A North African man accused of beating his girlfriend to death with a PVC pipe did not waive his Miranda rights, Judge Larry Long was told during a suppression hearing Tuesday.

Michaele Ashko Shimayil is originally from Eritrea, a small country between Ethiopia and Sudan that borders the Red Sea, and speaks an obscure dialect called Kunama.

Officers say he confessed to beating 24-year-old Bakita Mohammed through his interpreter the night of the incident, but that interpreter testified Tuesday that he speaks Tigrinya, the country’s most widely-spoken language, and only a little Kunama.

Both prosecution and defense lawyers acknowledge that Shimayil did not understand the rights as interpreted after his arrest for the April 20 incident.

Shimayil’s confession ought to be admissible on “good faith,” Deputy State’s Attorney Randy Sample said, because the interrogating officers thought at the time that the defendant had voluntarily waived his right to self-incrimination.

“This is a situation where police believed the defendant was read his Miranda and understood it,” Sample said. “It’s our position that law enforcement did everything it could to apply Miranda.”

Ghevere Tsegoy, who was the interpreter for Shimayil the night of the incident, told Long that he got a call asking him to translate for an interrogation but was not aware of the severity of the crime.

“I expected a car accident, drunk driver,” Tsegoy said.

Despite never having taken part in such an intense interrogation, Tsegoy said Shimayil appeared to understand as he translated the six Miranda warnings and asked if Shimayil would like to waive his rights and speak to detectives.

“I asked if he understood, and he said ‘yes,’ ” he said.

Public Defender Jeff Larson asked Tsegoy if he’d been required to take an English proficiency test to get his job at A To Z Language Interpreters or if he’d had any training for law enforcement interpretation.

He had not.

Officer Patrick Marino arrested Shimayil for driving under the influence on the night of the attack. During his testimony Tuesday, Larson played back audio of that interaction, during which Shimayil said “no English - Kunama” on four occasions.

Once the suspect made it to the Law Enforcement Center, Marino learned more about the suspect’s ethnic origin and called for an interpreter who could speak either Tigrinya or Kunama. “With my limited knowledge on where he was from, I thought they were related languages,” he said.

The police report said the interview was conducted in “Tigrinya, the language of Kenya.” Detective Keith Gries interrogated Shimayil with Tsegoy’s help and said he thought the suspect understood the nature of the conversation and the severity of the crime.

“It was apparent to me that he knew why he was there,” he said.

Shimayil, testifying through a Kunama interpreter, said he can only communicate with basic words and phrases in Tigrinya. Long will need to rule on the defense’s motion to suppress evidence from the interrogation.

Shimayil’s jury trial is tentatively scheduled to begin Dec. 7. Source; (Argusleader)