Justice
Goals & Activities
In early 2009, coalition members interested in criminal justice established a
subcommittee and devised a strategy for addressing language access
in the courts, which many saw as one of the key structural, systemic
flaws in the criminal justice system in the New Orleans area. Partners
from various organizations, such as Louisiana Appleseed, the Loyola
Law Clinic, the Hispanic Apostolate, Puentes New Orleans, the Hispanic
Lawyer’s Association, and the Orleans Public Defender, agreed that
the issue had to be evaluated from a statewide perspective. Any attempt
to address systemic flaws in one set of parish courts would not guarantee
replication in another jurisdiction. The subcommittee chose to pursue
systemic change at the state agency level rather than through the legislature,
in part because they recognized the authority that the Louisiana Supreme
Court has to mandate statewide standards across all Louisiana courts,
and also because it made better sense to establish an ally with the
Louisiana Supreme Court (LaSC) before pursuing legislative action.
The result of this strategy was the creation of working teams that researched
and developed components of a rule recommendation that the subcommittee
would submit to the Louisiana Supreme Court. The draft rule recommendation
was completed in September 2009 (provided in entirety in pdf below)
and submitted to the Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) for support.
Members of LSBA approved our rule recommendation and adopted it (resolution
in pdf below) as an item on their legislative agenda for 2010, which
they forwarded to the Chief Justice in April 2010. During this time,
Representative Cedric Richmond passed a resolution supporting the implementation
of statewide interpreter standards for the courts (provided in pdf
below).
Judicial Council of the LaSC reviewed the
recommended rule for statewide interpreter standards and moved to create
a committee that is charged with evaluating the recommendations in
the rule and provide action recommendations at the Judicial Council
level, which will took place in Spring 2011.
These events have led, within one year’s time, to the
State of Louisiana inching closer towards compliance with the rest
of the nation. Louisiana was one of ten states without
statewide standards for court interpreters, which puts the state at
a higher risk of civil rights violations. In fact, the Civil Rights
Division of the United States Department of Justice did issue a letter
to Louisiana in 2010 regarding this matter, effectively putting the
State of Louisiana on notice. The Judicial Council of the LaSC has moved to adopt standards and change their operations to meet these standards. This processes include a new program to traing court interpreters of May 2013.
We believe that the State of Louisiana and all its courst will adopt the
majority of the recommendations provided in the rule the subcommittee
created, and that as a result, Louisiana will continue move in a positive direction
in 2013 as regards due process and language barriers in statewide courts.
We are also hopeful that Louisiana aggressively pursues a progressive
stance on this issue and create a model process and program that serves
as a best practice nationally.
Resources & Tools
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