The way I see it, there’s no way to avoid the problems of translation and understanding (on juries, or elsewhere) in a linguistically diverse country like the U.S. You got your immigrants, your regional dialects, your ebonics, etc., and it’s not all going to blow away by declaring English the official language. So, what to do?
If, on the one hand, people who don’t speak English ARE allowed on juries, then there will undoubtedly be certain communication problems, as some of you have suggested above.
But if, on the other hand, people who don’t speak English are systematically excluded from juries, the very same kinds of communication problems will still be there. Why? Because there will be witnesses who don’t speak English or don’t speak it well. In such cases there will be interpreters and the “filtering” of words by them, and there will be all kinds of nagging questions about how well equipped the jurors are to comprehend and evaluate these witnesses. Translation and “filtering” for all jurors is not, as far as I can tell, any better solution than translation and filtering for one juror.
Personally, I think the blanket exclusion of people based upon their English proficiency is a very bad solution. I’d much rather see the system aim for accommodation and inclusiveness. Lawyers and others can get used to the murmuring of simultaneous interpreters, and jurors can make efforts to include all their fellow jurors in deliberations.
In Virginia, jurors must be able to understand English. A juror that does not may be challenged for cause by either side, or sua sponte removed by the court.
It’s probably instructive, though, to mention Batson. This was a Supreme Court decision which forbids either side from exercising a preemptory challenge to remove a juror in a criminal trial based on that juror’s race or ethnicity. There are also Batson progeny dealing with gender, and (I think) a civil equivalent whose case name I don’t recall.
In a criminal trial, both prosecution and defense have a limited number of preemptory juror challenges, which they can exercise (almost) at will, and an unlimited number of challenges for cause. But Batson stands for the proposition that even a preemptory challenge can’t be based solely on race; in short, if the defendant is a black male, the prosecution cannot arbitrarily exclude blacks (or males!) from the jury.
The idea is good, but the execution leaves something to be desired.
I’m sure some of you will remember Rosa Lopez from the Simpson trial that said,
“sometimes yes means no in my country.” Absurd!
State does not get an appeal on this issue, does it? If either man is found guilty perhaps they then can appeal saying that, ALL the people should have spoken Spanish.
Things are not what they seem to be; nor are they otherwise.
[lankavatara Sutra]
If I was guilty, seems like having a non-English speaker on the jury would be a good idea. If the jury acquits, I’m free; if they return a gulity verdict, I appeal on the grounds that 1 juror couldn’t understand the testimony.
Re: ASL - ASL is not a direct translation of English. Word order is different (closer to German), they’re aren’t the variety of synonyms that give English its more subtle shade of meanings, and some things (spatial relations comes to mind) are expressed more as a pantomime than sentence.
I suppose a juror with an interpreter is better than no juror at all. Remember that the next time you’re called to jury duty.
Anyway, it brings up interesting questions. Being an interpreter means just that. You “interpret” things. Which means that the juror is forming an opinion based on the interpreter’s interpretation. The judge instructs jury members not to read newspaper accounts on the trial in order to avoid that sort of thing.
For instance, if I got on the stand, I would say that I was a stay-at-home mother of two daughers. An interpreter could translate this, “She’s a mother of two girls, who stays home to raise them.” Or she could say, “She has two kids. She doesn’t have a job.”
The second translation is technically correct, but there is a subtle difference in interpretation. And that could mean the difference whether the juror trusts the witness.
I agree with you doc_miller. There was a purpose of having a non-English speaking person on the jury. If convicted…one juror couldn’t understand what was going on and we want a retrial. If not convicted…then its wonderful. I don’t think that non-English speaking jurors should be allowed.
New Mexico may be a special exception in this regard. Their State Constitution specifically guarantees maintenance of the the civic rights enjoyed by the Mexican inhabitants at the time of the Treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo. Possibility that cover the juror situation.
The Supreme Court of New Mexico has already ruled on the issue. In ruling that jurors cannot be automatically excluded for the fact they don’t speak English, Chief Justice Pamela Minzner wrote: “The right of any citizen of the state to vote, hold office or sit upon juries, shall never be restricted, abridged or impaired on account of religion, race, language or color, or inability to speak, read or write the English or Spanish languages,” referring to Article VII, Section 3 of the state constitution.
Please note that the appellant in the case was the prosecution. One has to wonder if the court would have arrived at the same result if a criminal defendant was arguing lack of due process by including non-English speaking jurors…
Regarding ASL as being English-based: Nope, that would be SEE (Signed Exact English) which, like English, is a completely different language than ASL. There isn’t always a one-to-one correspondence between English words and ASL (or any SL, for that matter) phrases. If anything, given the history of SL in the United states, it would be closer to the truth to say that it’s French-based.
