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On June 8, an Assistant U.S. Attorney announced the government's intent to seek a maximum penalty of life without parole for Mesa, following his indictment on 15 counts, including two of first-degree murder. His lawyer, without offering details, entered a plea of not guilty. The trial is scheduled for November.
US AGAINST US
In the end, what is striking about the Gallaudet murders is how non-deaf-specific they are. Though in his confession he allegedly claims to have killed for money, no one truly knows why Mesa may be a murderer; there is no suggestion yet that his deafness played a role. The police appear to have fumbled the case out of sheer incompetence, not because it occurred in a deaf venue. Indeed, the murders' most troubling long-term implication for the Gallaudet community is not a suggestion that deaf people are somehow different from anyone else but that, as regards the cardinal stain of murder, they are the same.
A persistent American myth regarding the deaf is that they are children of nature, well meaning and helpless. Mercy Coogan, Gallaudet's public relations director, has heard countless variations on the theme since Mesa's arrest. "People want to know how a deaf person could do this," she says. "The tendency is to say, 'Ah, God love 'em.'" This kind of condescension infuriates the deaf. And yet they too--for their own reasons--are stymied by Mesa's alleged confession.
The great genius of deaf activism over the past half-century has been to develop the idea that rather than a disability, deafness--especially among ASL speakers--can constitute a separate culture as rich as any based on a spoken language. Nobody who spends more than a day or two at Gallaudet would debate that assertion. Nor would anybody doubt that the community enjoys a rare, fond solidarity, which may be traceable to the fact that many deaf people spend their first decade or two in an ocean of hearing people, isolated from others like themselves. Says freshman Stephen Farias: "When I meet hearing kids, it's like, 'How you doin'?'" It's boring. When I meet deaf kids, it's like, 'This kid is cool.' If I see a kid signing at the mall, I'll go up and introduce myself."
"Even if you really hate this person, if they're deaf, they're still a part of us," says Tawny Holmes . "It's almost like the bald eagle; we're an endangered species or something. We won't kill each other." Affirms biology professor Michael Moore: "Murder is not within our...it's not us."
What, then, is Joe Mesa's alleged deed? An aberration? Or something new in the community? In the past few decades, just as the deaf have established a national profile, some of their cultural distinctives have been eroding. Deaf children, once segregated in residential schools, are often mainstreamed today. Cochlear-implant operations, once opposed by some deaf people as insulting and possibly harmful, have gained in acceptance. Pagers and e-mail are supplanting bulkier TTY, the small teletype that enables deaf people to use phone lines. Because most televisions now come equipped for closed-captioning, deaf Americans, historically less well informed--even less fashionable--than their peers, are catching up.