record. With a certified court reporter, one trained professional is accountable, full stop.
Digital recording systems also do not manage exhibits. There is no clear linkage between an audio file and the evidence referenced in it. Exhibits get lost, mislabeled, or are simply undocumented. A court reporter tracks and logs every exhibit as part of the certified official record.
Replacing the one professional in the room who is trained, sworn, and accountable for the record's integrity is not just risky; it is reckless.
