Court stenographers often misunderstand Black English
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
No one _actually_ thinks that was a misunderstanding, right?
>And the basis for this comes from the second interview, where I believe the defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer— prefacing that statement with “if y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.” As this Court has written, “[i]f a suspect makes a reference to an attorney that is ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable police officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking his right to counsel, the cessation of questioning is not required.” State v. Payne, 2001- 3196, p. 10 (La. 12/4/02), 833 So.2d 927, 935 (citations omitted and emphasis in original); see also Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452, 462, 114 S.Ct. 2350, 2357, 129 L.Ed.2d 362 (1994) (agreeing with the lower courts’ conclusion that the statement “[m]aybe I should talk to a lawyer” is not an unambiguous request for a lawyer). In my view, the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a “lawyer dog” does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview and does not violate Edwards v. Arizona,
https://www.lasc.org/opinions/2017/17KK0954.sjc.addconc.pdf
It's pretty obvious that the judge does not think that there are lawyer dogs and that the word "dog" in that sentence has no bearing on the judges opinion.
>defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer— prefacing that statement...
It's crystal clear that he is referring to this portion of the defendants statement:
>if y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it
I'm a little bit stunned that people actually think this is how the legal system works. You think that a prosecutor would seriously argue that a defendant didn't request a lawyer because they added "dog" to the end of that request? Or that a judge would take that argument seriously?
> In my view, the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a “lawyer dog” does not constitute...
Maybe it's just in jest or intended to be a (racially-coded?) slight at the defendant. It doesn't change the overall argument, but it stands out to me. Why wouldn't you just say "lawyer" there, probably without the quotes?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I would like to imagine legal opinions are written carefully. Hopefully I'm missing something.
Stunned or not, it seems pretty clear the judge is referring specifically to the phrase "lawyer dog" in the summary of their judgement. I don't see how 'reference to a "lawyer dog"' could be interpreted any other way...
>ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable police officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking his right to counsel
So the judge isn't saying that he is confused and thinks the statement is ambiguous because he doesn't know what a lawyer dog is. He's saying it's ambiguous because the statement didn't clearly request a lawyer, canine or otherwise.
This isn't anything confusing to a lawyer or someone familiar with the law. It's a well known legal standard. What the article claims is equivalent to saying that Java takes a lot of memory because the code is so verbose. It's just so obviously wrong to anyone with legal knowledge.
I'd be curious about your views on why the judge chose to include that sentence if the 'reference to a “lawyer dog”'' wasn't relevant to his decision?
In that it was not a clear and unambiguous invocation of the right to counsel.
>I'd be curious about your views on why the judge chose to include that sentence if the 'reference to a “lawyer dog”'' wasn't relevant to his decision?
I don't know why he chose to quote "lawyer dog" and not more or less of the defendant's quote. I'm not a mind reader. But when he writes:
>I believe the defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer
It's clear that the ambiguity he is arguing does not derive from his lack of knowledge of what a lawyer dog is.
A white suspect who said the same thing would probably have gotten a lawyer. The idiom "dog" is widely understood and used outside the black community, like "bro," "dude", "man", and there is no possible way “Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, dog?” was honestly interpreted as a request for a canid that passed the bar exam.
The most reasonable interpretation is that it is an insult, along the lines of "Why don’t you just give me a lawyer, asshole?" (or motherfucker, or asswipe, or shithead...)
Note that it happens to be a question. That isn't really the proper way to ask for something. The answer to the question may well be "Because you haven't demanded one yet, parakeet".
I'm a 40-year-old out-of-touch white dude and I know exactly what "dog" means in this context. So do my 65-year-old parents.
Maybe your life has been so far removed from mainstream American culture that you haven't heard basic slang for the last quarter-century at least. That doesn't mean it's reasonable or excusable for a working cop.
The best assumption for a random mysterious word is an insult, especially when used as name for you. If you don't know what "kike" or "tard" means and you assume it is an insult, you wouldn't be wrong.
This one is ridiculous as well.
Here's the quote:
>“I need police. . . . Me and my mama’s boyfriend got into it, he went in the house and got a pistol, and pulled it out on me. I guess he’s fixing to shoot me, so I got in my car and [inaudible] left. I’m right around the corner from the house.”
Here's the judge's argument:
> I hear the words: “I guess he finna shoot me.”
