People of Illinois v. Lang

The singular circumstances surrounding the murder trials of the deaf individual Donald Lang, the first in 1965 and the second 7 years later, underscore the dilemma of deaf defendants who cannot follow court proceedings (Lang was illiterate, had never been taught sign language, and could not lip-read) and, more broadly, considerations for how best to both protect the public interest and preserve the defendant’s constitutional rights to a fair and speedy trial. Can the courts convict a language-less deaf defendant with no concept of the trial process or even the concept of his own right to a zealous defense?

Although Lang shared little of his life story even with his own lawyers, hospital records indicate Lang had lost his hearing when he was 6 months old as a result of an untreated high fever and a subsequent fall from his crib. His family was too poor to afford special education. Lang communicated only through gestures and drawings, mostly with his mother (his father left when he was 6 years old). Still unable to read or write, he left school altogether at 16 to work on the city’s docks unloading cargo, a job that required no language skills or hearing ability. Character witnesses later interviewed by Lang’s attorney recalled that the teen was bright, friendly, honest, gentle, and diligent. But Lang spiraled into depression following his mother’s death in 1965. Over Thanksgiving weekend that year, Lang solicited a prostitute, a friend of his, in a South Side bar using crude gestures (he pulled his crotch and signaled with 10 fingers, to indicate what he was willing to pay). When she was found stabbed to death the following morning, bar regulars identified Lang. When interrogated by the police, Lang, using gestures, apparently admitted his crime, showing dramatically how he had killed the woman using a broad stabbing motion. The detectives charged Lang with murder.

The court recognized the potential problem of assuring a fair trial for the deaf defendant and assigned for Lang’s defense Lowell Myers. Myers, himself deaf since childhood, had extensive experience in handling communication issues with deaf defendants and protecting deaf people’s civil rights. However, because Lang was illiterate (although state-appointed psychologists estimated his IQ in the upper 120s), there was virtually no way to communicate to him the trial proceedings short of educating him in basic language skills, a process that might have taken years as he had no concept of words, what they signified, or even the alphabet. Myers pointed out to the court that Lang’s “confession” might, in fact, have been an anxious eyewitness account of a murder he had seen. Realizing the problem, the court reduced the charge, ruled Lang incompetent to stand trial, and remanded him to a state mental hospital. Repeated attempts by resident nurses to teach him sign language failed; the hospital refused to assign Lang a licensed sign language instructor as he did not technically have any mental problems. Cynics pointed out that Lang had no reason to learn language—as soon as he was proficient, he would be tried and most likely face execution. So there he stayed, periodically tested for language skills, until the state supreme court in 1971, on a writ of habeas corpus filed by Lang’s lawyer, asking whether the state can in [Page 733]perpetuity confine a man who is not insane to a mental hospital, ruled that Lang had to be charged, committed, or released. Because most of the evidence had been lost and many of the witnesses were dead or gone, the state, facing an irresolvable dilemma (even a long-shot guilty verdict would be immediately appealed and overturned), reluctantly released Lang.

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