Susan Rychman has been a Court Stenographer for 32 years.
On Monday morning in Genesee County Court she testified in a hearing in the Antwan Odom case, that she only became aware at the beginning of this year that recording in a Grand Jury proceeding was not allowed and is a Judiciary Law misdemeanor.
The issue came to light in January of 2019 when Shirley Gorman, Assistant District Attorney, contacted her about a question on a transcript and Rychman went back to check her notes and audio. After that conversation with Gorman, audio recordings of Grand Jury proceedings stopped.
Rychman has been involved with Grand Jury proceedings in Genesee County since 1997, working for Forbes Court Reporting Services.
After the issue was discovered, District Attorney Larry Friedman contacted all attorneys whose cases were involved and the matter was brought before the court and discussed.
Frank Housh, Attorney for Antwan Odom made a motion to dismiss Odom’s case after learning of the possible audio recordings several months ago.
After listening to Rychman testify on Monday morning, Housh says it looks like if there was audio recorded during the Grand Jury for the Odom case, Rychman was unable to find it.
Rychman told the court that audio recordings were made using her laptop and were recorded using keystrokes on her steno machine. They were not continuous recordings. Rychman says she believes if there were recordings in November and December in the Odom case they were deleted from her laptop 2-4 weeks afterwards. Rychman told the court she does not back up audio recordings as they are large files and take up too much space, she only backs up transcripts of the Grand Jury proceedings
Judge Zambito has reserved judgement and will contact Housh in a few weeks with his decision on whether or not the possible audio recordings affected the Grand Jury minutes and if the indictment should be dismissed.
The trial for Antwan Odom will begin on September 30th with jury selection.