>the statement contains no auxiliary verb (e.g., “is” or “was”) connected to “finna,” which I understand to be a slang contraction for “fixing to,” much as “gonna” serves as a contraction for “going to.” See, e.g., http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finna (last visited Apr. 19, 2007) (defining “finna” as, “Abbreviation of ‘fixing to.’ Normally means ‘going to.’”).8 The lack of an auxiliary verb renders determination of whether Gordon intended to imply the past or present tense an exercise in sheer guesswork.
http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0181p-06.pdf
The majority said that "he's fixing to shoot me"/"he finna shoot me" means that there is an ongoing attempt by the defendant. The dissenting judge said that's not something you can definitively conclude absent an "is" or "was" given that the rest of the statement was in past tense. So when the author of the article writes:
>when in fact “finna” refers to the immediate future
It's obvious he hasn't actually bothered to go and read the opinion. Or I suppose it's possible that a professional writer doesn't understand that you can use future tense when recounting stories in the past.
Okay, so it’s solved. Since according to the author all black people can communicate in the standard English dialect, I would suggest to use that when speaking with court employees. This is what I do. I do not address police officers as “dog”, for example, and expect 100% positive results. I would say “sir”, which is also in contrast to how I speak to my peers in daily life, despite the fact that I am white.
That this was not interpreted as a request for a lawyer and (worse) that that interpretation was upheld on appeal is a grave miscarriage of justice, IMO.
I wouldn't say that.
> [T]wo juvenile victims told investigators that Warren Demesme, 22, sexually assaulted them. Baddoo said one victim reported that Demesme “would portray the rape as a game, and the child articulated the sexual contact caused her pain.”
https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1ecdd37...
I said “probably… In that person’s case”. That means, if you randomly select one case, according to me, the likelihood is that some more serious bullshit occurred during the supposed application of justice. I said this in the absence of knowledge about the specifics of this case, and in fact, since I’m speaking in generalities, the specifics of this case don’t matter, at all.
If the legal system was to analyze the situation that you said was such a great miscarriage of justice, they would not be concerned about the underlying crime. They would be concerned about the legal principle of whether it was legal to interpret someone’s words in that way. I think we both agree it was unfair. What was your point again?
As an aside, the fact that AAVE and "standard" English are considered the same language is a political decision, not a linguistic one.
It’s widely recognized that people sometimes prefer to speak in their native tongue for purposes of being accurate. Hence sometimes bilingual Spanish speakers will testify in Spanish despite knowing English. The overarching point of the article is that a person’s native tongue ought not influence whether or not they are deemed guilty. Do you disagree with this point?
If you meant to communicate something else, you didn't do it very clearly.
You are maligning the speakers by saying that they “talk funny” or by summing up what I have said as “they talk funny”. According to the article, they speak 2 separate languages. I would suggest addressing police and the courts in the court’s native language. According to the article, again, this is possible for all black people.
I feel fairly neutral about police in general. Are they blameless? I really doubt it. Do I know anything else about this case, or does it really matter? No. Not at all.
"In fact, Black English is not deficient but alternate. There is no scientific basis for judging Black English grammatical structures as faulty or unclear"
We have no problem teaching Spanish speaking students English, or even constructing entire curriculum around the idea that they are still learning English while being taught. No one involved in that is under the impression that Spanish is inferior, but they recognize that, for people living in this region of the world, English is an important language to know.
We have decided that AAVE and "standard" English are the same language, but that is very much a political decision (and far from the most absurd example of different dialects being the same language). However, weather we want to call it a foreign language or not, it is still not the same language that native speakers of standard English speak. Any any speaker of English who plans on interacting significantly with speakers of another dialect will be well served to treat the other dialect as a foreign language and study it appropriately.
You could say that of French too. The trouble is, French is very deficient when judged as English. French grammatical structures are faulty and unclear in an English-speaking environment.
Likewise for Japanese being judged as Korean. It is deficient, faulty, and unclear. The fact that it is an alternate is unimportant. Japanese is very bad Korean.
The point of a language is to communicate. If you can't communicate, you need to fix that.
It can be important to speak the prestige language if one wants to advance in society, but it's not a medical problem to speak a local dialect. Would you advise an aspiring London barrister from Yorkshire to see a therapist or watch some YouTube videos on RP?