Wisconsin hires first Stenomask reporter
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| Court Reporter Mark Garvin tests his Stenomask in the Marathon County courtroom of Chief Judge Dorothy L. Bain. |
The Wisconsin court system hired its first Stenomask reporter in June, following a recommendation from a chief judges’ subcommittee that the courts give consideration to certified Stenomask reporters because of a looming shortage of court reporters.
The Stenomask is a device that the reporter holds over his or her face. The reporter repeats into the mask everything that is said in court and the mask records his/her voice and instantly displays the text on a screen.
Court Reporter Mark Garvin, a certified verbatim reporter, was hired in Wausau after completing a two-week audition during which attorneys and judges evaluated his record-taking compared with stenographic court reporters. On the final day of the audition, Garvin reported a hearing alongside a stenographic reporter and a digital recording device. After a review of the transcripts showed that his work was accurate and complete, he was offered the job.
Garvin, who received his original training with the U.S. Marines after being drafted in 1969, told the Wausau Daily Herald that jurors in the North Carolina courts where he worked for 24 years wondered what was going on when he held the mask to his face. “[They] would often come up to me and say ‘I thought you were taking oxygen over there.’ Some people think it looks like I have asthmatic problems.”
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