Court Trial
This essay concerns the observation of a court trial following the commitment of a murder. The trial involved two types of vulnerable participants, children and persons for whom English was either not spoken or was a second language. The court trial, as well as the reporting of the crime to the police, were both affected by misunderstandings between the various parties, due to language and cultural differences. The complainant, (who was later arrested and charged with murdering his wife), a native from Yemen, did not have a strong command of English and was unable to convey to on duty police officers the issue he was reporting. The police were required to rely on the young son to interpret, which highlights the issue of vulnerable children
…show more content…
The concept began as an attempt to allow the public to understand legal documents that required signatures, for example, rental agreements or terms and conditions of websites. According to Schane (2006), psycholinguists Robert and Veda Charrow directed multiple studies regarding jurors understanding of legalese, wherein the subjects were asked to listen to a tape of jury instructions and paraphrase what they understood. The result showed that approximately half of the required material was absent from portions of the summaries. The cause of this complexity was attributed to the nature of legalese grammatical constructions, for example unnecessary use of passive sentences and nominalisations and incidence of repeated negatives, rather than vocabulary items, as expected (2006). As part of the experiment, the researchers simplified the instructions with removal of complex sentences, and repeated the experimentation with a second comparable group of subjects. The research discovered, while there was improvement, it was unlikely that there would be complete comprehension by individuals of jury instructions across the board, regardless of whether English is a first or second language (Schane, 2006). In the case of vulnerable persons, according to Gibbons (2003), three problems occur within the judicial process. These are: communication of ideas may be conveyed poorly, vulnerable persons may be coerced into providing incorrect information, and lastly, the legal process is challenging for most people, but is especially so for vulnerable individuals such as children and second language
The concept began as an attempt to allow the public to understand legal documents that required signatures, for example, rental agreements or terms and conditions of websites. According to Schane (2006), psycholinguists Robert and Veda Charrow directed multiple studies regarding jurors understanding of legalese, wherein the subjects were asked to listen to a tape of jury instructions and paraphrase what they understood. The result showed that approximately half of the required material was absent from portions of the summaries. The cause of this complexity was attributed to the nature of legalese grammatical constructions, for example unnecessary use of passive sentences and nominalisations and incidence of repeated negatives, rather than vocabulary items, as expected (2006). As part of the experiment, the researchers simplified the instructions with removal of complex sentences, and repeated the experimentation with a second comparable group of subjects. The research discovered, while there was improvement, it was unlikely that there would be complete comprehension by individuals of jury instructions across the board, regardless of whether English is a first or second language (Schane, 2006). In the case of vulnerable persons, according to Gibbons (2003), three problems occur within the judicial process. These are: communication of ideas may be conveyed poorly, vulnerable persons may be coerced into providing incorrect information, and lastly, the legal process is challenging for most people, but is especially so for vulnerable individuals such as children and second language