infundibulum

N.Va. Prisoner Lost in Translation

Every morning, dozens of Latinos come by Kaiser’s desk. Many appear confused, frustrated. Starved for familiarity, they devour her every word, even if her Spanish is a bit broken.

Kaiser, 59, speaks English with a strong Tennessee accent and Spanish with the inconsistency of someone who taught herself more through desire than formal training. But she tries, and she sympathizes, and on a February afternoon when the halls were mostly hushed except for a man wandering around with a worried look, she listened.

You can hear the sound of me groaning as you read the next bit:

“It seems like there was a breakdown on a couple of levels,” said Tawny G. Hays, clerk of the General District Court.

From the beginning, his last name was entered as “Antonio Cruz” in court documents and as “Cruz” in jail records — a problem that both jail and court officials say often arises with Hispanic names that tend to be long and include an also-known-as.

Col. Charles “Skip” Land, who heads the jail, said the name might explain why officials failed to take Cruz to court Dec. 12. “Some people also come in with a hyphen between their name and then don’t come up unless that hyphen is typed in,” he said.