From the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. has ordered three Hispanic defendants to either learn English or do 24 months in prison.

The defendants – Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario and Rafael Guzman-Mateo – all needed translators when they appeared in court to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy to commit robbery. It led to Olszewski leveling the unusual condition.

But in order for them to avoid the 24 months in prison, Olszewski ordered the men to learn to read and write the English language, earn their GED, and, within 30 days of release, get a full-time job while on parole. The defendants, who range in age from 17 to 22, are to return to court in one year with their parole officers to take an English test, according to Olszewski’s order.

At first blush, this imaginative requirement might strike one as a bit jingoistic.  After all, who is a judge to say that his language is better than their language.  But frankly, there’s much to be commended about substituting education for prison when it comes to helping a defendant.

The ruling, the judge said, is supposed to help, not punish.“There’s no way young kids can be hurt by knowing how to read and write the English language,” he said. “It’s a means to helping them get a better education, getting a better job. Period.”

It’s not as if the judge has forbidden them to speak Spanish, or forced them to Anglicize their names.  Indeed, one of the things that criminal defense lawyers have found to be the root of crime is our clients’ inability to find decent employment or lack of the basic educational requirements to gain access to decent jobs.  How can you complain about a judge allowing them the opportunity to better their situation?

Notably, the defendants’ are quite pleased with the option presented by the court. 

But Latino community activists are less thrilled.

But that doesn’t make it right, said Agapito Lopez, a Latino community leader from Hazleton. He said he believes the ruling is a violation of the suspects’ rights.

“I think that it’s contrary to the Constitution,” said Lopez, who stressed he is not an attorney and is speaking from a lay person’s perspective. “I don’t think that is due process. … I think this can be challenged in court.”

Whether this is a violation of anyone’s constitutional rights is a fair question, but that doesn’t make it a bad policy choice. 

Unfortunately, the judge, having taken a leap of faith by engaging in this unusual sentencing trade-off, has done himself little good with his subsequent explanation.

Olszewski said the language condition he imposed on the defendants, who are resident aliens, was not something he had planned. Once he saw all the translators in court for one case, the idea dawned on him.

The decision, he said, could help cut down on extreme costs associated with the paying for translators for each court appearance.

Plus, he said, one of the defendants only went to third grade; the others didn’t finish high school. Learning English will help them get their GED first, and then a job, he said.

“Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?” he asked them.

Well, yes, your honor.  That’s exactly what you’re going to do when defendants don’t speak English, even in Pennsylvania.  That’s how this system works. 

Lopez, the community leader responded:

Learning the language could help the suspects, Lopez said. But it would not assure them of getting a job – that theory is merely mythical, he said.

“This is a country in which English is not the official language,” he said. “We cannot force people to learn the language.”

All true, but it can’t hurt and it beats the crap out of spending two years in the slammer, doesn’t it?  The constitutional problem of trading off prison time for learning English, not to mention the fact that the justification for putting the defendants in prison is undermined if they can be safely left out, is clearly a stumbling block to the validity of this creative option.

But I can’t help but think that the defendants will be far better off as a result of this sentence.

(Title courtesy of New York Lawyer.  It was just so much better than anything I could think of.)