A 7-year-old girl said she had been raped and repeatedly molested over the course of a year. Police in Montgomery County, Md., acting on information from a relative, soon arrested a Liberian immigrant. They marshaled witnesses and DNA evidence to prepare for trial.

What was missing — for much of the nearly three years that followed — was an interpreter fluent in the suspect's native language. A judge recently dropped the charges, not because she found that Mahamu Kanneh had been wrongly accused, but because repeated delays in the case had, in her view, violated his right to a speedy trial.

"This is one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make in a long time," Katherine Savage said from the bench Tuesday, noting that she was mindful of "the gravity of this case and the community's concern about offenses of this type."

Loretta E. Knight, the Circuit Court clerk responsible for finding interpreters, said her office searched exhaustively for a speaker of Vai, a tribal language spoken in West Africa. They contacted the Liberian Embassy, she said, and courts in all but three states. Linguists estimate that 100,000 people speak Vai, mostly in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In arguing to save the case, Assistant State's Attorney Maura Lynch said that dismissing the indictment "after all the efforts the state has made to accommodate the defendant would be fundamentally unfair."

Prosecutors, who cannot refile the charges against Kanneh, are considering whether to appeal Savage's ruling. Kanneh was granted asylum in the United States, according to State's Attorney John McCarthy. A conviction could have led to deportation proceedings.

Kanneh's attorney, Theresa Chernosky, declined to comment.

The proliferation of languages resulting from immigration trends is presenting courts with a novel challenge, legal and linguistics experts say. Rarely, however, does a court have such difficulty finding an interpreter that a criminal case must be dropped.

My senior year of high school, a member of my class died in a car accident when he was cut off by a bunch of guys drag racing on a state highway. More or less, the same thing happened: after a number of delays, those guys who were racing were let off because the trial wasn't started quickly enough. My ire in this case wasn't leveled at the judge who made the ruling, but rather the prosecutors who didn't get their shit together fast enough. Yes, they probably had a lot on their plate and all, but anyone who has gone through law school obviously knows that these things happen, so they should have made it their beeswax to get it done in time.

I understand the circumstances in this case are quite different, but I'd like to know where people's anger is actually aimed. Is it at the judge, or at the prosecutors who couldn't get a translator in time? I'm torn on where outrage should go. Yes, the prosecutors know the rules, but it seems like special circumstances when you're looking for 1 of 100,000 people who speak a language out of the 6 billion people on earth. It's not like the guy only speaks Spanish and they didn't get someone in time.

Before we stopped shooting and blowing each other up , that guy who was let out after raping that wee girl would have been "got". By that I mean one or all of the republican or loyalist paramilitary organizations would've kidnapped him, beat the fuck out of him and then knee-capped him. You know, shoot his knees off. That's if he was lucky. Now, I don't want to go back to the killing but sometimes I just wish some of these scumbags got "gotted".

Well i wouldn't recommend that or want it to become a trend, but sure enough every once in a while i could deal with it.

Can't make people speak English. It might hurt their feelings...

Can't make people speak English. It might hurt their feelings...

There's nothing preventing civil charges against this guy, right? Additionally, your "right to a speedy trial" and other restrictions are more flexible when it comes to civil disputes, correct?

Why is it idiocy? I think it's a pretty simple concept. If people SPOKE ENGLISH here, there wouldn't be these sorts of problems.

Think about this. Your political correctness is being put before the justice of a seven year old girl molestation victim. THAT is idiocy.

Everyone allowed in this country should have to speak English before they come here. And if this isn't a bright beacon of why, then I don't know what is.

Everyone allowed in this country should have to speak English before they come here. And if this isn't a bright beacon of why, then I don't know what is.