Posted on 07/23/2007 7:02:57 PM PDT by Past Your Eyes
ROCKVILLE, Maryland (AP) -- Charges against a man accused of raping and repeatedly molesting a 7-year-old girl have been dropped because the court took too long to find an interpreter fluent in his native West African language.
Montgomery County Circuit Judge Katherine D. Savage dismissed the nearly three-year-old case against Mahamu Kanneh last week, saying the delays had violated the Liberian immigrant's right to a speedy trial.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
:(
What took so long? The courts are taxpayer-funded. There is no excuse for their taking three years.
Funny how the various TV news crews and others could find interpreters on short notice....
This guy was brought to the US and (wait for it) went into high school and community college!! What, the only teachers he had spoke his particular dialect?? Of course not. He speaks English and that’s a fact. Stupid Judge and Stupid D.A.
This guy speaks fluent english.Good enough to graduate from high school and COLLEGE anyway.
That defense attorney sure earned his money, the scum. Apparently, he found a psychologist who testified that the guy needed a translator from his native language. The article does point out that the rapist went to high school and college in MD - in English. It could also have added that English is the official language of Liberia. None of those tribal languages are spoken widely enough to use as an official language.
One of the examples I was referring to.
‘Prosecutors pointed out that Kanneh attended high school and community college in Montgomery and spoke to detectives in English....’
He speaks English & we can assume he wasn’t being taught by tutors all these years at taxpayer expense? or what was the case?
more to the story?
I’m quite sure that if the perp had done this crime in English-speaking Liberia, the English-speaking court would not have seen fit to run around looking for an interpreter for him, much less let him off due to delay of his trial caused by his own fraudulent claims of needing an interpreter.
I seem to be the only person who noticed this slime’s name...
Mahamu
or. Mohemmed.
You see, Mulsims having sex with little girls is just part of thier religion.
Want to learn something new about Islam? Put these two words into google:
Islam thighing
We really need to know more about this judge. Her record doesn’t look so bad from a quick google, but this makes no sense. There was an interpreter in Court when she dismissed the case.
Maybe she & the defense attorney have a relationship we don’t know about?
The right to a fair and speedy trial has existed since long before either you or I was born. Normally the prosecution has a year to get a case tried. There are exceptions that can extend that time, but if the case isn’t tried within the time limits minus excluded periods, it has to be dismissed. There is nothing new about this. This was going on long before either you or I were born. It doesn’t happen very often at all, but sometimes a case will be dismissed for a speedy trial violation. I don’t know anything about this case, but judging from the quote from the judge in this case I’m sure she felt that she had no choice but to dismiss this case. If she was wrong, the prosecutors can appeal her decision and get this guy to trial, but I bet they won’t because I bet they won’t be able to show that they actually made a diligent effort to get this case in tried in the time alloted by law. If the time limit is a year there like it is most everywhere else, they went nearly three times the alloted time without getting this case tried. I just have a hard time believing they couldn’t have worked their issues out and gotten this thing to trial quicker than that. Sounds like they really dropped the ball and my guess is that was apparent on the record or the judge probably would not have dismissed the case.
The right to a fair and speedy trial has existed since long before either you or I were born. Normally the prosecution has a year to get a case tried. There are exceptions that can extend that time, but if the case isn’t tried within the time limits minus excluded periods, it has to be dismissed. There is nothing new about this. This was going on long before either you or I were born. It doesn’t happen very often at all, but sometimes a case will be dismissed for a speedy trial violation. I don’t know anything about this case, but judging from the quote from the judge in this case I’m sure she felt that she had no choice but to dismiss this case. If she was wrong, the prosecutors can appeal her decision and get this guy to trial, but I bet they won’t because I bet they won’t be able to show that they actually made a diligent effort to get this case in tried in the time alloted by law. If the time limit is a year there like it is most everywhere else, they went nearly three times the alloted time without getting this case tried. I just have a hard time believing they couldn’t have worked their issues out and gotten this thing to trial quicker than that. Sounds like they really dropped the ball and my guess is that was apparent on the record or the judge probably would not have dismissed the case.
“Funny how the various TV news crews and others could find interpreters on short notice....”
Found 3 in one day!
You see it in the black and white of the extended time it took to bring it to trial. I see a rapist let go claiming "no comprende englais".
As for the language issue, that's something that comes up all the time. I don’t know how well this guy spoke and understood English. Apparently a determination was made that in order for him to have a fair trial he needed an interpreter. I run into this all the time. I had a case set for trial last week where my client spoke pretty good English but needed an interpreter. He’d lived in this country for 29 years, but he lived and worked with other Hispanics and most of the time would only speak Spanish. I spoke with him several times in the jail. We could understand each other for the most part, but there were things he couldn’t really explain to me and things I was saying that he wasn’t really getting. I had to have an interpreter come to the jail a couple of times to make sure we were understanding each other and had the case have gone to trial there was going to be an interpreter there. It ended up being resolved by plea agreement in the last minute, just before jury selection, so we didn’t have to have a trial. He was also charged with rape of a child, facing up to life in prison. I don’t like those cases, but I’m a public defender and I have to take whatever they tell me to take. I really think the guy was innocent though and I can’t believe he pled. How could someone have full on intercourse with a 7 year old girl more than 5 times yet her vaginal exams come back normal, showing no signs that she’d ever been penetrated? A child prone psychiatrists say is prone to psychotic episodes makes and allegation and the story keeps changing, there’s no physical evidence of a rape, in fact the physical evidence supports the conclusion that the girl is making the whole thing up, but my client wants to take the deal because he’s afraid the jury will believe the girl over him and he’ll never taste freedom again. That’s scary.
Anyway, back to the point I was trying to make about the case in the article, when people are facing something like life in prison, it’s important that we give them a fair trial. We want them to be able to understand what is going on. The defendant needs to understand what the lawyers and the judge and the witnesses are saying so he can defend himself. Otherwise there are going to be misunderstandings that lead to innocent people being convicted and/or people not getting fair trials. Pretty good English might be enough to get by on in normal day to day activities, but when the rest of your life is on the line, you’re going to need to have a really good command of the language the trial is being conducted in or have someone there to interpret for you. Just because a guy did a couple of years in high school and some community college in the U.S. does not mean he’s going to be absolutely fluent in English. I’ve seen a bunch of people get through school barely able to speak English. Some seem to graduate without learning to read. Those that get by with only a basic command of English probably have to rely a lot on what they read a lot and work extra hard to make it, but it’s certainly possible to do it without a great command of our language.
I don’t know how fluent this African fellow was in English, but there was a determination made that he needed an interpreter. The State had a long time to get over that hurdle, but they dropped the ball. It sucks that this guy got to walk off without being held accountable for whatever he may have done, if he did it, but my bet is that the blame here lies squarely with the prosecutors who fell down on their jobs. They could have gotten that case tried in way less than 3 years had they have really been making an effort to bring it to trial like they should have been doing. If you must assign blame, assign it to them.
Nice summation, but you didn’t change my mind. ;)
My bet would be that the court rather than the prosecution is responsible for providing the interpreter. If you were a defendant, how comfortable would you be using an interpreter who had been selected by the prosecutor?
BTW, from what I've read, the person who determined that this guy needed an interpreter was a psychiatrist testifying for the defense team.
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