Knowing what happened to someone you love

Read the Trial Transcript — for $50 or Less

The prosecutor's copy of an existing trial transcript, released to the victim or the family — free electronically, and never more than $50 on paper.

DRAFT — not filed  Proposed bill for the 90th Texas Legislature · Adds Article 56A.0515 to the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure · Last updated November 5, 2026

The problem

Any person in Texas may apply for a court transcript under Government Code §52.047 — the barrier for a victim's family is not standing, it is price. Texas sets no statewide per-page rate; a fee is "reasonable" only if a judge later says so. Even the statute's discounted rate for additional copies — no more than one-third of the original per-page cost, §52.047(c) — leaves a typical 300-page trial transcript at roughly $500. A full transcript costs far more: after the first trial of his daughter's killer ended in a hung jury, Lawrence Baitland paid $1,800 for the record of that trial. In the same case, an indigent defendant can obtain the record without charge to pursue an appeal. No equivalent exists for the victim's side, even though Chapter 56A of the Code of Criminal Procedure gives victims and their families rights to confer, to be heard, and to participate.

What the bill does

The bill adds Article 56A.0515 to the Code of Criminal Procedure. On written request, the attorney representing the state shall release a copy of a transcript already in the office's possession to an eligible person: the victim, a guardian of the victim, or a close relative of a deceased victim, expressly including a stepparent who married the victim's parent while the victim was a minor. Covered transcripts are the trial record including the punishment phase, appeal transcripts, and revocation or parole-related hearing transcripts — only if the prosecutor's office holds them. An electronic copy is free; if no electronic copy exists, paper duplication is capped at $50. Eligibility is determined by the office's victim assistance coordinator from the case file, and each eligible person may receive one copy. The bill creates no duty to prepare, order, or pay for a transcript that does not exist: if nobody ever ordered an appeals transcript, none can be compelled.

Why it works

This mechanism is proven law elsewhere. Connecticut's statute, in force since 1997, requires the prosecuting official to provide a copy of any prepared transcript to any victim without charge on request (Conn. Gen. Stat. §51-286g). Indiana entitles a victim — or a deceased victim's spouse or immediate family member — to a free electronic copy of the transcript prepared for appeal (Ind. Code §35-40-5-8.5). Oregon lets a victim obtain a copy of a prepared transcript at the actual cost of copying it (Or. Rev. Stat. §147.419). The economics explain why these laws hold up: creating a transcript is skilled work, properly paid by the page, but once it exists, one more electronic copy costs almost nothing to send. Texas's own Office of Court Administration flagged the underlying problem in its 2026 court-reporting study: unregulated transcript pricing is an access-to-justice concern.

How hard will this be to pass?

The mechanism is narrow and proven — three other states run versions of it, one since 1997 — and the bill touches no court reporter's income, imposes no duty to create anything, and spends almost nothing. Prospective authors will be approached in January 2027, when the 90th Legislature's rosters are set.

The opposition's best argument is a serious one, and it comes from court reporters: transcript fees are statutory, earned compensation, not a windfall (Tex. Att'y Gen. Op. GA-0155), and Texas is losing reporters — nearly 400 fewer certified shorthand reporters between fiscal 2005 and fiscal 2025, by the Office of Court Administration's count. In a shortage, the argument runs, the Legislature should not erode the income that keeps reporters in courtrooms. The answer is that this bill touches no reporter's income at all: the fee for preparing the transcript was paid in full by whoever ordered it, and the bill imposes no duty on any reporter, caps no fee, and discounts no creation. It governs only what a prosecutor's office may do with a copy the State already holds — the structure Connecticut has operated since 1997.

Cost

Minimal: electronic delivery, of copies the State already holds, to a small and defined class. The only chargeable event is paper duplication where no electronic copy exists — capped at $50, paid by the requester.

How this gap in the law actually plays out

Cayley Mandadi was beaten to death in 2017. Her first trial ended in a hung jury — which meant a second trial, and meant that everything sworn in the first courtroom, every witness and every expert, was about to matter again. Her father bought the transcript of that first trial from the court reporter. It cost $1,800.

What that money bought was not a keepsake. Over the next year he worked through the transcript, the evidence, and the official records: he built graphs and timelines, took the defence expert's testimony statement by statement, and matched each statement against the evidence that contradicted it, in one-page summaries collected in a binder and given to the prosecutor. When the second trial came, the defence did not call its star expert witness.

