According to the Pacific Daily News, driving while intoxicated cases used to take between 2 and 2 ½ years for Guam’s courts to process. After the court hired Merly Karsom as a full time Chuukese interpreter, the average time from beginning to end of a driving while intoxicated (DWI) case fell to 90 days. A growing proportion of people living on Guam speak Chuukese, which is the official language of the islands of Chuuk in Micronesia. Court Lacks Interpreters: Out-of-Date System Causes Cases to Drag, Pacific Daily News (Nov. 26, 2012)
Access to Justice Fact of the Week (Feb. 1, 2013)