Thread: How ridiculous will it get???

Someone please tell me why we have to translate (perfectly) a document of the miranda rights here in the U S? This story is extremely unnerving and if this person has the charges dropped I shall be quite disgusted...This lil murdering punk MAY go free because we didnt translate well enough into spanish????

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/0 ... on_of.html

NEWARK -- Typos in a Spanish translation may have been so egregious that they violated the rights of a suspect in the Newark schoolyard shootings.

State Superior Court Judge Michael J. Nelson today granted a request by defense attorney Michael Robbins to have a language expert examine the 18 errors in the Spanish version of the Miranda rights given to the suspect's mother.

Detectives brought Anna Gomez to Newark police headquarters on Aug. 9, 2007 to gain her permission to talk to her 15-year-old son, according to Detective Sgt. Miguel Arroyo. Gerardo was in custody, suspected of robbing and killing three students behind Mount Vernon School on Aug. 4, 2007. State law prohibits police from questioning a juvenile without a parent's consent.

Because Anna Gomez indicated she felt more comfortable speaking Spanish than English, police provided a typewritten Spanish translation of the Miranda warnings and waiver.

The defense attorney has argued that these errors have interfered with the suspect's mother's understanding of her son's rights.

Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Thomas McTigue, however, said the court should consider the context of the entire interview in its ruling.

"This hearing is not going to hang on a single word of a single phrase," McTigue said.

In court, Arroyo admitted during cross-examination today that there were errors in the translation, but they did not affect Anna Gomez's comprehension of the form's content.

"The form had the problem, not the reader," he said.

Robbins continued to argue the errors interfered with the defendant's mother's ability to understand her son's rights, and how to protect them.

"To what good use or counsel can the parent be?" Robbins rhetorically asked after court today.

Court testimony today also revealed that police got a break in the investigation as Anna Gomez encouraged her son to sign the Miranda waiver and tell police what happened the night of the murders.

"Don't hide anything, even if it's your cousins," said Arroyo, as he read aloud from a translation of the mother speaking Spanish to her son.

"You know why, my love? Because none of them thought you would be in the way of this," Arroyo read from the transcript.

Arroyo said police did not know then that Gomez had cousins who could have been involved in the crime. At that time, the only suspect was 29-year-old Jose Carranza, Arroyo previously testified.

Gomez, his cousins Alexander Alfaro and Rodolfo Godinez, along with Shahid Baskerville, Melvin Jovel and Carranza are charged in the robbery and murders in the school playground in Newark's Ivy Hill Section.

Iofemi Hightower, 20, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18, were killed. Aeriel's sister, Natasha, was also shot but survived.

The defendants have been charged with shooting the victims in the head. Authorities have said that some of the defendants have alleged ties to the MS-13 street gang.

Sometimes you can't exactly translate another language. This is why this bull of bi-lingual or gee I prefere my own language to this one, so you can always play stupid when it's convient, has to go. Heck, I speak English and don't always FULLY understand legaleze....but that doesn't get anyone off.

It is all a ploy to try to take attention away from the heinous crime committed (allegedly) by this kid and others, that's all.

Make the criminal look like a victim and they gain sympathy and support.