Man thrown in jail and threatened with 75 years in prison for recording judge in public courthouse

[Bjorn Against]

With the request for a court reporter denied, Allison made good on his promise to bring his own audio recorder with him to the courthouse. Here's what happened next, as reported by Radley Bilko in the latest issue of Reason magazine:

Just after he walked through the courthouse door the next day, Allison says Crawford County Circuit Court Judge Kimbara Harrell asked him whether he had a tape recorder in his pocket. He said yes. Harrell then asked him if it was turned on. Allison said it was. Harrell then informed the defendant that he was in violation of the Illinois wiretapping law, which makes it a Class 1 felony to record someone without his consent. “You violated my right to privacy,” the judge said.

Allison responded that he had no idea it was illegal to record public officials during the course of their work, that there was no sign or notice barring tape recorders in the courtroom, and that he brought one only because his request for a court reporter had been denied. No matter: After Harrell found him guilty of violating the car ordinance, Allison, who had no prior criminal record, was hit with five counts of wiretapping, each punishable by four to 15 years in prison. Harrell threw him in jail, setting bail at $35,000.

That's up to 75 years in prison for breaking a law Allison did not know existed, and which he violated in the name of protecting himself from what he saw as an injustice.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/149706/75-year_prison_sentence_for_taping_the_police_the_absurd_laws_that_criminalize_audio_and_video_recording_in_america

Of course it should be noted that while the powers that be will threaten you with prison time for recording them in a public setting, they have no problem with people recording you. They will continue the warrentless wiretapping started under Bush and later endorsed by Obama, they will continue to allow corporate interests to engage in data mining of your personal information, they will violate your privacy in any way they can get away with but if you want any sort of record of what a judge says to you in a public courthouse you go to jail.

[eShirl]

1. one tier of justice for the powerful, and one for the peasants

[RegieRocker]

2. Tar and feather this judge and send him out of town on a

railroad tie.

[elleng]

3. Baloney, the judge goes

:thumbsdown:

He might have a 'case' if there were a general rule against recordings in court, but certainly the judge has no right to privacy in public court proceedings. I haven't studied the Illinois wiretapping law.

[Orrex]

4. I don't really have a problem with judges setting these kinds of rules for their courtrooms

If the judge doesn't want the proceedings recorded electronically, then I'm okay with that, as long as the judge has established this policy. I'm not even too upset about the lack of a posted notification; when I've been in courtrooms, there are all kinds of rules that aren't posted on the wall, the violation of any one of which could have landed me in a bunch of trouble even if I claimed ignorance of the rule in question.



However, I don't see why Harrell had to be such an asshole about it and reach immediately for the wiretapping law. Wouldn't a warning about contempt of court have been sufficient?


The story sounds a little weird to me for a host of reasons.

[Angry Dragon]

10. I say bullshit

[COLGATE4]

15. As an attorney I agree with you. Judges have a tremendous amount

of latitude in setting the rules in their court, and that is what this judge did. I also agree that there's more to the story than appears here. The obvious reaction of any judge I've appeared before (or seen) would be to threaten him with contempt of court. If he then proceeded to violate the order, he would have been in deep shit. The reaching for the wiretap law is pretty bizarre. There are some other parts missing.

[Orrex]

24. You're not going to bill me for that hour, are you?

Heh heh.


I kid the counsellor!

[Hydra]

17. It's weird for 1 reason

Why no court recorder? What was going to happen that this Judge didn't want legally witnessed?

[no_hypocrisy]

5. ALL court proceedings are recorded. But the rub is

you have to pay big bucks to get the transcript of those recordings.

[Little Star]

13. Bingo! It's about the cash you pay for the transcript!

[ZombieHorde]

6. I am sure the judge took no pleasure in asserting his power over another person.

:sarcasm:

Judges have too much power.

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. "Land of the Free....."

:puke:

[Ozymanithrax]

8. This is a grave misuse of privacy to allow it to apply toa public official

in the course of public work. Grotesque applicaiton of wiret tapping laws like this needs to be fought and abolished.

However, within our system, ignorance of the law is no excuse. So, he does not have to know about he law to be held acocuntable for it.

[NutmegYankee]

11. There is no ignorance.

Recording a public official in the course of his duties is never wiretapping or a violation of privacy. There is no expectation of privacy while on official business like running a court room. This judge needs to be impeached and removed from office.

[Ozymanithrax]

12. There is until someone takes this to court and gets the law removed...

Clearly, they have written a law to protect their asses, and it needs to be fought.

[Angry Dragon]

9. So this judge feels that court proceedings are private now??

Should have to repeat law school

[upi402]

14. Frist came 'free speech zones', and next

we lost our Republic to corporate fascists - either party- it's still 100% wrong.

