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26 Ariz. St. L.J. 163 (1994)
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Criminal Defendants: How You Gonna Get Justice If You Can't Talk to the Judge

handle is hein.journals/arzjl26 and id is 175 raw text is: Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Criminal Defendants: How You Gonna Get Justice If You Can't Talk to the Judge? Jamie McAlister* Aristotle pronounced them senseless and incapable of reason.' Alexander Graham Bell insisted that legislation be enacted forbidding individuals in families that had more than one of them to marry.2 Called useless eaters, 1600 were exterminated in Nazi Germany; thousands more were sterilized.3 More per capita are numbered among the American prison population than in the nation as a whole.4 These are persons who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. Their history is one of tragedy. Not a tragedy because of disability, but a tragedy because of the ignorance, fear, and discrimination their disability en- genders in those around them. Their experience in America is dismal.' Even more dismal is the situation of deaf persons who run afoul of the American criminal justice system. All too often important consti- tutional mandates are violated out of ignorance and fear. Ignorance on the part of the criminal justice system because the system does not * Jamie McAlister received an M.Ed. from Utah State University, 1974, and her J.D. from the University of New Mexico, 1992. She is an Associate at Meyer, Hendricks, Victor, Osborn & Maledon, Phoenix, Arizona. 1. JACK R. GANNON, DEAF HERITAGE: A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF DEAF AMERICA xxv (Jane Butler & Laura-Jean Gilbert eds., 1981). 2. Id. at 76. 3. Vickie Walter, In der Nacht: An Unusual Exhibit Depicts The Nazi Persecution of Deaf People, 18 GALLAUDET TODAY 6, 7 (Winter 1987-88). At least 150,000 persons with disabilities were sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Id. Promoted as a service to the Fatherland, an additional 320,000 to 375,000 persons with disabilities, 17,000 of whom were deaf, were sterilized before World War II began. Id. at 10. 4. Deaf and hard-of-hearing inmates have been largely neglected by professional researchers. Only a few articles address the incidence of deafness in penal populations. One of the foundational articles reporting the incident of hearing and speech impairments in penal populations is Nicholas Bountress & Jacqueline Richards, Speech, Language and Hearing Disorders in an Adult Penal Institution, XLIV J. SPEECH & HEARING DISORDERS 293 (Aug. 1979) (Sixteen to thirty-two percent of the inmates were properly classified as communicationally disabled.). 5. See generally GANNON supra note 1; HARLAN LANE, WHEN THE MIND HEARS: A HISTORY OF THE DEAF (1984); BERYL L. BENDERLY, DANCING WITHOUT MUSIC: DEAFNESS IN AMERICA (1980).

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