Court Opinion

ID: 9783617
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:52:11.66192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:27.545591
License: Public Domain

GUADALUPE RIVERA, Justice,
concurring.
I concur but write separately to express my concern with trial court decisions to play the audio of a videotape in a foreign language. Proceedings are to be conducted in the English language. See Garcia v. State, 151 Tex.Crim. 593, 601, 210 S.W.2d 574 (1948). Indeed, notice of charges for crimes committed by a person against the laws of the State are in English, see id., and we qualify jurors to serve on the basis of whether they can read and write the English language. See Sayyadi v. State, 40 S.W.3d 722, 722 (Tex.App.-Austin 2001, no pet.). When necessary, we provide interpreters for defendants or witnesses who speak languages other English. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.30 (Vernon Supp.2010). Due process, at a minimum, requires that. Pineda v. State, 176 S.W.3d 244, 247 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2004, pet. ref'd).
Similarly, recordings of conversations in foreign languages are routinely translated into English prior to their admission at trial. In fact, this method of translation is preferable to the live, contemporaneous translation where the opportunity for error and lack of opportunity to object are greater. However, once the trial court admits the translation, the trial court, in essence, has determined what the videotape said, and it is solely the role of the jurors to decide what weight to attach to that evidence. Indeed, the trial court is the gatekeeper of the evidence at a trial. It decides what evidence to admit, whereas the fact finder decides what weight should be attached to that evidence. When, as here, the trial court admits a translation of a foreign language into evidence, that translated rendition becomes the only permanent record of what was said. Flores v. State, 299 S.W.3d 843, 855 (Tex.App.-El Paso 2009, pet. ref'd). The words spoken in the foreign language are as if they were never spoken before the jury. Id.
Playing the audio recordings in their original form, however, may be helpful to the jury in judging the tone and demeanor of the persons speaking thereon. But I caution that if those recordings are played along with the limiting, contemporaneous instruction as given here, a further instruction in the charge should be given, noting that the jury may only listen to the audio for purposes of determining tone and demeanor of those speaking on the recording, which goes to the weight and credibility to be attached to such evidence. The instructions should further provide that the jurors, who may also speak the same language as exhibited on the recording, should not be allowed to engage in their own interpretation of the words spoken but rather must accept the translated rendition of the foreign language as provided by the trial court. Failure to give such instructions could disrupt the trial court’s role as the gatekeeper of the evidence and *612allow the jury to make its own translation of the foreign language, which they cannot do.
With these comments, I concur.