Competing Creole Transcripts in Trial.pdf

Competing Creole Transcripts on Trial

Peter L. Patrick

Dept. of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex

patrickp@essex.ac.uk

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/

Samuel W. Buell

U.S. Dept. of Justice, District of Massachusetts

buell@mediaone.net

ABSTRACT A criminal prosecution of Jamaican Creole (JC) speaking ‘posse’

(=gang) members in New York included evidence of recorded speech in JC. Clandestine

recordings (discussions of criminal events, including narration of a homicide) were

introduced at trial. Taped data were translated for prosecution by a non-linguist native

speaker of JC. Defense disputed these texts and commissioned alternative transcriptions

from a creolist linguist, who was a non-speaker of JC. Prosecution in turn hired another

creolist, a near-native speaker of and specialist in JC, to testify on the relative accuracy

of both sets of earlier texts. Differing representations of key conversations were

submitted to a non-creole speaking judge/jury, both linguists testified, and defendants

were convicted. The role of linguistic testimony and practice (especially transcription)

in the trial is analysed. A typology of linguistic expertise is given, and effects of the

language’s Creole status and lack of instrumentalization on the trial are discussed.

KEYWORDS Creoles, Jamaican, transcription, translation, types of expertise, wiretap

Patrick & Buell

INTRODUCTION 1

Linguists appearing as expert legal witnesses in court have as yet rarely been asked to

testify about pidgin or creole languages. 2 The opportunity for such testimony generally

arises in jurisdictions where a standard language (and its dialects) are dominant, and a

pidgin or creole is perceived as exotic and not native to the jurisdiction; where pidgins

and creoles are routinely spoken, they frequently enter into courtroom proceedings, but

are apparently not highlighted as subjects for expert linguistic testimony.

Creoles are natural languages which are independent – i.e., not dialects – of the

(standard) languages they are related to. 3 Many creolists hold creoles are not directly

genetically descended from them by the usual processes of language evolution

(Thomason and Kaufman 1988). Creole languages are typically widely-disrespected,

unwritten vernaculars which have not undergone standardization or been formally

admitted to public use in institutional discourse, even in their home settings.

Consequently, many of their own native speakers are uncertain whether they exist as

“real languages”. Presenting expertise on creoles to an audience of nonlinguists (e.g.,

judges, juries and attorneys) who may be disinclined to credit them with the status or

complexity afforded to recognized standard varieties, and even to their regional or

social dialects, thus raises interesting problems. In the case discussed here, although

gaining admission of linguistic testimony to the courtroom was not difficult due to the

nature of the evidence, these problems are compounded by the difficulties associated

with the interpretation of transcribed evidence that is drawn from recordings made in

difficult mechanical or discourse conditions.

Competing Creole Transcripts…

This discussion shows the impact linguistic expertise can have on a type of

criminal case that is increasingly common in the USA: one involving tape-recorded

conversations among individuals speaking non-English languages or dialects. The use

of linguists in such cases is likely to gather steam, not only because of the statistically

increasing significance of non-Standard-English speaking populations, but also because

newly assimilating and economically disadvantaged immigrant groups bear a

disproportionate brunt of the overall impact of crime in society. While immigrants from

Atlantic English Creole-speaking areas have long been resident in such (post-)colonial

metropolises as New York City, London, Toronto and Miami, their encounters with the

courts have only recently, and inconsistently, been recognized as episodes involving

cross-cultural communication. 4 The questions of whether intervention by a language

expert is required, and what the qualifications for expertise are, thus remain unresolved.

The special linguistic relationship between creoles and dominant versions of

their lexifier languages (e.g., Jamaican Creole and Standard American English) comes

into focus in this account of a criminal trial in which recordings and transcriptions of

highly vernacular Jamaican speech played a significant role as evidence. We first

describe the general linguistic context and the background of the case briefly, and then

discuss two general issues raised in considering the linguistic portion of the evidence:

• The role of data annotation, reduction and selection, especially the transition

from tape recording to transcription, and

• The types and sources of expertise and knowledge required for effective

interpretation of such speech data.

Patrick & Buell

JAMAICAN CREOLE

Nearly all Jamaicans speak a Creole language which is structurally distinct from

English. (Most Jamaicans can make themselves understood to non-speakers of JC when

desired, and many also speak a standard variety of English, some of them natively.)

Jamaican Creole (hereafter JC), or Patwa as its speakers name it, probably crystallized

as a separate language in the last quarter of the 17th century . 5 The major input of lexical

items and historical sound and grammar patterns was from the English of the day, but

West and Central African substrate languages also made significant contributions,

especially to syntax, phonetics and pragmatics. This rapid process of creolization, in

which a language may evolve from typologically diverse source materials in a century

or less, is thought to be radically different from language change and genesis in the

normal course.

Thus broad varieties of JC are unintelligible today to speakers of American or

British English; even speakers of other Caribbean English Creoles may sometimes find

Jamaicans difficult or impossible to understand. JC is known both to linguists and West

Indians in general as one of the “deepest” varieties of English Creole in the region. It is

also a language of very strong ethnic identification: people of Jamaican ethnicity are

strongly expected to be conversant in the Patwa, and nearly all are; while conversely no

outsider is expected to be competent in the language, and almost none are. Because this

case pitted a close-knit group of Jamaican-born Creole speakers against US-native law

enforcement officers who do not speak it, competence in JC played a crucial role in both

the criminal activity of this case, and in its investigation and prosecution.

It is important to note that JC is essentially an unwritten and non-standardized

language. It is in fact one of the best-studied of all creoles – certainly Caribbean English

Competing Creole Transcripts…

Creoles: linguists have composed a phonemic orthography (Cassidy 1961), dictionary

(Cassidy and Le Page 1967), and grammar (Bailey 1966), and are deeply involved in the

teaching of language arts in Jamaica . 6 It is common for popular and literary writers to

use JC for dialogue and even for narration (Cooper 1993, Lalla 1996). Nevertheless, no

standard orthography is yet popularly recognized and used, the language receives no

official recognition, and its very existence is routinely denied and denigrated by many

of its own speakers. The official language of news media, education, administration, and

law courts in Jamaica is a standard English that few Jamaicans learn natively at home.

‘OPERATION ISLAND GREEN’

The case under discussion, US v. Derrick Riley, et al., was the culmination of Operation

Island Green , an investigation of Jamaican ‘posse’ activities in urban areas across the

US, conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Jamaican posses (members

are often known as ‘yardies’) are organized crime units which originate and are

grounded geographically in specific neighborhoods of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital city,

though their activities have spread far beyond it (Gunst 1995).

The case was tried in federal court in Brooklyn, New York in Spring of 1998. It

charged the commission of grave acts of violence, including multiple homicides, by an

organized group of professional criminals. The victims were Jamaicans, members of

posse members’ own cultural group. Many posse victims are illegal immigrants, distrust

the police as a result of experiences both in Jamaica and abroad, have family members

in Jamaica who cannot be protected from reprisal by US law enforcement, and generally

have little or no recourse. Two men were charged with numerous crimes under the

RICO act, which punishes conspirators acting for organized crime groups, including:

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