Can a deaf black lesbian charged with murder get a fair trial?
Does your answer change if you learn the trial is in South Dakota? How about if she's up for the death penalty?
From the March 6 article in the Argus Leader of South Dakota:
[Daphne] Wright, 43, was indicted in February 2006 on kidnapping and first-degree murder counts in the disappearance of 42-year-old Darlene Vander-Giesen of Rock Valley, Iowa.Courtroom discussion over the methods used to make sure Wright has adequate interpretation of court events has already been extensive:
Vander-Giesen's body was dismembered, and searchers spent days at a landfill west of Sioux Falls searching for her body parts. Some human remains also were found in a ditch in Minnesota....
Wright's minority status as deaf, black and homosexual have been considerations in pretrial motions and have brought national attention to the case.
Ricky D. Taylor, a deaf Washington, D.C., blogger who runs RidorLIVE.com, said by e-mail that he's received several e-mails about Wright's case. He said it's of particular interest on the East Coast, where Wright used to live.
Taylor said he's interested in the makeup of the jurors and would like to see a deaf person among them.
"As much as the crimes are heinous to us all, I am concerned about the jury selection. For one, Daphne is (a) woman, lesbian, deaf and African-American. Will she be fairly judged by her peers in the state of South Dakota? In my opinion, I doubt that," he wrote.
Wright's deafness has necessitated as many as five American Sign Language interpreters to be in court at a time.From ABCNews coverage:
The weeks leading up to Monday's start of jury selection have featured lengthy pretrial testimony and argument about what else should happen to guarantee Wright a fair trial.
[Judge Brad] Zell already had granted a defense motion that in-court translation be videotaped and reaffirmed it Monday after hearing new arguments. The defense wants the recording to make sure what is being signed to Wright is the same as what witnesses are saying.
[Minnehaha County State's Attorney Dave] Nelson argued in court Monday that other steps the court has already taken will ensure a fair trial and that the video would draw out the appeals process if Wright is convicted.
"I don't think the state or county should have to bear this really remarkable expense," he said, assigning an $80,000 price tag to the argument.
Assistant public defender Traci Smith insisted it's crucial that the court record is accurate.
She noted that the chosen company, Midwest Litigation Services, would charge the county $60 per hour, which for a 30-day trial at eight hours per day is less than $15,000.
Prosecutors say Wright got caught up in a whirlwind of lesbian drama which drove her to commit murder. The motive was jealousy. Wright says VanderGeisen, who was heterosexual, was trying to break up her lesbian relationship with a woman identified as Sallie Collins, a close friend of the victim. The two reportedly had a heated argument over the relationship shortly before the murder took place.While prosecutors are talking about the "whirlwind of lesbian drama" others are discussing the very real complications of providing adequate ASL interpretion in real time in the courtroom of complex legal issues:
Professor Jeff Braden, an expert in deafness and development, says that Wright should not face the death penalty, even if an ideal interpreter were available. "She is at more of a disadvantage than, say, if you or I were arrested and taken to court in Pakistan, where we'd be at the mercy of a court interpreter. Having an interpreter still doesn't change the fact that deaf people don't have a native language."Other disability and Deaf activists fear any special concerns given to Wright because of her deafness would signal that Deaf people are not responsble for their actions or capable of participating in society as equals. Of course, the death penalty eligibility complicates everything, not only raising the stakes but adding a level of legal complexity.
The problem, Braden says, is that it is not uncommon for a woman like Wright — deaf since early childhood and born to hearing parents — to get a late start in her exposure to language. In those critical early years, Braden says, critical communication skills are lost.
"There are a number of barriers that deaf people face that would put them at a severe disadvantage in a legal proceeding. … She'd be at a significant disadvantage, even with an interpreter." Braden told ABC News.
"Battery or manslaughter may be signed the same way. An individual is not getting info they need because American Sign Language doesn't [those symbols]," Braden added. He also notes that tone of voice and other nuances that convey meaning in the courtroom would get lost in interpretation.
