136 days

Suzanne Choney

Convicted killer re-tried after virus destroys testimony

A man found guilty of murder had his conviction thrown out because the trial's transcript was on a PC that was struck by a virus. Not only was the information wiped out, but the court stenographer had previously erased the transcript from the stenography machine's memory.

The bizarre case is a cautionary tale — or horror story, really — about the importance of backing up data in more than one place. For those involved in the trial, it has resulted in "terrible pain for the victim's family and frustration for prosecutors and police officers,” a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office told The Miami Herald.

"It seems like the plot twist in a bad TV show — but it's true," wrote Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, on that company's blog.

In 2009, a jury convicted Randy Chaviano of second-degree murder for shooting a man who, according to prosecutors, had come to Chaviano's duplex to buy drugs in 2005.

Chaviano appealed the conviction, and the problem of the non-existent court transcript led Florida's Third District Court of Appeal to order a new trial for Chaviano.

The stenographer was fired; her former employer said she had a "habit of not bringing enough of the special rolls of paper used to chronicle the proceedings," the Herald said:

At Chaviano’s trial, she again failed to capture the trial on paper, according to a courts spokeswoman.

Afterward, (the stenographer) erased the data from the stenography machine's memory disc [sic], but not before transferring it to her computer. But then a virus struck her computer, wiping out all her notes.

Said Cluley: "It seems very sloppy to allow the only record of a trial's proceedings to be held on an individual's PC — it's like asking for trouble if it isn't at the very least held securely as a backup elsewhere."

Ed Griffith, spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, put it another way to the Herald: "Overturning a murder conviction because of a court reporter’s problem creates a brand new level of pain and frustration."

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• Worm eats up 45,000 Facebook user logins

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