The point is the price of admission. Everything he did began with a document that already existed — a transcript the court reporter had already prepared and been paid for — and the only question was whether a grieving father could afford a copy of it. He could. Most families cannot write an $1,800 check, and for them the rights Texas gives victims on paper — to confer with the prosecution, to be heard, to take part — run into a paywall at exactly the moment those rights become real.

Texas law already recognises that a transcript is too important to be rationed purely by price — for one side of the courtroom. An indigent defendant can receive the record without charge to pursue an appeal, and in Britt v. North Carolina the U.S. Supreme Court recognised the value of a first-trial transcript in preparing for a retrial after a hung jury — again for the defence, as a constitutional right. This bill claims no constitutional right for victims. It asks the Legislature to extend the same recognition, by statute, to the family on the other side of the aisle.

Likely criticism — and our answers

You will meet these arguments in committee, in the press, and possibly inside your own organisation. Each is stated in its strongest fair form. The expected sources are court reporters and their association, county organisations, and the criminal-defence bar — named here as likely critics, which is a different thing from naming an ally. None of them has taken a position on this bill; their expected grounds are drawn from the economics of court reporting and the public record, and are labelled as inference where they appear.

Potential allies

These are the kinds of organisation whose missions and records align with this bill. Organisations are deliberately not named here. A group that found its own name on a bill page could reasonably read it as being cited as a supporter, and no organisation has committed to this bill. Named research is kept in the project's working papers; a category below means a natural conversation to have, not a position taken.

• Survivor-run organisations of murder victims' families in Texas — organisations led by victims and surviving family members, whose members have faced exactly this bill's fact pattern: a criminal trial, a possible retrial or appeal, and parole hearings years later where the trial record is the family's only anchor.
• Statewide sexual-assault and family-violence advocacy coalitions — the coalitions whose legislative programmes routinely support Chapter 56A expansions; victims of those offences are core beneficiaries, including for protective-order and parole proceedings where the record matters.
• Organisations of families bereaved by drunk-driving homicides — whose members routinely sit through the same sequence of trial, appeal, and parole review.
• Victim-services professionals — the coordinators and victim-assistance staff inside prosecutors' offices who watch families go without records; plausible witnesses on how the eligibility mechanism would work in practice.

Prosecutors are a consultee, not a counted ally. Prosecutors' offices are the delivery mechanism for this bill, and their victim assistance coordinators already identify and serve the class the bill covers — so the eligibility determination costs them least. But support from the profession should not be assumed: it depends on the duty staying in its possession-limited form, with discretion to withhold or redact sealed or protected material and no duty to order or pay for a transcript the office does not hold. Prosecutor organisations should be sounded out before filing, not first met in committee.

One further piece of the landscape is worth knowing: the Office of Court Administration's own 2026 study of court reporting — a study the Legislature itself commissioned — recommends that policymakers address the current absence of regulation on transcript pricing, which it identifies as an access-to-justice concern. That is cited as the judiciary's published analysis, not as any agency's endorsement of this bill.

Prospective authors

Fiscal and implementation notes

• Fiscal impact is expected to be minimal. The duty is to release copies of transcripts the State already holds, delivered electronically at no charge. The only chargeable event is paper duplication where no electronic copy exists — capped at $50, paid by the requester. Requests will be infrequent: a violent-crime case with a surviving family that wants the full record. That is an assessment of the bill's structure, not a costed figure — the Legislative Budget Board produces the fiscal note.
• Eligibility is decided inside the prosecutor's office. Release requires a determination by the office's victim assistance coordinator, from the records of the case, that the requester is an eligible person. Court reporters are never asked to certify anyone's status.
• Requests are in writing, and the entitlement is one copy per eligible person — a parent, a spouse, and an adult sibling may each receive their own copy; no one receives two.
• The Act is prospective in operation: it applies only to requests made on or after its effective date (September 1, 2027), regardless of when the transcript was prepared — so a family whose case was tried years earlier can still ask, and receive, a copy the office holds.