And there's this, from a March 7 article by Keloland television:
[Public Defender Jeff] Larsen pointed out that Wright is the only african american in the courtroom. He asked the all white jury panel about race. Although some acknowledged race issues have made them uncomfortable at some point in their life, all potential jurors said race won't be a factor in how they find the verdict. Jurors answered the same way when asked questions about Wright being a lesbian.So, no black or deaf people on the jury, for sure, it seems. Any gay folks? Can this be fair under these circumstances?
14 comments:
The whirlwind of lesbian drama did make me titter. This morning AJ and I had an argument - it was a hurricane of heterosexual happenstance.
I don't know much about South Dakota, except that's where they attempted to ban abortion. But it does seem incredible, given what I understand about your jury selection system, that there wouldn't be at least someone who was gay, Deaf or of colour among them. On the issue of sexuality, that defies probability.
However, it does strike me that having a Deaf juror should be the priority. Whilst one Deaf person doesn't necessarily have much in common with another, this would greatly reduce the chances of some relevant subtlety being lost in translation.
Your post inspired a post at DSTU:
http://disstud.blogspot.com/2007/03/intersections.html
(I need to learn how to do those link things the right way...)
I think a better question is how would it be possible to get a "balanced" jury in a state that's essentially all white? I don't think tribal members living on reservations are eligible for jury duty, are they?
Monocultures, imho, often dispense justice better than do folks from culturally mixed areas where there is often real tension between different groups. Folks in SD haven't had their racial tolerance "tested," and may actually come to the trial with a more open mind than someone living in St. Paul or Chicago or Milwaukee.
But this will be tricky because deaf culture is often, and I expect to get lambasted for saying this, a closed community. The growing "Ellen Jamesian" style movement of those who see deafness as simply a different way of existing, and not as a "handicap," will, undoubtedly, complicate this trial and its aftermath when the only real question before the jury is whether or not the accused committed the crime, and if so, whether or not there were mitigating circumstances.
A woman is dead, and society demands an accounting. If Wright is guilty, she needs to be found guilty. If innocent, she should be acquitted. By the end of the trial those jurors will know better than any of us which is the case.
Penny: Excellent!
(And the link thing: It's a major flaw of Blogger, as far as I'm concerned, that you have to manually put in the html for comment links. I hate it and usually end up calling up some old post of mine to cut and paste the code.)
The RidorLIVE.com of Ricky Taylor named in my post above is also called "Observe But Do Not Interfere" at my sidebar, which I should maybe change because RidorLIVE is the much more recognized blog name. I browsed through Taylor's archives and found he had met the defendant once when she still lived on the East coast. It's a small world, and even more so when talking about the Deaf community, I think it's fair to say.
Mark: In my experience the monoculture of rural Minnesota (about 300 miles from where the Wright trial is taking place) only makes racism more quiet and polite. People routinely speak of "those people" that they have never had to interact with and have little personal experience available to dispel what are national racial prejudices and beliefs. I don't believe isolation makes anyone more open-minded, and the idea that it would runs counter to every personal experience I have ever had.
Native Americans in the same region as this trial often have great difficulty finding impartial juries (and their disproportionate prison population helps illustrate this), though I don't know how reservations as residences effect calls to jury duty.
I'd agree that Wright's membership in the Deaf culture will complicate this. Or rather, again, the general public's ignorance about any references to it and her life within in it will be complicated.
As an aside, I believe any trial working with the possibility of the death penalty also adds a huge bias to the jury selection. There are those of us who would never ever be considered as jury members for a death penalty trial, and thus, a whole population of people who might otherwise be relatively more open-minded than death pealty proponents but who do not get to deliberate on the basic issue of innocence or guilt.
Goldfish: "Hurricane of heterosexual happenstance"! Hee!
