Trial

Today I covered a hearing for a man accused of murder. He doesn't speak any English, and it required two translators to get the point across to him (he speaks a very rare dialect of Mayan.) I was thinking how desperate one must feel not being able to communicate with anyone and being imprisoned. I was thinking that even if I were stuck in jail in Brazil, where I speak the language, I would be pretty freaked out (ok ok we all know I'm a goodie, goodie so I'd be freaked out in an American prison, but even more so in Brazil.) That isn't because of the scariness of jail, which it is, but because understanding the court system is complicated if your language skills are perfect, much less if it is your second language (or in that man's case a language you don't speak at all.) I found the process of the translators tedious but interesting. It takes four times as long to communicate anything but the process is fascinating.