No habla ingles & jury duty???

Great Debates
1

I wanted to hear your opinions on this:

Jan 1998. Family in El Paso drops off their 19 year-old freshman daughter at NMSU in Las Cruces NM. She is never seen alive again. Two months later, her body is found. She died of over 30 stab wounds. Two Las Cruces men, JD & JA are ultimately arrested. Since each accuse the other of killing the girl while they were asleep in the pickup truck (yeah, right), they are tried separately.

JDs first trial in Las Cruces ended with a hung jury.
JAs first trial was postponed & moved to Albuquerque due to extensive pre-trial publicity.
JDs second trial (also in Albuquerque) ended with a conviction & life sentence.

JAs trial is now in (or maybe just completed) jury selection. One of the jurors does not speak English, and will be hearing all of the testimony through an interpreter. S/he will of course be in the courtroom & able to hear voice tones & see facial expressions, BUT not simultaneously with the words they are saying.

I have interviewed a fair number of Spanish speaking patients through an interpreter. I know enough Spanish to realize that only about 50% of what I say gets conveyed to the patient sometimes.

It seems to me that this juror will miss a great deal of the available information. It is not just what witnesses say that matter, but whether they make subtle contradictions, how they hold themselves while giving testimony, whether their voice sounds confident, hesitant, fearful, etc.

IMO, this juror:
a) cannot get the full impact of the testimony. What s/he does get will be “filtered” through another person.
b) cannot argue in deliberations as effectively as the English-speaking jurors. Again, everything s/he hears will be filtered, and everything she says will be filtered through this interpreter.
c) therefore should not be a juror.

If you think it matters, I will add that both the victim & the accused in this case are Hispanic.

Peripheral issues to consider:

  1. Does barring non-English speakers from jury duty affect the right of Hispanic defendants to get a fair trial by a jury of their peers?
  2. Does that mean that 50+% of El Paso natives could claim to be uncomfortable with English for such an important matter & be exempted from jury duty?

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

2

I think if you absolutely cannot understand English, you should not be sitting on a jury. But we don’t have an official language in this country, so what I think has no legal standing. (Shocking, isn’t it?! Jeez!) So I would guess that if they didn’t allow this person on the jury, the defense would have an instant appeal handy should he be convicted.

3

English is not the official language of this country, and apparently not of the State of New Mexico either. I think it probably should be - and any citizen who cannot understand english should be excused from jury duty. The way it is now though, I don’t think there is any legal way to bar her (short of having one of the lawyers exclude her in jury selection, if they do that in NM).

4

I cannot believe she was not excluded.

Cooper, I sort of agree with you. But there is a problem. Anyone who cannot understand English be excluded? I’d be willing to bet there would be a sudden rash of people of foreign descent feigning ignorance to be excluded. Not all, of course, but many consider jury duty to be an inconvenience, and are willing to do anything to escape it.

In Maryland, jurors are selected from the pool of registered voters. And if you’re responsible enough to vote, you should be responsible enough to be included in jury duty.

Still trying to think of something witty to say here

5

I’d think that the ultimate concern, other than Justice, is that the accused be granted a fair trial. Having someone on the jury who can not communicate with the other members of the panel save through an interepreter is a violation of that right. And it turns the interpreter into a Juror, not a witness or clerk.

6

I think it’s absurd that some Spanish speakers in the US don’t learn to speak English. I also think that native English speakers in border states who work with Spanish speaking clients or customers should learn to speak Spanish. In New Mexico, Spanish has always been one of the official languages. Claro que si.
Jill

7

Yeah, what Monty said.

Basically, the Juror won’t get the whole issue, and it wouldn’t be fair to the accused. It’s not discriminating against non-english speakers, it’s discriminating for the accused.

hehe, turn it around like that. Sweet.

8

Consider this, though: Under the ADA, deaf persons cannot be excluded from juries - courts must provide ASL interpreters. It would strike me as inconsistent to have a legal policy that determines that ASL court interpreters can do their jobs effectively but Spanish court interpreters can’t.

9

There are any number of lies you can tell to get out of jury duty, and any one of them can end up with you facing charges of perjury (or obstruction of justice? contempt? not sure, but I’ve heard of it happening).

I think english should be the official language of this country and the states - but until it is no one should be excluded for not speaking it.

10

ruadh, you bring up a good point. But there are at least a couple of differences.

  1. A deaf person does not choose to remain deaf. To some extent, a non-English-speaking American chooses to remain non-English-speaking. I do realize that learning a 2nd language as an adult is not easy, but neither is it impossible.

  2. ASL is English-based. English-to-ASL still allows for unambiguous translation of phrases & words. “For” in English can be either para or por in Spanish; I believe there are situations in which substituting one for the other changes meanings significantly (but can’t remember these offhand). I certainly have noticed how many Hispanic patients I see tell me about “drinking” their pills. While this may not have huge legal implications, there are countless mismatches & overlaps in word usage between English & Spanish.

