The Indiana Criminal Justice Institute has approved a $58,920 grant for the Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Investigator/Translator Program.
One goal of this program is to enhance victim safety and hold offenders accountable in cases of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking, institute officials said.
“But to be clear, this grant is not just for domestic violence, although that is clearly a big part of it,” Bartholomew County Prosecutor Bill Nash said. “In a nutshell, this grant allows us to have a bilingual staff person who can assist victims and witnesses.”
A key provision in the grant is to provide resources for underserved populations, Nash said.
“In our community, that is definitely those who speak Spanish,” the prosecutor said.
Much of the grant pays the salary of Hispanic translator and investigator Rachel Morris-Clark. The wife of Columbus North High School principal David Clark has served in this capacity for over a decade.
While Nash says he can read and write Spanish adequately, the prosecutor said that does not make up for true bilingual fluency — a level of proficiency that requires extensive studying and testing.
Besides language, bilingual fluency also involves a degree of cultural understanding of different countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Columbia and Mexico, the prosecutor said.
“We’ve got a pending murder case with four defendants — all of whom speak Spanish as their primary language,” he said. “We have plenty of victims and defendants who are Spanish-speakers, but not bilingual to provide legal assistance. So we’ve had no trouble keeping Rachel busy.”
Even if a native of a Spanish-speaking country is a defendant capable of speaking and reading English, the law still calls for a Spanish translator to be used during court hearings.
“We’re talking about depriving someone of their liberty,” Nash said. “To expect them to defend themselves in what is not their native language? That seems like a bit of an unfair stretch.”
On the practical side, a defendant could always claim he or she didn’t understand the proceedings without a translator, and attempt to use that claim to overturn a conviction, Nash said.
