Countywide : Faulty Translation Reverses Conviction

The 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana has reversed the conviction of a young Vietnamese man who admitted his involvement in a Westminster jewelry store robbery on grounds that he had not been properly read his rights because of faulty translation.

The court found there was sufficient evidence to prove that Chi Dinh Ta of Westminster was one of three men who robbed the Kim Hoang jewelry store on Dec. 15, 1987. He was identified in a lineup by one of the robbery victims, and was later found at the residence where much of the stolen merchandise was recovered.

But the justices found that it was unlikely that Ta understood what was being said when the Westminster police read him his rights.

The justices found that the translation was so inadequate that two court-appointed interpreters who read the Miranda warning, written by police in Vietnamese, could not adequately understand what it said. Ta, the court pointed out, has almost no formal education.

“If two well-educated interpreters could not understand critical parts of the advisement . . . there is simply too much doubt that a meaningful Miranda warning was given in this case,” wrote Justice Thomas F. Crosby Jr.