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

11

I could not believe if I was on trial I would have someone in the Jury that would not speak English. I have lived in New Mexico for 18 years now, and I do not feel compeled to learn Spanish. New Mexico is a state within the United States, and it is acceped that English is the primary language. If you dont speak English, you really should. I dont have the nerve to move to France and expect the French to speak to me in English. And the statement that I would not get a fair trial is completely correct. If I’m on trial, I’d deffently sleep much better in jail knowing that:

A) bubba is on his side of the cell
B) My entire Jury is fluent in the English language

12

The price that justice exacts is high when you live in a free country. It often allows the guilty to go unpunished.

The Miranda Ruling, double jeopardy, trial by your peers, search and seizure restrictions, the 5th Amendment, open trials, etc., have been viewed by many as working in favour of the criminal. I don’t see it that way. I see it as justice bending over backwards to prevent a wrongful conviction. And yet, in spite of these safeguards, sometimes the guilty go free and the innocent are convicted.

The great jurist Oliver Wendall Holmes said that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be punished.

Here in Canada we do not have the double jeopardy rule. Some time ago a young man by the name of Guy Morin was charged and found not guilty of murdering and raping a little girl. The Crown appealed and he was found gulty. Then Morin appealed and it resulted in a hung jury.Again he was tried, and again it resulted in a hung jury. This madness would have continued for I don’t know how long, but fortunately DNA evidence finally absolved him completely by techniques that were not available until recently.

I’m not so sure. This juror will have to rely on facts rather than impressions. He/she might be the best juror of them all.

Just my nickel’s worth.

When the pin is pulled, Mr.Grenade is no longer our friend.

13

Interesting. In California one of the qualifications for being a juror is that you must speak and understand English.

I’ve taken depositions of people who are not English speaking, and it is very difficult even in that setting. As does Sue, I speak enough Spanish to know that sometimes the nuances of what I am asking are not translating well, and that sometimes the interpreter is giving me the meaning of what was said but not the exact wording.

Further, there are two ways to do this: one is to have simultaneous translation (which means that the interpreter is talking at the same time I am), which is incredibly distracting, or else to have pauses while what is being said is translated, which causes everybody to lose their train of thought and takes twice as long. Plus, I’ve had interpreters who have to stop and think about what the translation ought to be, and have stopped the proceedings momentarily for that purpose or because they themselves have not understood what I’ve said.

I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to do opening statement and closing argument to the jury with someone sitting there who did not speak English, and with an interpreter murmuring along with everything I said.

Bad call, IMHO.

-Melin

14

Wally, one of the reasons that appellate courts give great deference to the factual findings made by a jury is because the jury is able to observe the witnesses who are testifying, rather than simply reading a cold, written record. It is thought that carefully examining a witness’ demeanor – body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. – on the stand allows each juror to bring to the trial the experiences he/she has in learning to discern trustworthiness. Thus, these things are critical to the jury process.

-Melin
(the real one! ;))

15

majormd asked:

  1. Does barring non-English speakers from jury duty affect the right of Hispanic defendants to get a fair trial by a jury of their peers?

–If the defendant is Hispanic and the jury is Hispanic that would be a jury of peers. They would just be Hispanics that speak English. If the defendant only spoke Spanish I might want some fluent Spanish speakers on that jury.

  1. Does that mean that 50+% of El Paso natives could claim to be uncomfortable with English for such an important matter & be exempted from jury duty?

–Maybe closer to 30%…the State of Texas requires a juror to have some understanding of English.
But Carly’s trial is in New Mexico, where that state’s supreme court has upheld the right of non-English speakers to serve on juries.

16

Sue -

#1 is correct, but I don’t see why it would have any legal bearing.

#2 may be correct - I don’t know enough about ASL to judge. But I think the “filtering” problem you spoke of would still be there, although maybe to a lesser degree.

Also, Melin notes:

Emphasis added. Jurors certainly determine a witness’s credibility in part by whether they think the witness SOUNDS LIKE s/he’s telling the truth; ASL obviously can’t convey this.

I do think Melin’s point about the distraction of translation is well taken. ASL probably wouldn’t be a problem in this regard.

17

ruadh, the reason #1 has legal bearing is that not speaking English is not a disability under the ADA, which requires accomodations for deaf jurors.

18

Melin, I stand corrected.

After reading your post I see that if I was wrongfully charged with a crime, I would want the jury to understand my sincerity during questioning on the stand. This sincerity is not easily translated to the written page.

I’ve obviously missed the point of Sue’s post entirely.

At least give me credit for not mixing you guys up for a change.

Damned if I know why I do that. It’s maybe some kind of Phraedus-osmosis thing.

Yikes!

When the pin is pulled, Mr.Grenade is no longer our friend.

19

OK, got it. But the ADA does allow for exceptions when the person is unable to perform a job’s requirements due to his/her disability. If a deaf person serving on a jury is explicitly not one of these exceptions, it seems to me the law is stating that being able to understand spoken testimony is not a requirement of jury duty.

That’s why I say it might be inconsistent to claim that it is a requirement where non-English speakers are concerned. If it’s problematic enough to exclude them, it’s problematic enough to be an ADA exception. I can see a plausible case being made for that anyway.

I hope some of this made sense … I am tired and going to sleep now :slight_smile:

20

WallyM7, What happens in Canada? Is everyone bilingual?

Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.