Misuderstanded

The Black English gap, as one might call it, matters: It can affect people’s lives at crucial junctures. In 2007, a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dissent claimed that when a black woman said, in terror, “He finna shoot me,” she may have been referring to something in the past, when in fact “finna” refers to the immediate future. “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” Warren Demesme asked the police when accused of sexual assault in 2017. The statements one makes to law enforcement after requesting a lawyer are inadmissible—but Demesme’s rights were ignored because, it was argued, he’d requested a “lawyer dog,” not an actual attorney.
John McWhorter. "Could Black English Mean a Prison Sentence?"

These don't strike me as mistakes made by people who don't understand Black English. Or, to use it's longer name, African-American Vernacular English; "Ebonics" in the vulgar tongue. And while John McWhorter's broader point, which is that court transcribers who are unfamiliar with how many Black people speak can place into the record distortions of what people actually intended to say is well taken, it's worth separating that from what appear to be cynical attempts to use the fact that many White people find the way Black people talk to be something between bizarre and bastardized as a weapon against them.

Although I'm black myself, I don't speak Black English. Mr. McWhorter's opening example of “He come tell ’bout I’m gonna take the TV,” may as well have been Greek. The fact that “He come tell ’bout,” negates whatever comes after it (presumably, it means "he lied about") was complete news to me. But despite the fact that I haven't lived in a majority Black neighborhood (outside of my freshman dormatory in college) since I was too young to remember, I'm well aware of the fact that “finna” is short for "fixing (as in "preparing") to" and that in Mr. Demesme’s case, "dog" is effectively a synonym for "dude," "guy," "bro," mister," "pal," buddy," "fella" et cetera. These aren't particularly obscure usages. After all, I heard them on television all the time.

People who are tasked with either finding ways to win a person's freedom or place them behind bars don't really care if Black English is deficient or alternate when compared to Standard American English, or any other dialect of the language. What matters to them is that the language is different enough from what likely jurors and or judges are familiar with that nonsensical definitions of “finna” or “dog” will sound plausible.

And in that case, even the best educated and precise court stenographer won't make much of a difference.