Abreham Zemedagegehu, a 42-year-old deaf man originally from Ethiopia, spent six weeks in jail after being falsely accused of stealing an iPad. He had no way to defend himself, unable to communicate with his jailers—he can’t read, and they provided no American Sign Language interpreter or videophone for him to contact friends or a lawyer.
The iPad in question was later found, still in the possession of its owners.
Zemedagegehu, who is homeless, has since sued the Arlington County, Virginia sheriff over his treatment. According to the lawsuit, he was subjected to involuntary medical treatment and frequently left hungry since he could not hear the calls to meals. He was detained for 24 hours before he even found out why they had arrested him.
“I felt like I was losing my mind,” he told the Associated Press. “I thought Virginia would give me an interpreter and they said no. That’s why I felt lost.”
He was arrested in February at Reagan National Airport, where he was looking for a place to sleep. The officers denied his request for an interpreter, and took him in for medical screening. He declined to sign their medical forms—which he couldn’t read–but they proceeded with the tests anyway, one of which made him ill. In the suit, he describes how they “forced a needle into his arm.”
“It had to be obvious to people at the jail that my client was hurting,” Larry Tanenbaum, one of his’s attorneys, told the Washington Post. “The fact that nobody did anything, that this was tolerated, is just appalling.”
The sheriff’s office wants the case thrown out, saying that they tried their best to communicate with him. “It takes extra resources and creates additional security considerations to bring in an ASL interpreter,” they argue.
Zemedagegehu claims that the one device they used to attempt to communicate with him –a TTY machine, which produces written text—is not commonly used among the deaf community, while the sheriff’s office insists they are “accepted practice.”
“They’re doing this 25 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. They know better,” said Zemedagegehu .
Eventually, fearing jail time, Zemedagegehu took a plea deal. His lawyer then tried to have that overturned, claiming that prosecutors did not reveal evidence that the iPad had been discovered.
The judge ruled that the appeal was too late.
“This comes down to recognizing basic human decency,” Caroline E. Jackson, an attorney at the National Association of the Deaf Law and Advocacy Center, told the Washington Post. “Our client was jailed for six weeks with basically nobody to communicate with. It was hell for him.”
