Communicating Miranda Rights to Non-native English Speakers
Our firm represented Dias Kadyrbayev, the young college student charged with obstruction of justice in the Boston Marathon bombing case. The Government sought to introduce statements Kadyrbayev made to law enforcement after allegedly being Mirandized. In the motion to suppress and evidentiary hearing, attorneys Robert G. Stahl and Laura K. Gasiorowski argued that as a non-native speaker of English with no prior experience with the American justice system, Dias did not comprehend his rights under Miranda. Those rights were provided to Kadrybayev only in English, with no Kazakh or Russian translation or interpreter, despite the fact that his limited English proficiency was insufficient to understand the complicated language and syntax of the Miranda rights.
