We have had access only to that portion of the transcript which the prosecuting attorney quotes in his brief in opposition to the granting of leave to appeal and in opposition to defendant's request that he be furnished with the transcript. Heeding the admonition of the United States Supreme Court in Gardner v. California (1969) 393 U.S. 367 ( 89 S.Ct. 580, 21 L.Ed.2d 601), to refrain from taking the role of parens patriae, we have not searched the record to find possible error in defendant's conviction or to determine whether there exists meritorious grounds for appeal. We, therefore, refrain from granting or denying leave to appeal and will treat the claim of defendant contained in his question quoted above as an application for superintending control.

Id., at 499 (quoting Coppedge v. United States, 369 U.S. 438, 446 (1962)). Our decisions on the question of free transcripts for indigents include: Wade v. Wilson, 396 U.S. 282 (1970); Williams v. Oklahoma City, 395 U.S. 458 (1969); Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367 (1969); Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40 (1967); Long v. District Court of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192 (1966); Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487 (1963); Lane v. Brown, 372 U.S. 477 (1963); Coppedge v. United States, 369 U.S. 438 (1962); and Eskridge v. Washington Prison Bd., 357 U.S. 214 (1958). A "record of sufficient completeness" does not translate automatically into a complete verbatim transcript.

The Supreme Court has stated that it is a criminal defendant's "access to the record which makes any appellate review meaningful. . . ." Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367, 368, 89 S.Ct. 580, 581, 21 L.Ed.2d 601 (1969). Accordingly, "there can be no doubt that the State must provide an indigent defendant with a transcript when that transcript is needed for an effective defense or appeal."

. . . A layman hence needs the transcript even more.Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367, 369-70, 89 S.Ct. 580, 582-83, 21 L.Ed.2d 601 (1969) (emphasis added). In Gardner, a pro se habeas petitioner was denied a copy of the transcript from his original habeas proceeding.

Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 358 (1963). See also Eskridge v. Washington Prison Bd., 357 U.S. 214 (1958) (provision of trial transcript may not be conditioned on approval of judge); Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487 (1963) (same); Lane v. Brown, 372 U.S. 477 (1963) (public defender's approval may not be required to obtain coram nobis transcript); Rinaldi v. Yeager, 384 U.S. 305 (1966) (unconstitutional to require reimbursement for cost of trial transcript only from unsuccessful imprisoned defendants); Long v. District Court of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192 (1966) (State must provide transcript of post-conviction proceeding); Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40 (1967) (State must provide preliminary hearing transcript); Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367 (1969) (State must provide habeas corpus transcript); Williams v. Oklahoma City, 395 U.S. 458 (1969) (State must provide transcript of petty-offense trial); Mayer v. Chicago, 404 U.S. 189 (1971) (State must provide transcript of nonfelony trial). The only cases that have rejected indigent defendants' claims to transcripts have done so either because an adequate alternative was available but not used, Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226 (1971), or because the request was plainly frivolous and a prior opportunity to obtain a transcript was waived, United States v. MacCollom, 426 U.S. 317 (1976).

And the Court in each case emphasized that no constitutional violation would have been shown if the State had provided some "adequate substitute" for a full stenographic transcript. Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226, 228 (1971); Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367 (1969); Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487 (1963); Eskridge v. Washington Prison Board, 357 U.S. 214 (1958). Mayer v. City of Chicago, 404 U.S. 189 (1971); Williams v. Oklahoma City, 395 U.S. 458 (1969); Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367 (1969); Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40 (1967); Long v. District Court of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192 (1966); Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487 (1963); Eskridge v. Washington Prison Board, 357 U.S. 214 (1958).

The question here is whether the state court properly determined that the transcript requested in this case was not needed for an effective defense. Williams v. Oklahoma City, 395 U.S. 458 (1969); Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367 (1969); Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40 (1967); Long v. District Court of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192 (1966); Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487 (1963); Eskridge v. Washington Prison Board, 357 U.S. 214 (1958); Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956). In prior cases involving an indigent defendant's claim of right to a free transcript, this Court has identified two factors that are relevant to the determination of need: (1) the value of the transcript to the defendant in connection with the appeal or trial for which it is sought, and (2) the availability of alternative devices that would fulfill the same functions as a transcript.

See, e.g., United States v. Devlin, 13 F.3d 1361,1365 (9th Cir. 1994) (holding that the state must provide an indigent defendant with a suppression hearing transcript for trial preparation purposes); United States v. Vandivere, 579 F.2d 1240, 1243 (10th Cir. 1978) (holding that "the presumption should be that indigent defendants in criminal cases are entitled to a transcript of any preliminary examination"); United States v. Young, 472 F.2d 628, 629 (6th Cir. 1972) (holding that reversal was required where the trial court refused to grant defendant's motion for a transcript of the first trial and the preliminary examination). The Supreme Court subsequently extended Griffin to require the state to provide indigent defendants with transcripts of (a) state postconviction proceedings, Long v. District of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192, 192-94, 87 S.Ct. 362, 17 L.Ed.2d 290 (1966) ( per curiam); (b) state habeas evidentiary hearings, Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367, 370, 89 S.Ct. 580, 21 L.Ed.2d 601 (1969); and (c) petty offense trials, Williams v. Oklahoma City, 395 U.S. 458, 459, 89 S.Ct. 1818, 23 L.Ed.2d 440 (1969). As we explain later, appeals are different from second or successive trials in that appeals ordinarily involve only the specific issues the defendant chooses to raise; accordingly, only the portions of the transcript that are relevant to those specific issues must be provided in the particular case.

As said in Kamisar, LaFave and Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure 136 (5th ed. 1980), "[i]n the decade and a half following Griffin, its underlying principle was broadly applied." Perhaps most significant in the present context are Long v. District Court of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192, 87 S.Ct. 362, 17 L.Ed.2d 290 (1966) (per curiam) (indigent must be furnished a free transcript of a state habeas corpus hearing for use on appeal from denial of the writ although state law did not make its availability a necessary prerequisite to full appellate review); Robert v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 194, 19 L.Ed.2d 141 (1967) (per curiam) (indigent defendant entitled to free transcript of preliminary hearing for use at trial); Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367, 89 S.Ct. 580, 21 L.Ed.2d 601 (1969) (indigent prisoner entitled to free transcript of lower court habeas proceeding in bringing a new petition before a higher state court); and Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226, 92 S.Ct. 431, 30 L.Ed.2d 400 (1971) (indigent may be entitled on retrial to transcript of previous trial that ended with hung jury). These cases, only one of which is cited by Sliker — and this by mere reference, and none of which is cited by the Government, thus go well beyond the holding of a bare majority in Griffin that a free transcript must be provided for an appeal where lack of such a transcript or a substitute barred appellate review.

Our decisions for more than a decade now have made clear that differences in access to the instruments needed to vindicate legal rights, when based upon the financial situation of the defendant, are repugnant to the Constitution. [ 389 U.S. at 42, 88 S. Ct. at 196] More recently, in Gardner v. California, 393 U.S. 367, 89 S.Ct. 580, 21 L.Ed. 2d 601 (1969), the Supreme Court once again faced the question of an indigent's right to a free transcript. In Gardner, the petitioner, a California state prisoner, filed a request for habeas corpus relief which the state trial court denied.