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Disability Law

Deaf man took plea in theft case over iPad that wasn't stolen, due to lack of communication

A homeless deaf man, who was arrested last year at a Washington, D.C., area airport where he was trying to sleep, spent six weeks in jail in Virginia and eventually took a plea in a case over a stolen iPad, due to a lack of communication.

The iPad at issue, in fact, had not been stolen, reports the Associated Press. In order to get out of jail, Abreham Zemedagegehu took a misdemeanor plea that sentenced him to time served. By the time an appeal was filed, it was too late.

Last month, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Arlington County sheriff’s department. In it, Zemedagegehu says the lack of a sign language interpreter at the jail made the experience of being arrested especially confusing and frightening because he didn’t understand why he had been arrested or the purpose of medical procedures that were allegedly performed without his consent. He says he requested an interpreter at the time of his arrest, but instead was simply taken to jail and booked.

Although the sheriff’s department said in a responsive filing that personnel tried to communicate with Zemedagegehu using written notes, that wasn’t sufficient because he grew up in Ethiopia and learned sign language there, his suit says. He subsequently learned American Sign Language after coming to this country and is now a U.S. citizen; however, he is not fluent in English.

Central to the case is whether the efforts by the sheriff’s department satisfied the Americans with Disabilities Act, the AP article explains. The sheriff’s department argues in a motion to dismiss filed Monday that there was no intentional discrimination by jail personnel, who tried to communicate with Zemedagegehu. As the filing points out, “it takes extra resources and creates additional security considerations to bring in an ASL interpreter.”

It isn’t clear from the AP article whether any appellate effort is currently ongoing to reverse Zemedagegehu’s misdemeanor conviction. The individual who complained to airport authorities that his iPad had been stolen, resulting in Zemedagegehu’s arrest, later contacted authorities and said he had found it. The prosecution in Zemedagegehu’s case said it relayed this information to his public defender, but the public defender denied receiving it prior to the plea.