Recording

Every courtroom is linked to the courthouse’s central audio recording system, which consists of a network of microphones, tape recorders and speakers. The role of this system is to make recordings of each hearing, which are then available to judges, lawyers, journalists and the public. To do this, two independent systems are used at the same time – one makes a recording of each individual hearing, and the other makes a master recording.

The individual recording system is made up of a series of tape recorders, each of which is linked to a single courtroom. The court recorder starts the individual tape at the moment when the clerk of the court telephones him to say that the hearing is beginning. He stops the recording when the clerk lets him know there is a break in the hearing or that it has ended.

The master recording is a backup copy in case the individual system doesn’t work properly. The sound quality of this system is not as good as the individual system, but it allows the recording of sound in 20 courtrooms at once. It starts in the morning as soon as the courthouse opens, and doesn’t stop until the last hearing of the day ends.

Because the master system is constantly recording, private conversations, such as those between lawyers and their clients, may be picked up on it. For this reason, no one may listen to the master recording without the permission of the Chief Justice of the Court. This prohibition even applies to the court recorders.

Let’s come back to the individual recording system and how it can be used. Using the speakers in the courtroom, the judge and the people in the room can hear what had been said earlier in the proceedings, if needed. This can be useful when a witness says something and denies saying it a moment later. The clerk can rewind the tape to the right place at the request of the judge. Then, the court recorder plays the tape recording on the speakers.

In addition, the tapes are available at a certain cost to anyone who is interested. For example, sometimes journalists come to listen to a trial that they couldn’t attend in person. That being said, the public doesn’t have access to recordings of cases that happen in closed hearings, like those of the Family Division of the Superior Court, or those of the Court of Québec, Youth Division.

To use this service, all that is necessary is to give the date of the trial, the room number and the file number to the attendant responsible for the recordings at the courthouse. It is even possible to ask to hear exactly what was said at a specific time because there is a track that records the time on the tape.

It is also possible to obtain a written version of the recording. This is called a transcript. The tape is sent to an official stenographer who types out what is heard on the tape. This rather costly service can be useful when a person is involved in several legal proceedings related to the same events. For example, a person may be sued over a contract both in Small Claims Court and before a criminal court. During the criminal trial the person might say that the cat was red. In the Small Claims documents she said that the cat was blue. It could be useful to show the judge there are two versions of the story, in order call this person’s credibility into question.

If the recording system didn’t exist at the courthouse, the lawyers would have no choice but to hire an official stenographer to ensure that everything said during the trial was properly recorded. In fact, this was the method used in the past, before someone had the brilliant idea to install a tape recording system