[ixion]

16. I see. So it's only us peons who have no expectations of privacy in A PUBLIC PLACE

so that's the way it's gonna be, eh?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

18. Why did the judge deny him a court reporter in the first place?

This makes no sense.
I was a court reporter for twenty years. I have never heard of this happening.

And of course the lawyers think we are too expensive, and that we can be replaced by tape recorders. We can't.
If you want a crappy unusable-on-appeal transcript, use a tape recorder that picks up background noise, can't intervene when two people talk at once, or mumble, or talk too fast or whatever. And who is gonna certify that the transcript is accurate? That's why they license court reporters and we have to certify that the transcript is accurate on the last page, and sign it and put our seal on it.

The lawyers who replace us with tape recorders deserve what they get for their cheapthink.

:banghead:

[udbcrzy2]

19. I usually don't see Court Reporters in the lower courts for

lower level offenses. Usually the court reporter is ordered for more serious offenses. Like if you had a traffic ticket, there would not be a court reporter there.

If it's a criminal/civil trial and court reporter is ordered, it could cost around 4k for a transcript for a 5-day trial.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

22. I used to take pleas for hours on end.

The defendant in a criminal case has to sign away his right to a court reporter.
Traffic court, yeah, usually not a court reporter, but in any court above that, there usually is a court reporter. Civil and criminal.

The people who whine about transcript costs don't realize how many pages you can cram into a six hour court day. If it's fast, you can run over 200 pages a day. Forty pages an hour is a pretty fast clip, around 200 words per minute or more. It's a helluva lot of work turning shorthand into a transcript, and the lawyers usually don't appreciate how hard we work. As I said, they think they can replace us with tape recorders because we're just glorified secretaries.

Also, the lawyers beat the evidence to death, and ask the same question three times, and the judge does not stop them, and then they gripe at ME because the transcript is so long. I can't take anything out.

If they were efficient in presenting their evidence, they could get through a lot sooner.

[udbcrzy2]

26. Glorified secretaries couldn't keep up with

a Pakistani physician speaking at 275wpm. I think Court Reporters are much more special than just a secretary. They are court officials.

I think realtime reporting is cool, where they write and the software translates the machine words into real words, like on closed captioning.


adding: not that secretaries are not special, but it's really different work.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

27. Sometimes you have to stop people and make em slow down.

They don't like it but you have to do it.

The max speed we had to learn to pass the state test was 225 words per minute Q&A four voice, 200 wpm jury charge, and 180 literary. That was usually stuff from the Congressional Record.

It's an amazingly stressful job and not many people have the manual skills and concentration to do it. My dad was an attorney and I was a legal secretary for him before I went to court reporting school. Being a legal secretary took lots of brains.

They told us in court reporting school that out of 200 people who start school, which lasts 2 years if you are good at it, but can take a lot longer, only THREE people will be certified and licensed, and only ONE will actually become a practicing court reporter. One out of 200.

I'm a musician and very auditory & kinesthetic, and took twelve years of piano lessons.
The mechanism is like reading music -- except you hear words and have to practice until you automatically hit the right keys. But in music you're taking in the information from sheet music.

[treestar]

20. I don't see how a court can have proceedings without a court reporter

Or a tape recorder. It is not legitimate for a judge to have any proceedings whatsoever without a record being made.

[MADem]

21. I do have a problem with failure to record public trials, but so long as the SUPREMES

refuse to be videotaped, this kind of shit will probably continue.

I think we, all of us citizens, have a right to see/hear public trials, and we shouldn't have to go to the courthouse to make that happen.

I also understand that there are times that trials shouldn't be aired contemporaneously with the actual proceedings, but held until the verdict is reached. This is especially true when you have a non-sequestered jury. However, I think at some point these proceedings should be made available to the public, either for download or on public access tv.

[blkmusclmachine]

23. There's the "laws" for the Masters of the Universe,

and then there's the LAWS(!!) for everybody else. Know the pecking order!

[lib2DaBone]

25. If you have money.. you walk. Poor? Too bad... go to jail.

[Kolesar]

28. Isn't that the reason that the press has to use artists' chalk drawings of court participants?

eom

[Javaman]

29. in other words, they can tape us, be we can't tape them.

ah yes, that's fascism at it's finest.

now will people understand, why our privacy is important?

[Hart2008]

30. K & R

:kick:

[Ikonoklast]

31. This guy has a history with the court.

He also thinks he is above the laws that pertain to everyone else.

Read the article first.

Why didn't he hire his own court reporter if he was so concerned about documenting the proceeding?

And the judge might be an ass, but he does have lots of latitude in what he allows to happen in his courtroom.