Opinion
No. X-398.
July 6, 1976. Rehearing Denied August 9, 1976.
Appeal from the Circuit Court, Bay County, Warren L. Fitzpatrick, J.
Richard W. Ervin, III, Public Defender, and David J. Busch, Asst. Public Defender, for appellant.
Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., and Andrew W. Lindsey, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
On January 6, 1976, this court rendered its opinion which relinquished jurisdiction to the trial court "with directions that it direct the court reporter to forthwith transcribe the [trial] proceedings."
Smith v. State, 325 So.2d 426 (1 Fla.App. 1976).
By an instrument entitled "Response to Order of Appellate Court", the trial court has advised "that it is impossible to furnish such a transcript as evidenced by the affidavit of the court reporter, which is attached to this response." The referenced affidavit explains the circumstances in which a deputy court reporter, who is now living in another state and is employed in a non-court capacity, destroyed her shorthand notes of the trial.
This indigent appellant having been denied a full appellate review of trial counsel's assignments of error set out in our prior opinion, the judgment of conviction is reversed with directions that a new trial be granted.
REVERSED.
RAWLS, Acting C.J., and MILLS, J., concur.
SMITH, J., specially concurs.
I concur in the result and in the court's opinion because it does not appear from the record of this case, tried in October 1974, that the events at trial from which appellant's contentions arise can be evidenced to us in any way equivalent to a stenographer's transcript. See Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487, 495, 88 S.Ct. 774, 9 L.Ed.2d 899 (1963).