Talking points

• "A transcript is a working tool, not a souvenir."
• "Nobody is ordered to create a transcript, and no court reporter loses a dollar — the fee was paid in full by whoever ordered it."
• "This bill governs one thing: a copy the State already holds."
• "Connecticut has required exactly this of its prosecutors since 1997. Indiana and Oregon have their own versions. None of them asks a reporter to work for less."
• "Texas already furnishes the record without charge to an indigent defendant. This bill extends the same recognition, by statute, to the family."
• "Sealed material stays sealed. Everyone's existing right to order a transcript at full price stays exactly as it is."

Questions advocates ask

Download the draft bill in Texas House format (PDF) — DRAFT, not filed

Current law

What the draft changes, section by section

• SECTION 1 — new Article 56A.0515, Code of Criminal Procedure. The bill works entirely inside Chapter 56A, so the chapter's definitions and victim-coordinator machinery apply, and places the whole duty on the attorney representing the state. Court reporters and clerks are not in the bill at all.
• Subsection (a) — definitions. "Close relative of a deceased victim" takes the art. 56A.001 meaning, except that it expressly includes a stepparent who married the deceased victim's parent while the victim was younger than 18 — closing the stepparent gap in the borrowed definition. "Eligible person" means a victim, a guardian of a victim, or a close relative of a deceased victim. "Transcript" means a transcript prepared by a court reporter of (A) the trial, including the punishment phase, (B) an appeal in the case, or (C) a revocation hearing or a parole-related hearing held in connection with the case.
• Subsection (b) — the duty. On the written request of an eligible person, the attorney representing the state shall release a copy of a transcript in the possession of the attorney representing the state. The possession test is the load-bearing wall of the draft: the duty never reaches a transcript the office does not hold.
• Subsection (c) — the eligibility gate. The attorney may not release a copy unless the office's victim assistance coordinator has determined, from the records of the case, that the requester is an eligible person. Certification sits with the office that already holds the victim records — never with a court reporter.
• Subsection (d) — price. If the office holds the transcript in electronic form, the copy is released in electronic form at no charge. Only if no electronic copy is held is the copy released in paper form, and the duplication fee may not exceed $50. The $50 figure is a cap on duplication cost, not a price for a transcript.
• Subsection (e) — one copy. An eligible person is entitled to only one copy of a transcript under the article — one each, per eligible person.
• Subsection (f) — sealed material. The article does not require release of any portion of a transcript that is sealed, was taken in camera, or is subject to a protective order or another court order restricting disclosure; the attorney may redact such a portion from the copy released.
• Subsection (g) — what the bill does not do. Nothing in the article (1) requires the attorney to prepare, order, pay for, or otherwise obtain a transcript not in the attorney's possession; (2) imposes a duty on a court reporter or a clerk of a court; or (3) reduces or otherwise affects a fee owed under §52.047 for the preparation of a transcript or for a copy furnished by a court reporter.
• Subsection (h) — savings clause. Nothing in the article limits the right of any person to apply for and obtain a transcript under §52.047, Government Code, or under other law. The full-price reporter route survives intact, for families and for everyone else.
• SECTION 2 — applicability. The Act applies only to a request made on or after its effective date, regardless of when the transcript was prepared.
• SECTION 3 — effective date. September 1, 2027.

