State v. Nguyen

Defendant Minh Nguyen was convicted in the Chittenden District Court of two counts of attempted second degree murder. During the trial, he communicated with his attorney and the court almost exclusively through a Vietnamese interpreter. Defendant raises four arguments on appeal: (1) he was denied his constitutional right to be present at every stage of his trial because he was denied an interpreter at his arraignment; (2) he was denied due process at trial because the interpreter assigned to him did not accurately translate the testimony, and the court committed plain error when it did not…