Who’s that invisible dame?

“Who is ‘she’?” That was the question Louise*, the court reporter, had been subpoenaed to answer. And she was not looking forward to it.

The day “she” entered Louise’s life had started like any other day. The assignment didn’t seem to be anything special. Sometimes routine is good.

It had been an arrest and a bilingual police officer had been the interpreter. The trouble was not the police officer’s command of the language. No. The problem was his interpreting technique – or rather, lack thereof. When rendering the deponent’s replies to the court reporter, the well-intentioned police officer started all his statements with “ She said ” and that is how they were entered into the record. Routine? Not a chance.

The problem? He had introduced another character into the scene. We already had the

Fig. 1. United States Dist. Court of Indiana [Click to enlarge]

Fig. 2. Transcript Format for Judicial Proceedings NJ State Courts [Click to enlarge]

* Just another made up name

References

–       Fig. 1. – http://www.innd.uscourts.gov/docs/crtrpformat.pdf (pg 6)

–      Fig. 2 – https://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/appdiv/transcript.pdf (pg 16)