I think Professor Braden's comments are less than helpful. I don't know anything about the defendant, and he may be right that she was language delayed (which is certainly not an uncommon occurrence for deaf children). However, to say that deaf people *as a whole* don't have a native language is incorrect. I'm also confused by his statement that ASL's lack of a specific word for battery and manslaughter would keep a deaf person from "getting the info they need". Any halfway decent interpreter will negotiate signs for concepts like those with their client - just as a lawyer would have to interpret what the words "battery" and "manslaughter" mean for an English-speaking client.
He's cited in the quote as an expert in deafness and development - is he deaf or Deaf himself? Does he sign?
(Note: I do agree that there are problems here, including linguistic problems. But it would be a pity if attempts on the part of folks like this professor to point out those problems caused issues down the road for other deaf people. If the defendant isn't competent to stand trial, or isn't provided with qualified interpreters, that's a huge problem. These arguments don't speak to those issues, though.)
Blue, my experience was that hatred of the "other" diminishes when there is no other. Native Americans are a part of their world, and therefore subject to prejudice. Granted, the world is a smaller place now, but growing up half way between Des Moines and the Twin Cities, I learned nothing of conventional racism except the way the same tropes applied to Catholics, who were "the" minority in my neighborhood.
Things have changed, but the Dakotas are about as isolated as you can get, and for at least some jurors this trial will be the closest they've ever been to an African-American, or an "out" lesbian. A good defense attorney would see that as an opportunity to educate, and not something to fear.
But death-qualified juries are a real problem, and quite scary. That's one of the reasons I refuse to reject the death penalty completely. If called, I want to be eligible to serve on one of those juries. Someone who doesn't watch Fox News should be empaneled to keep things honest.
Blue, my experience was that hatred of the "other" diminishes when there is no other.
True for out-and-out hatred, maybe, but it doesn't take animosity to have prejudice. Just ignorance. Lots of us are well-meaning people who nevertheless have racism or homophobia or abilism, or fear of Muslims, etc. in our hearts because of societal attitudes, whether they be local or more widespread attitudes. It's not like someone living in a rural part of the country can't get access to all the subtle prejudices available on radio and tv.
I agree about Fox News.
Ook!: I think Professor Braden's comments are less than helpful. I don't know anything about the defendant, and he may be right that she was language delayed (which is certainly not an uncommon occurrence for deaf children). However, to say that deaf people *as a whole* don't have a native language is incorrect.
I thought so too. While languages vary in their ability to communicate various things (German, for example, has been said to be a good language for very precise thought needed for discussion of philosophy) and I have heard that ASL is particularly good as a language for expressing emotion, to say it cannot be a native langauge seems incredibly ableist. It may even be the first natural language of us all -- well, not ASL, but gestural communication.
There is a similar article.
http://deafloves.com/blogs/blogs
It may even be the first natural language of us all -- well, not ASL, but gestural communication.
This thread is probably done now, but I feel the need to say this for future reference (let the record show, yuk yuk yuk). If ASL were comparable to gestural communication, then "no native language" and "unable to carry the subtle meanings of legal language" would be valid points. Gestural communication of the sort that we use when we're growing up, or "home sign", is certainly not a valid way to conduct legal affairs (and I'm not coming from a militant ASL standpoint here - as a non-fluent signer, my signing is relatively English-y, more PSE than true ASL). However, ASL (and, for that matter, Signed English and PSE) is certainly capable of doing this sort of thing.
In computer science, we talk about "Turing complete languages", and that anything that can be represented in one TCL can be represented in another, even though one language may be 'better' than another for a given application (Lisp is well suited to AI work; Python and Perl are well suited to text processing, etc, but anything you can do in one of those languages you can also do in another). I think there's something analogous here - as you say, German is often said to be better for philosophical discussions, ASL is said to be better with emotion and storytelling, and so on.
I know you know this, but it needs to be said - signed languages are, first and foremost, languages. Comparing them to the sort of gestures we use as children is like comparing spoken language to the babbling of a pre-lingual child (and, in fact, it's been shown that children who grow up in a signing environment "babble" with their hands just like hearing children who grow up in a speaking environment babble with their mouths).
