The Oregon Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of a Beaverton man sentenced to 25 years in prison for rape after determining the trial judge incorrectly allowed the man's translated police statements into evidence.

Two of three Appeals Court judges agreed with the defense's argument that a police interpreter's English translation of the man's statements in Spanish to investigators amounted to hearsay.

A dissenting judge agreed that the out-of-court translation was hearsay, but he found that video recordings of the police interview and transcripts that included English translations became admissible once the interpreter testified during trial that they were accurate representations of the police interview.

The Appeals Court has referred the case back to Washington County Circuit Court for a new trial.

Mauricio Ambriz-Arguello, now 35, was arrested in December 2012 and accused of sexually abusing a young female relative for years. In Spanish, Ambriz-Arguello claimed to police that the relative had taken his hand and placed it on her genitals several times between the ages of 9 and 12, the Appeals Court ruling said in a summary of the case. He said he previously confessed to his church pastor.

He agreed to have a Beaverton police interpreter verbally translate his statements into English for detectives throughout their interview with him. Police recorded video of the interview and made a transcript of Ambriz-Arguello's statements translated to English.

The girl recanted her accusations during the trial, according to the summary. A police detective who interviewed the girl testified that she told him that her mother and godparents convinced her that she had dreamt up the abuse.

A jury found Ambriz-Arguello guilty of first-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse and first- and second-degree sodomy in January 2014 and he was sentenced to prison.

Kevin Barton, a Washington County senior deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, said the district attorney's office plans to ask the state Attorney General's Office to challenge the ruling in the Oregon Supreme Court.

The police interpreter in the Ambriz-Arguello case was fluent in Spanish and English, Barton said. He felt there was "literally nothing different that could have been done" to more accurately capture Ambriz-Arguello's statements to police.

"It's unclear what this ruling means for cases that involve interpreters," Barton said. "If this ruling holds true, that someone who is fluent in another language can't translate a defendant's statements, then it makes crimes committed by people who don't speak English very difficult to prosecute."

Judge Suzanne Upton allowed the video and transcripts of the police interview, including the interpreter's translation, into evidence because Ambriz-Arguello was ultimately the person who provided the information, the summary said.

On appeal, Ambriz-Arguello argues that his statements in Spanish were admissible, but the English translations "added an additional layer of hearsay" not allowable under Oregon law.

In their decision, Appeals Court Judges Douglas Tookey and Roger DeHoog cited a past ruling that found an out-of-court translation of a non-English speaker's statements to a third party was hearsay because the translation consisted of "an assertion of the English meaning" of the original statements.

Allowing the translation to be used as evidence in Ambriz-Arguello's case unjustly harmed him, the ruling said, because it was the only evidence that had him admitting to the abuse. The translated statements also were a prominent part of the prosecutor's closing arguments, the court noted.

Appeals Court Judge Timothy Sercombe disagreed. The interpreter's testimony -- not the translation - during the trial established the substance of Ambriz-Arguello's statements to police and validated the video and transcript, he said.

Sercombe also disagreed that the translation was the only evidence of Ambriz-Arguello admitting abuse, noting that the jury also heard about the statements during the interpreter's testimony about the translation's accuracy.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey