Most United States citizens will see this news item in the context of our justice system gone awry. But there are also two important issues here endorsing tough action against illegal immigration.

Mahamu Kanneh was born in Liberia, West Africa into a family that spoke the native tribal language Vai. Vai-speaking people in their native lands number about 100,000 located mostly in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

According to Fox News:

…Kanneh was born in Monrovia, Liberia, on May 19, 1984, but at a “very young” age moved with his family as refugees to Guyana, where he was introduced to English (Guyana is an English speaking country in South America, a former Dutch colony that later became a British possession before independence in 1966).

Kanneh was granted asylum, and came to the United States legally. Already speaking English from his upbringing in Guyana, Kanneh attended high school in Montgomery County, Maryland and graduated. He then enrolled in community collage there.

Based on the complaint of one of Kanneh’s relatives that he had repeatedly raped and molested a 7-year-old girl who was another family member for a whole year, Kanneh was arrested in Gaithersburg, Maryland in August 2004. The prosecution had a solid case against him, including DNA evidence.

His defense counsel argued that the court must suppy a Vai interpreter. For three years the court failed to do so, and on July 17 Judge Katherine Savage ruled that the defendant had been denied the right to a speedy trial and dropped the charges, provoking outrage in the local community.

Although the defendant is this particular case was in the United States through asylum, and not illegally, there are two concerns raised by this case:

• Buried in the details of the news reports is the fact that Montgomery County spends one million dollars per year on interpreters for non-English speaking defendants. That is a major expenditure, and one that is replicated in jurisdictions across America. Since it is a “hidden” expense, buried in the judicial budget, it likely does not get reported when the tally of illegal immigrant costs is made.
• This loophole in the law gives illegal aliens a way to commit rape, murder, child molestation, and a whole laundry list of henious crimes that no citizen could get away with, and escape justice on a technicality. The only was to prevent this is to eradicate illegal entry to the US, and to demand that legal entrants be fluent in English.

Sources:

International Herald Tribune
FOX News
CNN
USA Today
Washington Post