Imagine if your job was to sit silently at a desk, furiously typing everything that was being said. Imagine further, that you hated that job and decided to get drunk instead. That’s basically how it happened for a “rogue court reporter” (oh God, he’s gored a bailiff!) in Manhattan, who decided to pull a Shining and type “I hate my job” over and over. All booze and no fun makes Jack a terrible stenographer.
An alcoholic Manhattan court stenographer went rogue, channeling his inner “Shining” during a high-profile criminal trial and repeatedly typing, “I hate my job, I hate my job” instead of the trial dialogue, sources told The Post.
The bizarre antics by Daniel Kochanski, who has since been fired, wreaked havoc on some 30 Manhattan court cases, sources said, and now officials are scrambling to repair the damage.
One high-level source said his “gibberish” typing may have jeopardized hard-won convictions by giving criminals the chance to claim crucial evidence is missing.
Kochanski’s botched transcripts include the 2010 mortgage-fraud trial of Aaron Hand, who was also convicted of trying to hire a hit man to take out a witness against him. […]
…source said of Kochanski: “He hit random keys or wrote, ‘I hate my job. I hate my job. I hate my job,’ over and over.”
Claudia Trupp, of the Center for Appellate Litigation, said her office was handling the appeals in Hand’s and nine other cases.
“I never had a situation where a single court reporter was responsible for so much damage,” she said. [NYPost]
Instead of pulling a Shining, I wish he’d just sort of paraphrased the whole thing like a butthoused John Grisham. “So then the fat guy was all ‘Blah blah blah the murder weapon yadda yadda yadda,’ boring the piss out of everyone, and the bald dude stood up and was like ‘I object!’ or whatever, but then the judge was all ‘Nah, ‘fraid not, bro,’ and it was hella boring again. Anyway, me and Steve crushed some quarts of High Life during the 20-minute recess and I got an old fashioned from Baldy’s paralegal in judges chambers, it was rad.”