Gestural communication of the sort that we use when we're growing up, or "home sign", is certainly not a valid way to conduct legal affairs
Agreed. You seem to know much more about this than I do, and I definitely didn't mean those early gestures are part of a complete language. I only meant to show my perception of the bigotry of calling sign "not a natural language." It seems at least as natural as spoken language to me. Maybe Professor Braden means something more complicated by what he said, but I think it's a comment that belittles and "enfreaks" the Deaf.
Also for posterity more than discussion, since going through back posts has gotten me predictibly worked-up:
First, ook, thanks for stepping in on this! This "expert" view of ASL as a language lacking vocabulary for abstract concepts and thus being unfit for use in education, the law, medicine, and other speheres of prestige is old and tired and wrong. It's in the same vein as saying only Inuit folks should ever be allowed to be weathermen, because golly, how could poor English-speakers manage to talk about snow?
The argument that ASL is lexically impoverished is, btw, every bit as absurd as the "great Eskimo snow hoax," as Geoff Pullum calls it. I hauled out my ASL Legal Disctionary (Elaine Costello, Random House Webster), and found three apparently synonymous signs for battery, non of which could remotely be confused with manslaughter. (One was fingerspelling B-A-T-T-E-R-Y, which only works if your client understands the English term - about which more later - the next was HURT, which probably requires some context to establish what kind of hurting's being done but clearly doesn't mean kill, and the last was a compound of HURT~ACCUSE.) The dictionary being a limited resourcem it doesn't have an entry for manslaughter, but I can easily imagine glossing it as KILL NOT~PLAN or something of the sort.
In fact, the advantage of ASL in this respect is that it can't really get away with borrowing from Latin or Norman French to create legal vocabulary - unless you're just flat-out fingerspelling everything. The interpreters and their client are going to have hash out signs between them and will probably end up with something a lot easier to understand than the legal English floating around. (I mean, what makes more sense, "manslaughter" or KILL NOT~PLAN?)
This is not to say, however, that his argument about her being at a disadvantage in court is completely out of line. In particular, his "no native language" argument deserves to be examined seriously. you'll note that he said that deaf kids born to hearing parents are at risk of not having a native language. This isn't because ASL isn't a valid native language, it's because these kids may or may not ever be exposed to ASL. Especially if the defendant's deafness was undiagnosed or unacknowleged well into her school years (which is common) it's quite easy to imagine her receiving no usable linguistic input until it was way too late to acquire any language natively. In the best case scenario, she may have grown up with people trying to communicate with her and failing; in the worst case, she may have been given up as a "hopeless case" and ignored. And even if her parents did discover and acknowlege her deafness early, there's no reason to assume they decided to raise her with a visually accessible language - it's pretty easy to imagine this woman growing up with people flapping their lips at her and insisting she do the same back and just not getting what they were trying to do until it was too late, if she figured it out at all.
No, this part of his argument, depressing as it is, holds water, and it's not about any deficiencies in ASL as a language; it's about deficiences in the upbringing and education of d/Deaf people, which are still shockingly common.
Incidentally, the presence of five interpreters at once suggests to me that she does have some significant language issues. A normal interpreting team consists of two interpreters; for an assignment this complex and intense, I can see having three around to increase the rest period each terp has before going active again. But five suggests that they're probably using one or two CDIs - Certified Deaf Interpreters - whose job it often is to mediate between an ASL interpreter and a d/Deaf client who may be cognitively disabled, use home signs, have no linguistic system whatsoever, etc.
So it seems like a pretty good bet that this guy knew what he was talking about with respect to the defendant's own language issues; it's a shame that he had to drag in the beastly old specter of ASL-blaming where it clearly didn't belong. With advocates like that, I hope this woman doesn't have enemies ... (eh, who am I kidding.)
Maudite, thanks for such a detailed information-laden comment.
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