Providing Notice of Implied Consent Rights to Persons Who Do Not Speak English (Part I)

Several earlier posts a (here, here, and here) address the requirement that a person arrested for an implied consent offense be informed of statutory implied consent rights before being asked to submit to a chemical analysis. Posts (here and here) address the remedy for failure to adhere to these statutory requirements. None of those posts, and indeed no North Carolina appellate court decision, addresses the circumstance in which a chemical analyst advises a defendant of the implied consent rights by reading them and providing a copy in writing, but the oral advice and the writing are in English, a language the defendant does not speak or comprehend. If such a defendant submits to a chemical analysis, are the results subject to suppression at trial? What if the defendant refuses? Is the refusal admissible at trial as evidence of the defendant’s guilt? G.S. 20-16.2 does not require that notice of implied consent rights be provided in any particular language, though the practice is to read the rights in English and provide a copy of the rights written in English. Perhaps the inquiry ends there, at least for determining whether results of a chemical analysis are admissible at trial. The argument in support of this view is that notice provided in English is provided in accordance with the statute; thus, there is no basis for suppression. This view is supported by the purpose of the warnings, which is “to provide scientific evidence of intoxication not only for the purpose of convicting the guilty [...]