"This is a very unusual case," Howard said in an email Thursday. "During my 19-year tenure as district attorney, my office has participated in thousands of matters involving transcripts produced by the same system of court reporting central to this case. We can only recall one other instance wherein court reporters have not provided a trial transcript. Unfortunately, in this case failure means a murder is overturned. We are struggling to determine whether we can successfully retry this matter due to the death and/or unavailability of several key witnesses. As we respond today, we are not...MORE
