Computer virus may get convicted killer out of jail

A man convicted by a jury in Miami, Florida for murder in July 2009 will be getting a new trial, and he has a computer virus to thank for it.

 

Randy Chaviano, 26, had been convicted for the drug-related shooting of Carlos Acosta in 2005, according to a report on the New York Daily News.

 

Last week, an appeals court junked his conviction and life sentence after learning most of the court transcripts had been destroyed.

 

The New York Daily News report said Chaviano had been convicted for shooting a man who police say went to his apartment to buy drugs.

 

Investigation showed court stenographer Terlesa Cowart was to have recorded the entire criminal trial on paper and on a stenography machine's internal disc but she ran out of paper.

 

Cowart transferred the court records to her computer and erased the stenography machine’s memory disc.

 

However, a virus in her computer wiped out everything. Cowart was eventually fired.

 

Thus, when lawyers searched for the transcripts as part of the appeal case, they found that only one key pretrial hearing and the closing arguments existed.

 

“The rest is lost forever,” defense attorney Harvey Sepler wrote in court documents.

 

Computer security firm Sophos said it was "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," it said. — TJD, GMA News