{"id":12748,"date":"2011-01-03T05:10:11","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T10:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/?p=12748"},"modified":"2011-01-03T06:02:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T11:02:26","slug":"a-defense-lawyer-for-the-deaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2011\/01\/03\/a-defense-lawyer-for-the-deaf\/","title":{"rendered":"A defense lawyer for the deaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

A defense lawyer for the deaf<\/strong><\/p>\n

Local justice gets boost with young lawyer’s sign language skills.<\/p>\n

By Steven Kreytak
\nAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
\nSunday, Jan. 2, 2011<\/p>\n

When Amber Farrelly Elliott was 9, her mother enrolled her in an American
\nSign Language class in hopes of keeping the inquisitive youngster occupied
\nduring summer vacation.<\/p>\n

The language immediately fascinated Elliott, whose hearing is not impaired.
\nEvery day she eagerly rode her bike to the class in a church in her hometown
\nof Lawton, Okla., a military town near Fort Sill. Elliott studied signs at
\nnight to keep up with her adult classmates.<\/p>\n

That summer began an affinity for sign language and deaf culture that
\nElliott calls upon today as a criminal defense lawyer in Travis County.
\nLicensed to practice law for just over a year, she fills a niche at the
\nTravis County Courthouse with her ability to directly communicate with deaf
\nclients instead of indirectly through an interpreter.<\/p>\n

“It’s a beautiful language,” Elliott said. “It’s just so expressive. And
\ncaptivating. When you see somebody sign you can’t help as a hearing person
\nto look and be like, ‘Wow, they are communicating with their hands and they
\ncompletely understand each other.’<\/p>\n

Court officials say they assign Elliott to represent all the deaf people in
\nTravis County who have been arrested for Class A and B misdemeanors and
\ncan’t afford to hire their own lawyer. That amounts to about two or three
\ndefendants a month, said court administrator Debra Hale. Certified
\ninterpreters still translate for those clients during most official court
\nhearings. Because of her limited experience, the local judges have not yet
\napproved Elliott, 34, to represent court-appointed clients in felony cases.<\/p>\n

County Court-at-Law Judge Nancy Hohengarten said that Elliott’s ability to
\ncommunicate with clients in their language further ensures that the
\ndefendants will receive fair representation.<\/p>\n

“I think she’s a very good lawyer,” Hohengarten said. “She has good
\ncommunication skills and perhaps that’s in part because of her (sign
\nlanguage) training.”<\/p>\n

County officials estimate there are 50,000 to 60,000 deaf and hard of
\nhearing people in the Austin metropolitan area. That’s one of the largest
\npopulations in the country, according to deaf advocates and county
\nofficials, who believe it is partly because of the presence of the Texas
\nSchool for the Deaf and government agencies that offer services to deaf
\npeople.<\/p>\n

Paul Rutowski, president of the Texas Association of the Deaf, an advocacy
\norganization, said in an e-mail that some deaf people have been skeptical of
\nElliott, worrying that she is using her sign language skills to “patronize
\nthe deaf community.”<\/p>\n

Rutowski does not believe that is the case.<\/p>\n

“I value Amber’s contributions to her profession as we all benefit from her
\nexpertise,” he wrote. “Her knowing sign language is really a benefit to us
\nand everyone else. She has a good personality and is a good person.”<\/p>\n

Proper discretion<\/p>\n

Elliott is 5 feet tall with a high-pitched voice. But that can be
\nmisleading, said Alexandra Gauthier, the president of the Austin Criminal
\nDefense Lawyers Association, who has worked closely with Elliott.<\/p>\n

“She’s a little pit bull” in court, Gauthier said. “She’s also whip-smart
\nand extremely well-organized.”<\/p>\n

Elliott estimated she has represented about 65 deaf clients, most of them in
\nTravis County and a few in Williamson County, mostly on misdemeanors, such
\nas driving while intoxicated and theft.<\/p>\n

