Cases that Cross Cultures
Seattle, Washington Cross-Cultural Criminal Defense Attorney
In my work on capital cases generally, and particularly on the capital cases I work on for the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, I have obtained significant experience in dealing with cross-cultural issues and in ensuring that a person’s differences do not become his or her downfall. This experience is of direct benefit in any type of case in which the client is not part of the mainstream, but, rather, experiences the isolation and fear of being an outsider looking in and hoping to be understood by the key decision-makers.
The way a person sees, experiences, and interprets the world, and expresses himself or herself to others, may be dramatically affected by the person’s culture, language, race, ethnic origin, age, gender, and sexual identity. While it may be easy to “get” or understand someone who is similar to ourselves, this is not always the case when we are trying to understand someone who is quite different. In the legal context, particularly in the courtroom, a lawyer’s duty is to ensure that his or her client’s differences are appropriately explained and understood by the pertinent decision- makers, so that those differences do not obstruct justice.
Explaining cultural differences may mean, for example, presenting the testimony of a cultural expert who can help explain that when the client looked down while the police were questioning him, this was his culturally-based, respectful and submissive response to authority and not an indication of evasiveness. Or, as another example, it might be necessary to call a linguist to testify that, although the client speaks English, it is his second language and one he learned as an adult, and thus he missed many of the nuances and meanings of the questions asked of him by a police interrogator. In yet another example, perhaps the client has a mental illness, and the prosecution’s mental health expert gives him certain tests that were not designed for people from the client’s culture; it would be up to the defense lawyer to expose the error in the expert’s use of such tests.
Cultural issues may arise even when the client is part of the mainstream. For example, a physician suspected of falsely claiming on bills that she spent substantial amounts of time with her patients may need to show that her patient population consisted largely of people from other cultures not familiar with the assumptions made by Western medicine. Or, clients who are part of the mainstream generally may have tendencies or traits that are not bound for the stage in Peoria. While not necessarily products of cultural differences, these tendencies may need to be explained or placed in context.