FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA---A court stenographer who failed to complete a transcript needed for an appeal in a child-rape case has been found in indirect civil contempt of court and jailed.

Ann Margaret Smith, 44, a stenographer with Laws Reporting, a court reporter agency located across the street from the Broward County Courthouse, was sent to jail Friday by Circuit Court Judge Charles Greene after an appeals court asked him for the trial transcript of Damion Foster who had been sentenced last April to three consecutive life terms for kidnapping a 2-year-old boy from his bedroom in Pompano Beach, wrapping the boy's head with duct tape and raping him. He then left him two blocks from his home.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, Smith will remain in the Broward County Jail until she completes the transcript. The judge ordered that her transcribing equipment and notes be sent to the jail and ordered that the facility provide her a place to work.

The appeals court had requested the transcript from Smith previously but she didn't provide it. The appeal cannot move forward until the transcript is completed.

A contempt hearing had been held on Feb. 9 for Smith and she was ordered to finish the transcript by Feb. 28, the second time a deadline had been set. She was told that she could not be the stenographer in any more trials in Broward County until she completed the Foster transcript but she failed to comply.

In 2003, Judge Greene jailed stenographer Diana Cavitt for not providing a transcript and delaying an appeal.

"There's someone that's awaiting an appeal and the only reason they're not getting it is because this lady isn't cranking her transcript out", Greene said in ordering Smith's arrest.

At the most recent hearing on Feb. 9, Smith told the judge she might need until May or June to finish the transcript which he called unacceptable. At another hearing Friday, she said she hadn't met the Feb. 28 deadline because her computer broke.

Florida's handling of a court stenographer's delay of an appeal is in sharp contrast to the handling of the same situation in New York State.

In the harassment case of North Country Gazette publisher June Maxam, convicted at trial in December 2000, forced to trial pro se, court stenographer Jayme Harvey defied three court orders and delayed providing the transcripts necessary for appeal for nearly two years.

Harvey claimed that Maxam didn't need transcripts of pre-trial hearings and the voir dire in order to perfect the appeal. The trial court judge's illegal restructuring of the jury after jury selection and his unlawful selection of the jury foreman were issues that required automatic reversal of the convictions.

Harvey also tried to keep from the record the illegal Sandoval hearing conducted in the absence of the publisher, a violation of her Fifth Amendment rights. That issue, along with denial of First Amendment rights and Sixth Amendment right to counsel, constituted the grounds for the reversal and ultimate dismissal of the convictions and charges against the publisher.

Acting Warren County Court Judge Felix Catena refused to find Harvey in contempt of court despite her repeated violations of court orders to produce the transcripts and in fact, at one point, dismissed the publisher's appeal because the stenographer had failed to provide the transcripts.

When the transcripts were finally provided two years after they were ordered, they were found to have been falsified and crucial parts of the proceedings intentionally omitted. Harvey later admitted under oath at a reconstruction hearing that she and trial judge Michael Muller of Queensbury had discussed the content of the transcripts before they were finally provided. No action was taken against either the judge or stenographer.

Although Maxam was able to provide by certification of a forensic investigator that the transcripts had indeed been falsified, Catena ordered that the issue could not be raised in the publisher's appeal.

Catena was removed from the case without explanation in December 2004 after the appeal was perfected.

Eventually in April 2005, the convictions were reversed due to violations of the publisher's constitutional rights. The charges were finally dismissed in December 2005 when additional special prosecutors refused to retry the case saying that the publisher's First Amendment rights had been violated by the initial arrests in 1998. 3-11-07

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