The New York Times told the story of Erik Camayd-Freixas, who is a federal court interpreter with 23 years experience, as well as a professor of Spanish at Florida International University.  Apparently, Professor Camayd-Freixas hit the wall after he was summoned to Waterloo, Iowa for help in a case involving 400 illegal immigrants, and decided to publish a 14 page essay about his experience.

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

I’m shocked.  Shocked!

I’ve written in the past about how English-speaking defendants have no clue what’s happening in court and how juries don’t understand instructions.  Lawyers and courts use both arcane terms as well as convenient short-hand for doing our job.  It works great for us.  It doesn’t work well at all for our clients. 

Superimpose over this scenario a defendant who doesn’t speak English.  Many of our lawyer-words don’t translate well into other languages under any circumstances, and are particularly problematic when dealing with uneducated defendants.  These are not easy words, and the underlying concepts are even more difficult to understand.  Many lawyers don’t get them.  Should non-lawyers be subject to higher expectations?

Then, it all comes under very difficult circumstances, in the enormous tension of a courtroom and at a pace so rapid that it precludes any attempt at explanation. 

“All defendants were provided with experienced criminal attorneys and interpreters before they made any decisions in their criminal cases,” Mr. Teig said.

“Once they made their choices, two independent judicial officers determined the defendants were making their choices freely and voluntarily, were satisfied with their attorney, and were, in fact, guilty.” Mr. Teig said the judges in the cases were satisfied with the guilty pleas.

“The judges had the right and duty to reject any guilty plea where a defendant was not guilty,” Mr. Teig said. “No plea was rejected.”

Another dirty little secret of the law exposed.  Before a plea can be accepted, the judge must inquire as to whether the defendant understands all the rights being waived and that there is a factual basis for the plea.  It consists of the judge talking in legal jargon and the defendant saying the word “si” numerous times.  Afterward, we all pretend that the defendant had a clue what the judge was saying and that we’ve done our duty.

As the interpreter knows, the defendant turns and looks at him after each question is asked by the judge, with sad, inquiring eyes, pleading with him to “tell me what I’m supposed to say?”  The defendant has no clue what the judge is saying.  The interpreter has no time to explain, in a way that might possibly be meaningful, what is happening. 

The plea allocution (it’s called other things in other places) is a mantra that we go through, but its utility is entirely dependent on understanding both the nature of rights as well as the language of rights.  Afterward, when a defendant has had a chance to calm down, recapture his composure and have the courtroom scene relayed for him (if he ever gets to see his lawyer again), he suddenly realizes that he had no idea what he was agreeing to, and wants to take it back.  Too late, the appellate courts tell us.  The rights were “fully explained” and he said “yes”.  End of story.  The legal fiction of comprehension prevails.

This is true of most defendants.  It is almost universal with non-English speaking defendants.  This is what made Professor Camayd-Freixas so upset.  He didn’t want to be a part of this sham perpetrated on 400 Guatemalans who couldn’t read or write, but worked in our agriprocessing industry in Iowa. 

These people thought they were in Immigration Court, and that they were agreeing to be deported. Nope.  They were being prosecuted for using false social security numbers. 

He suggested many of the immigrants could not have knowingly committed the crimes in their pleas. “Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security card was or what purpose it served,” he wrote.

He said many immigrants could not distinguish between a Social Security card and a residence visa, known as a green card. They said they had purchased fake documents from smugglers in Postville, or obtained them directly from supervisors at the Agriprocessors plant. Most did not know that the original cards could belong to Americans and legal immigrants, Mr. Camayd-Freixas said.

There are many people who will have no sympathy for these 400 illegals.  After all, they were illegal, so who cares what happens to them.  They are criminals and they get what they deserve.  While this attitude is ignorant, it’s also irrelevant.  The question isn’t whether they are illegals, or whether illegals are evil, but that our legal system does what it pretends to do. 

In all likelihood, the disposition of these 400 would not have been much different had they fully comprehended what they were doing.  But the problem of people in our court system making knowing, voluntary and intelligent decisions remains.  And it’s the same problem for well-educated, English-speaking defendants, just 100 times worse when language and cultural barriers make comprehension a joke.