There are numerous resources both on the web and in many local bookstores to check this assertion. Feel free to do so.
OK, I stand corrected. I guess my exposure to ASL (my nephew has Down’s & learned signing because of a severe speech impediment) is not representative of the more complex language needed for a murder trial.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
[[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).]]
Yeah, but if you speak Spanish and English fluently - as most translators do - you’d never make that mistake.
[[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.]]
That is because the word “tomar” means “to take” and also “to drink.” If a person is fluent in the languages - and Spanish does translate pretty well into English and vice versa - the context will allow accurate communication to occur. I’m not saying that I am completely comfortable with translation being allowed in a court of law for non-English jurors… people have enough trouble understanding and interpreting their own, native language sometimes and it does add another step to the process.
Back to the pill anecdote, when I worked at Planned Parenthood, we had at least one native English speaking client receive education on how to take birth control pills from a native English speaking nurse, and proceed to insert the pill into her vagina.
Jill
I don’t know whether to post this here or on the false memories thread.
I must have heard tidbits of separate news stories & crossed them.
Story 1: (as of early AM 1/20) The murder trial described in the OP was expected to complete jury selection.
Story 2: The NM State Supreme Court found that potential jurors could not be eliminated on the basis of not speaking English (see the link from DSY above.)
All I can think of is that I channel surf too much in the car & caught tidbits of 2 different stories (both out of Albuquerque courtrooms the same day) & mistakenly put them together into 1 story. Geez- no wonder I couldn’t remember if the non-English-speaking juror was male or female.
I apologize for the accidental misrepresentation here. I think the question is still a good one to debate, although perhaps less titillating without the spectacle of a murder trial looming.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
PunditLisa is right. Can the attorneys examine and have the interpreter removed during jury selection? How is the interpreter chosen? Is the interpreter sequestered if the jury is? Is the translation of the interpreter preserved anywhere in the court record, so that appeals can be made if the translation is biased, or can an interpreter say what they want, put any spin they choose on things, and not get caught?
Two hypotheticals:
What if there is taped evidence and, as often seems to be true with tapes made surrpetitiously, it is hard to understand? Does the interpreter get to translate, clearly, whatever they think was on the tape? This is a fairly clear-cut case where all the native-speakers might form a reasonable doubt that the xenophone would not. I doubt I could judge just how garbled a tape in a foreign tongue was.
Second hypothetical.
What if a witness speaks only German, and an interpreter has to translate the testimony? Bad enough that meaning might get lost on the way to English, but one of the jurors ends up hearing a Spanish (say) translation of an English translation of German. We’re inching slowly away here from my ideal notion of a “fair trial”.
Finally, if the deaf are not excluded from juries, are the blind? They could certainly have someone describe to them any evidence they couldn’t see, which is not much different from someone who is deaf having testimony translated into ASL for them.
IMO, it is more trouble than it’s worth to try to include more than one language (including ASL) in a court proceeding. Sometimes they will crop up, unavoidably, but purposely injecting them when they can be easily avoided seems silly.
(Of course, there is no restriction on stupid jurors, and I would rather have an intelligent deaf or Spanish speaking juror than an idiot Anglophone. If only the choice were that simple!)
If only there were an incentive for competent jurors to perform their duty. How many of you have remarked on the fact that anyone who is more-than-competent is likely to have a job that will not stand you being excused for more than a few days at a time…
Regarding my previous posting about ASL not being English-based, here are some links for y’all to check. Didn’t mean to be snide or snippish (is that a word?).
Does anyone other than me remember the one episode of Law & Order in which the judge had to declare a mistrial because one of the jurors told the rest of the panel that the interpreter had made a mistake in translation? I wonder if that would be an issue here.
As has already been implied above, but not stated outright, New Mexico has legally made both English and Spanish the official languages of the state. (I did a research project on official languages, etc., a couple years ago.) It seems clear that this woman should therefore be allowed to serve as a juror. I find the translating problematic as well, but I have to admit, I don’t have any solution, other than reversing the state law, although I can imagine that that would make people very unhappy.
What bothers me just as much as the juror’s ability to understand the testimony, is the jurors ability to effectively deliberate. I can imagine that it would be an intimidating situation to be in a room with 12 other people (don’t forget the interpreter) and, while everyone else is bantying about ideas, they have to always be reminded to slow down/pause so the translator can translate. One could easily feel that they were more of a nuisance than their comments were worth, and may give in or simply not press their points as strongly as they would have otherwise.
I, personally, would also have to wonder how well a non-English speaker knew the laws and customs of the US. That someone would come here, achieve citizenship, and still not learn the language suggests to me a less than ambitious desire to assimilate. I think one could make the argument that someone who lives in a distinct sub-culture within the US does not constitute a peer of a fully assimilated English-speaking American.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal