Blind Justice and a Deaf-Mute

"The facts in this case are unique in American jurisprudence," said the Illinois Supreme Court. Donald Lang, 25, was charged with the fatal stabbing and beating of a woman friend. Lang cannot hear, speak, read or write. Nor does he understand sign language. For those reasons, Lang seemed clearly incompetent to stand trial. The question: should the state nonetheless try him?

Deaf-mutes have commonly been found fit for trial, but the fact of Lang's further disabilities posed enormous problems. Not only would he be unable to understand what was happening at the trial, but he could not communicate with his attorney to help prepare a defense. The attorney, Lowell Myers, is himself deaf and specializes in representing deaf-mutes. Myers contends that Lang and the woman, who was neither deaf nor mute, were attacked while walking to her house from a nearby tavern. After the murder, the lawyer notes, Lang "went into a bar and tried to get some help. Nobody paid any attention." That does not seem to be the act of a guilty man, says Myers, but "Lang can't tell me what happened."

In 1966, Lang was found mentally and physically incompetent to stand trial, and he wound up in Illinois' Dixon State School. Dixon authorities say that Lang resists all efforts to teach him to communicate, but is in all other respects of average intelligence. The State Supreme Court had two competing interests to resolve. On the one hand, the capacity of the accused to understand and cooperate is fundamental to a fair trial; if Lang were found guilty, could it be said that he had been convicted with due process? Yet, before the killing, Lang lived with his relatives and in no way represented a threat to others or to himself. Was it legally right to confine him to a state institution indefinitely, though he had neither been convicted of a crime nor judged insane in the medical sense?

Since the state was unwilling to free him outright, his attorney preferred the risks of trial to the near certainty of confinement for life. The court agreed and ruled that Lang should be tried. Said Bernard Deeny, a perplexed assistant state's attorney: "The court has ordered us to give him a trial, but I don't see how we can." Nonetheless, the trial is scheduled to begin next week.

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