Opinion ID: 2261906
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: court-appointed interpreters

Text: The defendant next argues that he was denied his rights to a fair trial and to testify effectively on his own behalf because his testimony was seriously impaired by the many deficiencies in the Spanish-English translation. The defendant asserts that the trial justice erred in failing to grant his motion for a mistrial, which was presented to the court during the lunch recess of the second day of defendant's testimony as well as during the state's closing argument. We are not persuaded that the court-appointed interpreter's performance was so woefully inadequate and inaccurate as to cause defendant to receive a fundamentally unfair trial. Rule 28(b) of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure allows the trial justice to appoint an interpreter of his or her own selection. The selection itself rests in the sound discretion of the trial justice as an incident to the proper administration of the trial. Erba v. Erba Bros., Inc., 77 R.I. 75, 81, 73 A.2d 697, 701 (1950). We shall not interfere with the exercise of such discretion unless it is shown that the trial justice abused his or her discretion in appointing an interpreter. Id. The defendant's inability to speak English caused defense counsel to move the court for appointment of an interpreter. That motion was granted on June 20, 1989, and thereafter Charlene Patenaude (Patenaude) served as a translator for the defense team. During the time leading up to the trial, Patenaude became both familiar with the names of the persons involved and accustomed to defendant's Nicaraguan dialect. The court noted, however, that Patenaude's involvement in defendant's case could mislead the jurors into believing that defendant's testimony on the stand was being translated by a friend rather than by a professional interpreter. To eliminate the risk that defendant's testimony be discounted in any way, the trial justice appointed Inge Feldman (Feldman) as the official court interpreter upon Patenaude's recommendation. Patenaude remained at defense counsel's table to keep defendant abreast of what was being said in the course of the trial. The defendant enumerates each occasion in which Feldman had difficulty either understanding an answer defendant had given or remembering a lengthy question proffered by counsel. The defendant also presented to the trial justice a list of discrepancies between defendant's answer in Spanish and Feldman's translation into English, as had been noted by Patenaude in the course of defendant's testimony. Furthermore, defendant argues that Feldman's inability to keep up with his testimony altered the course of the question-and-answer exercise and therefore caused defendant to appear distraught and evasive as a witness. The defendant specifically alludes to the fact that defendant was not permitted to engage in long narratives and that other lengthy answers had to be split into two parts because the interpreter could not remember whole answers all at once. We do not agree that such modifications in the art of trial advocacy have resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial for this defendant. Our review of the record leads us to believe that the interpreter requested that questions be framed to invite only brief answers and that defendant repeat his answers so she could translate defendant's answers accurately. Furthermore, we are of the opinion that the trial justice's instructions to counsel and defendant to limit the length of answers were in the interest of providing defendant with the ability to testify effectively on his own behalf through an accurate translation process. We find that the trial justice properly exercised her discretion in allowing Feldman to continue to serve as the court-appointed interpreter, [2] and therefore we shall not interfere with the trial justice's choice in the absence of an abuse of her discretion. See Erba, 77 R.I. at 81, 73 A.2d at 701. During his second motion for a mistrial, the defendant argued that the state's closing arguments improperly attributed the difficulties in the translation process to the defendant's manipulative, untruthful demeanor. When a defendant claims that alleged prejudicial remarks form the basis of a mistrial, it is within the province of the trial justice to assess the prejudicial impact of such statements. State v. Padula, 551 A.2d 687, 691 (R.I. 1988) (citing State v. Brown, 522 A.2d 208, 210 (R.I. 1987)); State v. Marrapese, 116 R.I. 1, 7, 351 A.2d 95, 98 (1976). A thorough examination of the trial transcript reveals that the trial justice weighed the prosecutor's statements in the context of the defendant's entire direct and cross-examinations and determined that any prejudice caused by such comments would be addressed in her instructions to the jury. See State v. McDonald, 602 A.2d 923, 927 (R.I. 1992). During her charge to the jury the trial justice did allude to the use of the court-appointed interpreter and instructed the jurors not to use certain errors in the translation as evidence that the defendant was lying. Consequently we find that the trial justice did not abuse her discretion, nor was she clearly wrong in denying the defendant's motion for a mistrial. Id. Accordingly the defendant's appeal is denied and dismissed. The judgment of the Superior Court is affirmed.