Some people can't hear. Others don't want to.
It is the deliberately hard of hearing who turned a deaf ear to Latell Chaney and left him sitting in a southern Minnesota jail for months without access to an interpreter who might have helped him.
Chaney, 33, has been deaf since he was a baby and communicates by American Sign Language, which is not a way of speaking English with hand signals, but an entirely different language, like Somali or Spanish. The criminal justice system has gotten better at accommodating people who don't speak English. But people who use ASL still have trouble making themselves heard.
Chaney was released from a state prison July 15, after the Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned a conviction stemming from a 2006 tussle that resulted in a car chase and a crash. The conviction was thrown out on a legal technicality, but Chaney's attorney and advocates for the deaf argue that the whole matter would have been handled better -- and possibly without Chaney spending almost a year behind bars -- if authorities had followed state law and given him an interpreter.
"He's been a victim of discrimination at every turn," says Chaney's attorney, Ed Matthews of the Minneapolis law firm of Fredrikson & Byron, who took the case pro bono after advocates for the deaf complained that Chaney had been neglected by his public defender and treated unfairly.
Chaney, who is black, was the victim in a notorious 1995 beating when he was waiting for a bus in Minneapolis and gang members mistook his use of sign language for gang signs. Chaney was beaten so severely that he lost an eye and suffered lasting injuries to his throat.
In March, 2006, Chaney was arrested in Fairmont, Minn., after a dispute with the mother of his two sons. Chaney claimed that the mother and her boyfriend had pulled his oldest child, a 13-year-old from another relationship, from his car and sped off. Chaney pursued and was arrested after his car crashed into the other car (no one was seriously injured). He was charged with two counts of criminal assault and two of criminal damage, all felonies.
Chaney said that the crash was an accident but that he was arrested and interrogated by police through hand-written notes, although he asked for an interpreter. Communication problems started piling up. When an officer gave him a Miranda card, Chaney asked if anyone had told his mother of his arrest. The officer said he would do it later. Lost in translation: It's not clear whether Chaney acknowledged being informed of his rights.
