QUOTE (citydweller @ Jan 15 2009, 12:42 AM)
Something stinks. Which is strange because it's like they sprayed the room with air freshener before someone farted.
The accused can't see those giving testimony because he's surrounded by an army of sign language interpreters who are charged with telling him everything going on in front of his own eyes. All he really needs is one interpreter to tell him what's being said. Two teams, working in shifts? Shifty, says I. Last I heard he isn't blind.
And, um, just how many teams of sign language interpreters are servicing the wife? I know she reads lips, so says the paper, but has she really been declared free of any possible guilt, just 'cause she said so?
Is she even there?
And why, exactly, can't deaf members of the public communicate to each other? How will the accused see them when he is surrounded by an army of people telling him what is happening before his own eyes?
It may just be yet another case of LNP's horrendous reporting skills, but this whole affair reads like a big fat set-up, with someone with "too much to loose" pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Actually, no one attending the trial in the audience is permitted to "communicate" with each other during the trial. You are not permitted to lean over and talk to the person next to you. Just because the deaf aren't talking out loud, their signing is communicating. With deaf witnesses on the witness stand, and signing taking place, there could be witness tampering. And the interpreters are undoubtedly a dot every i cross every t thing where the court is mandated to provide interpreter, but the defense wants their own, and the prosecutor's office wants their own and ... well, you get the point. It is a circus. As usual.