Legal analysis

• The possession test does the fee work. Because the duty attaches only to an existing copy in the office's hands, the bill creates no taking or fee-erosion exposure for reporters and no unfunded duty for counties. Subsection (g)(3)'s express preservation of §52.047 fees is a belt to subsection (h)'s suspenders: the savings clause preserves the application route, and (g)(3) preserves the compensation structure behind it.
• Takings and compensation (Tex. Const. art. I, §17; U.S. Const. amend. V). A law that cut the price of work a reporter had already performed, or imposed new uncompensated duties on reporters, would invite a compensation argument — and §52.047(g) shows the Legislature has before made reporters absorb free-transcript work in one configuration, which is exactly the precedent reporters would cite. This draft imposes no duty and no loss on any reporter, which is the strongest answer. GA-0155's logic also cuts in the bill's favour: transcript fees are statutory compensation, so the Legislature that created the structure may prospectively adjust the copy side of it — and this draft does not even do that, leaving §52.047 untouched.
• Copyright is a weak basis for opposition. The weight of authority is that a verbatim transcript is not copyrightable by the reporter — there is no originality in transcribing others' words (Lipman v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 475 F.2d 565, 568 (1st Cir. 1973); the Tenth Circuit's Smith v. City of Albuquerque line, holding a reporter is not entitled to be paid again when a copy is obtained from a public agency that lawfully holds the transcript). The reporter's statutory fee entitlement for work the reporter performs is real, but it is separate from copyright — and the draft preserves it expressly. The draft is also confined to the transcript of proceedings, not to a reporter's separately priced add-on work under §52.047(d) (exhibit reproduction, indexing, special binding).
• The indigent-defendant precedent is persuasive, not controlling — and the bill argues it that way. Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956), and Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226 (1971), establish that transcript access is too important to be purely price-rationed — for defendants, as a matter of constitutional right; Britt is on all fours factually (a first trial ending in a hung jury, a transcript sought for retrial) but recognises the right for the accused. No equivalent constitutional transcript right for victims was found in research, and the bill does not claim one. It is argued as sound policy extending the same recognition to the class Article I, §30 and Chapter 56A already single out. Overclaiming a constitutional entitlement would hand opponents an easy rebuttal; the draft does not make that mistake.
• Sealing and protective orders are answered inside the text. Subsection (f) excludes sealed, in-camera, and court-protected portions and grants redaction authority, on the model of Indiana's confidentiality carve-out. Without it, an unfiltered release duty could collide with court orders; with it, the duty and the orders coexist. Recipients also remain subject to any court order governing the underlying proceedings.
• No discovery or work-product spillover. A transcript is not discovery material and not prosecutor work product; delivering it discloses nothing the defence does not already have — defence counsel was in the room. The bill is deliberately transcript-only, so it cannot be characterised as a route into the State's file.
• Retrial integrity. Expect the argument that family-held transcripts could be used to coach witnesses at a retrial. On the facts: the transcript is equally available to the defence at copy rates today, witnesses can already be confronted with it, and courts retain full authority over sequestration ("the Rule") and witness contact. No drafting change is needed to answer it.
• Fiscal drafting. The duty is electronic-first and the only chargeable event is defined and capped inside the bill itself, so no open-ended county obligation is created for a fiscal note to find.

Known seams — flagged for the author and Legislative Council

Published here deliberately: a bill page that hides its drafting issues will not survive staff review, and these are mechanical rather than substantive.

• The sealed-material exclusion is a conscious drafting inclusion. Subsection (f)'s exclusion of sealed, in-camera, and protective-order portions — with redaction authority — is machinery added in drafting, on the model of Indiana's statute. It is there because without it the release duty could collide with court orders. It changes no part of the bill's design, but it should be adopted by the author consciously, not discovered in committee.
• "A transcript of an appeal" needs one word settled. Subsection (a)(3)(B) could be read as a transcript of appellate proceedings rather than a transcript prepared for an appeal — the latter is the intended meaning, matching the models in Connecticut and Indiana. Council should settle on the "prepared for" formulation.
• The eligibility gate could stall in a small office. Subsection (c) makes release impermissible until the victim assistance coordinator has made the eligibility determination — a sound gate, but in a small office with no coordinator capacity the precondition could stall a duty the bill elsewhere states unconditionally. The mechanism should be confirmed as workable with prosecutors' representatives, at small-office scale, before filing.
• Statutory text to be re-verified. The research behind this draft worked from the published text of Chapter 56A and §52.047 as reproduced in standard legal publications. Before filing, the live text should be re-pulled from the official Texas statutes website and the placement and subchapter for new Article 56A.0515 confirmed with Legislative Council.
• Open placeholders. The bill number and the author line are the only placeholders in the draft. Everything else is drafted to be filed as it stands, subject to the items above.

Sources

• Tex. Gov't Code §52.047 (published statutory text): law.justia.com
• Tex. Att'y Gen. Op. No. GA-0155 (2004) (transcript fees as statutory compensation): texasattorneygeneral.gov
• Tex. Code Crim. Proc. ch. 56A (published chapter text): tdcaa.com
• Office of Court Administration, digital court recording study (2026) — reporter numbers and the transcript-pricing recommendation: txcourts.gov
• Conn. Gen. Stat. §51-286g: law.justia.com; Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice Policy 521 (victim rights, implementing §51-286g): portal.ct.gov
• Ind. Code §35-40-5-8.5: law.justia.com
• Or. Rev. Stat. §147.419: law.justia.com
• Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226 (1971): supreme.justia.com