Assault family violence case. Defendant made motion for the court to appoint interpreter that was granted.

I have a spaniish speaking reluctant victim. Audiotape interview between English speaking detective, through a spanish speaking forensic investigator, and the spanish speaking defendant.

I want to get a spanish speaking interpreter for the state to translate the victim and the audiotape. Defense informally suggested that case law requires any spanish evidence has to be interpreted by the defense interpreter, but judge said state needed its own interpreter.

Anyone have any case history on court appointed interpreters and their scope of evidence presentation?

Thanks.

I don't know of any rule that requires you to get your own interpreter. But the mechanics almost dictates that there be a second interpreter.

Someone has to sit beside the defendant and interpret to him. Someone has to sit beside the victim/witness and interpret to him. Without some fancy electronic gear feeding that same translation into the ears of both defendant and victim, there have to be two interpreters.

As for interpreting the audio-recording, check out Rule of Evidence 1009 (Translation of Foreign Language Documents). Although it deals with documents, I think the same standard would apply to a recording. It only specifies that a "qualified translator" do the translation.

In each of the 15 felony jury trials I had in the last year we had at least one intrepreter involved, usually two. In a lot of the trials not a single witness testified in English. I forget sometimes that this is not business as usual for counties not on the Mexican border. When our defendant is spanish speaking, his intrepreter sits in the back of the courtroom and uses a headphone setup for their translation. Otherwise, the translation is very distracting for everyone. When we have an audio recording in Spanish, we give it to the intrepreter ahead of time and have them do the translation into English on a seperate tape that we play for the jury. We swear in the interpreter to prove up and admit the tape.