Emanuel Ochoa v. the State of Texas

• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas
• Decided: February 17, 2023
• Docket: 02-21-00175-CR
• Status: Published

Opinion

In the Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth No. 02-21-00174-CR No. 02-21-00175-CR No. 02-21-00176-CR

EMANUEL OCHOA, Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

On Appeal from the 235th District Court Cooke County, Texas Trial Court No. CR19-00054, CR19-00056, CR19-00057

ORDER

On August 31, 2022, Teresa Ward, official court reporter for the 235th District

Court, certified to this court that she was unable to convert State’s Exhibit Nos. PT

SX-2 and SX-83 into a format and/or size compatible with the requirements of the

TAMES records submission portal (RSP). Ward stated that the exhibits are the same

video, “a[n] Interview Room video that is on proprietary software, MJP format,” that

is “unable to be converted.” This court subsequently ordered the trial court clerk to deliver a copy of State’s

Exhibit No. PT SX-2 (Interview Room Video) and State’s Exhibit No. 83 (Interview

Room Video) to this court for review. Upon receiving the exhibits, the court

confirmed that the exhibits are identical copies of the same audio/video recording of

law enforcement’s interview of appellant on February 6, 2018. The audio/video file is

saved in MJP format, which the court recognizes is not a format compatible with the

TAMES RSP. However, the player included with the audio/video file contains an

export feature under the player’s Video menu that is capable of converting the file

into AVI format, which is a format compatible with the TAMES RSP. See Jud.

Comm. on Info. Tech., Technology Standards § 3.2 (Version 7.0 Nov. 2021),

https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1435816/technology-standards.pdf. The export

feature is also capable of splitting the video into multiple smaller files that do not

exceed the two-gigabyte file-size limit of the TAMES RSP.1

1 See Off. of Ct. Admin., TAMES Records Submission Portal (RSP) User Guide 8 (Version 3 Aug. 1, 2013), https://rsp.txcourts.gov/training/TAMES-RSP-User- Guide.pdf; see also Unif. Format Manual for Tex. Reporters’ Records § 8.10 (amended June 28, 2010), https://www.txcourts.gov/media/244178/Uniform-Format-Manual- 20100701.pdf (providing that a recording may be broken into multiple files if it is too long to fit in one file). This court’s staff is willing to share technical knowledge with court reporters about this method of converting exhibits to an electronic format that conforms to the size and format requirements of the TAMES RSP. But the responsibility of contacting court staff for this knowledge, and the obligation of uploading the reporter’s record to the TAMES RSP, remains with the court reporter.

2 Accordingly, we return the copies of State’s Exhibit Nos. PT SX-2 and 83 to

the trial court clerk and order court reporter Teresa Ward to upload the exhibits to

the TAMES portal in compliance with the applicable rules no later than Monday,

February 27, 2023. 2

We direct the clerk of this court to send a notice of this order to court reporter

Teresa Ward, the attorneys of record, the trial court judge, and the trial court clerk.

Dated February 17, 2023.

Per Curiam

2 Because the exhibits are the same video, we will permit the court reporter to upload one copy of the video with both exhibit numbers in the filename (i.e., Cooke- CR19-00054-RR-Part001-ExhibitPTSX-2-SX-83.avi).