Conflict between audio recording and transcript in a legal case translation.

September 4, 2008


Judge orders new translation of murder suspect's interview

WEB EXTRA

By Brian Shane
Staff Writer
SNOW HILL — A Spanish-language transcript of an alleged murder confession didn’t match up with its audio recording in Worcester County Circuit Court, and now state prosecutors are on the hook to bring the judge a corrected version, likely postponing the October trial date.
Because sections of the audio did not match or were omitted from the transcript as prepared by State Police, Judge Theodore Eschenburg continued the defense’s motion to suppress the confession until Oct. 1, when the trial is scheduled to start.
“I’m sure everybody wants an accurate transcript, and I will not rule on this without one,” he said, adding, “Wow. This one is a little bit unusual.”

Fifty-six-year-old Cecilia Dea Parker was found stabbed to death in her Mystic Harbor home April 22. State Police investigators said Roberto Antonio Murillo, her across-the-street neighbor and sometimes landscaper, confessed to the crime hours later during a Spanish-language interview. Police said Murillo allegedly killed Parker over disputed payment for completed yard work.

Murillo, 28, is a Honduran native who illegally emigrated to Worcester County in 2005, leaving behind a wife and two children, court documents show. In court, he wore his black hair cropped short and sported a thin mustache. He was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit with a dark necktie, wearing ankle bracelets bound by a metal chain.

Wednesday marked Murillo’s first court appearance in this case. When sheriff’s deputies ushered him into court, he nearly stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. Across the courtroom, relatives of the deceased sat up in their gallery pews to get their first live look at the defendant.

Defense attorney Scott Collins said his client had not signed any waiver agreeing to speak to police on the record without an attorney present. Collins also contends that Murillo had asked for a lawyer before State Police questioned him.

“The way the officer asked the question in the transcript, he simply asked: Do you want a lawyer? Do you want to talk? Mr. Murillo’s answer was yes. Well, which question was he answering? The trooper did not inquire, the trooper simply went into his interrogation. To me, if you’re asked two questions, you generally answer the first one,” Collins said.

Trooper Alberto Vazquez, the Puerto Rico native who interviewed Murillo, testified that he moved forward with his Spanish-language interrogation after Murillo signaled that he didn’t need a lawyer — with a shrug, not by speaking aloud.

“He wanted to talk,” Vazquez said. “It was clear that he wanted to talk, and the whole time he was talking,” adding that he simply told Murillo “just to be honest.”

When the transcript wasn’t explicit enough in its meaning, prosecutors offered to play the audio of the confession — and it was soon obvious that what was on the tape wasn’t what ended up in the transcript.

Once the audio was translated to English on the fly by a court interpreter, Eschenburg ordered the State’s Attorney’s office to prepare a new, accurate transcript using an outside agent.

Through the transcript was prepared and submitted by State Police, the burden falls on the State’s Attorney, according to Collins.

“The state is responsible if they are saying my client, Mr. Murillo, confessed to the police, they’ve got to tell me what he said,” he said. “Right now, what they’ve given me isn’t apparently what my client said, and isn’t what the state trooper said. It’s just a very poorly-done transcript.”

Earlier, Judge Eschenburg denied a motion by Collins to dismiss the case based on the States Attorney’s office using a Spanish-speaking attorney to translate for Murillo, who speaks no English. The role is usually reserved for an unbiased court-appointed interpreter.

Worcester State’s Attorney Joel Todd said the Spanish-speaking Pam Correa, an Assistant State’s Attorney, was called in “because they couldn’t find anybody else to translate” from local law enforcement agencies.

Eschenburg dismissed the motion, saying, “She interviewed him. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

Correa testified that Joel Todd called her personally, asking that she translate. She testified that when she translated for Murillo, he was not yet a suspect, just the man investigators believed was the last person to see Parker alive.

Investigators fed her questions in English to ask Murillo during what ended up being nearly a five-hour interview. Correa added that she and Murillo had difficulty understanding each other based on their varying Spanish dialects, and because “he mumbled a lot,” she noted.