She said that because the deaf community is so small, she has to take extra
\nsteps to protect their privacy, such as not scheduling deaf clients to come
\nto her office or to court at the same time.<\/p>\n

“I tell my clients, if they see me at a deaf event, I won’t acknowledge that
\nI know them unless they come up to me first,” she said. She refuses to talk
\nabout their cases in public, in part because other deaf people can see what
\nthey are saying.<\/p>\n

In many of the cases, she said, prosecutors have dismissed charges after
\nElliott convinced them that there was no crime and simply a misunderstanding
\nbetween hearing and deaf people. Some deaf clients, for example, were
\ncharged with assault after tapping someone to get that person’s attention,
\nshe said.<\/p>\n

“If they really want you to pay attention to them , they tap harder,” she
\nsaid. “If you want to get technical, I’ve been assaulted by my (deaf)
\nfriends many times.”<\/p>\n

In one case, she had a homeless deaf man as a client, who received a written
\ncriminal trespass warning by University of Texas police. Later, when the man
\nwas found on campus again, he was arrested for trespassing, Elliott said.<\/p>\n

Elliott said the man, whose reading skills were poor, did not understand the
\nwarning on the ticket and because he did not get the benefit of a verbal
\nexplanation he did not know he was not to return to campus.<\/p>\n

“His reading level was not college level, which is required to read one of
\nthose stupid warnings,” she said.<\/p>\n

When she explained this to prosecutors, they dismissed the case, she said.<\/p>\n

Confluence of signs<\/p>\n

Elliott has continued to augment her knowledge of deaf culture after her
\nfirst sign language class as a child.<\/p>\n

A self-described “complete nerd,” Elliott said that first class motivated
\nher to work odd jobs to earn the money to take a more advanced class. She
\nmemorized a book on sign language that her uncle had bought her for 25 cents
\nat a garage sale and befriended children who were deaf.<\/p>\n

Elliott stopped practicing sign language while attending the University of
\nOklahoma but began again with deaf colleagues while working a
\npost-graduation job at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Waco, where she
\nevaluated veterans’ levels of disability.<\/p>\n

“It’s like riding a bike,” she said. “It came right back.”<\/p>\n

After enrolling in law school at the University of Arizona in 2006, Elliott
\nfound a group of people, about half of them deaf, who would meet regularly
\nto communicate using sign language. Soon she was attending happy hours for
\nyoung, professional deaf people.<\/p>\n

“It was a great stress reliever,” she said.<\/p>\n

During law school, Elliott studied for a year at the University of Texas and
\nspent the fall semester of 2008 working with a group of defense lawyers who
\nwere preparing for the retrials of capital murder defendants Michael Scott
\nand Robert Springsteen, who were accused of killing four teenage girls at a
\nNorth Austin yogurt shop in 1991.<\/p>\n

She spent hours sifting through the more than 30 boxes of evidence in the
\ncase, watching recorded interviews and conducting legal research. At night,
\nshe took sign language classes at Austin Community College. Citing new DNA
\nevidence, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg dismissed the charges against
\nScott and Springsteen last year, about the time Elliott passed the bar exam.<\/p>\n

The case, she said, solidified her interest in practicing criminal law.
\nAfter she became certified to practice, she introduced herself to the
\ncriminal judges at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center and told
\nthem about her sign language skills.<\/p>\n

Now, she said, “I can put my two passions together \u2014 sign language and the
\nlaw.”<\/p>\n

skreytak@statesman.com; 912-2946<\/p>\n

Source:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.statesman.com\/news\/local\/a-defense-lawyer-for-the-deaf-1159280.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A defense lawyer for the deaf Local justice gets boost with young lawyer’s sign language skills. By Steven Kreytak AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Sunday, Jan. 2, 2011 When Amber Farrelly Elliott was 9, her mother enrolled her in an American Sign Language…<\/p>\n

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