Mistranslated DWI warnings in Westchester could force tossing cases

Hundreds of drunken driving cases involving Hispanic drivers in Westchester County are getting a second look out of concern the evidence collected by arresting New York State troopers might have been tainted by dubious English-to-Spanish translations.

That’s according to a new investigation by the news organization ProPublica, which broke the story last week. A spokesperson for the Westchester District Attorney’s Office said the office’s conviction review unit received a list of 263 DWI arrests from the police in February 2022. “We’re still combing through paper,” Jin Whang, the spokesperson, said of the cases and review, ProPublica reported.

Morning Edition Host Michael Hill recently discussed the developments with reporter Brett Murphy, who wrote the article. Their conversation has been lightly edited.

Michael Hill:

Brett, good morning.

Brett Murphy:

Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Your report finds that for years, when state troopers stopped Spanish-speaking drivers for suspected drunken driving, they gave them mistranslated information. What was the problem and how did it affect the evidence?

From at least 2014 through 2018, state troopers in Westchester were pulling over Spanish-speaking drivers, and when those drivers didn't want to take a Breathalyzer or another chemical test for DWI suspicion, the troopers would give them a piece of paper that read something to the effect of, ‘if you refuse this test, if you don't want to take this test, we will punish you as being guilty.’ That is dramatically different than what these warnings are supposed to read.

If you get pulled over, if anyone else gets pulled over, the police officer is supposed to read you a warning that says something to the effect of, ‘this can be used as evidence against you,’ this being your refusal to take the test. But because this mistranslation was so different for Spanish-speaking drivers versus what it was supposed to be, it led to confusion. And a lot of legal experts told us that it amounted to kind of coercive language, so there was this large number of cases – we don't know how many yet – that may have been affected by this tainted evidence.

You reported that Westchester prosecutors were made aware of the translation issue years ago. Why has it taken so long to get these cases reviewed, and how many DWI cases might we be talking about here?

So they first learned about it in 2018. And I should say, too, this was a prior administration to District Attorney Miriam Rocah's current administration. She took office in 2021, but senior prosecutors there, including one who is still currently in the office, first found out about it in 2018. From the records and from my reporting, it doesn't look like any steps were taken after she learned about the issue.

A year later, it came up in another case. Again, it doesn't look like any internal steps were taken at the DA's office at that time in 2019. This was on a separate case. Fast forward to 2021: It came up a third time in another case, and this time, Legal Aid reached out to the DA's Office, the Conviction Review Unit, and said, ‘Hey, this is a problem. We are going to the state police, and we're asking them for information about other cases that may have been affected. We've put in a records request. We would like you guys to take a look at it as well.’ At that point, the Conviction Review Unit at the Westchester DA's Office started to field information about those hundreds of cases, and right now they're going through the paper. It's been a year and a half or so since that process started, and some of the lawyers, the critics have said it's just taken too long.

Is there any indication these reviews will lead to convictions being overturned or people being let out of prison?

A couple days before we published our story, the DA's office told me just that: They said that convictions may be overturned, may be vacated. They are discussing that as an option for some of these cases that they're reviewing. So far, I think they've found about five cases. I don't know if that includes or if that's in addition to the three that I already found. And like I said, they're still pouring through hundreds more.

What are the state police saying about this? And is there any indication that this problem reaches beyond Westchester?

The state police said, ‘listen, this is not an official state police translation. This is not an official document. We don't know where it came from.’ They couldn't tell me where it came from, when it originated, when it first started being used, and they said they believed it was only in Westchester and that these mistranslated documents are no longer in circulation.

Brett Murphy is a reporter with ProPublica. Brett, thank you so much.

Thank you.