An appeals court acknowledged that his English was bad – and that the cops’ Spanish wasn’t that great, either – but the language barrier wasn’t enough for Roberto Carias-Moran to reverse his drug conviction and 30-year sentence.

Carias-Moran, 57, of Banning, California, was sentenced in La Salle County Circuit Court for hauling about 27 pounds of heroin, seized in autumn 2020.

Though he entered a blind plea, Carias-Moran appealed his conviction to the Third District Appellate Court and argued he was the victim of a language barrier. He argued in part that he has limited English and that the officer failed to use the correct Spanish word for “search,” which could have voided the consensual search.

The appeals court didn’t parse the Spanish-English flap, but the justices did rule that the defense lawyer wasn’t incompetent in failing to raise the language barrier at trial.

“We cannot say that plea counsel’s failure to further investigate the meaning of the term (in Spanish) constituted deficient performance,” Justice Lance Peterson wrote in the unanimous ruling. “In hindsight, it may have been more thorough to do so, but defendants are not entitled to perfect representation, only competent representation.”

The justices also spotlighted a finding by a La Salle County judge that Carias-Moran only understood English “when it was convenient.”

Carias-Moran was charged following a Nov. 12, 2020, traffic stop in which investigators first seized 18 pounds of heroin concealed in fire extinguishers and, later, another 9 pounds found in a concealed compartment. (The 9-pound seizure was suppressed, however.) In all, the seizure was valued at $360,000.

Carias-Moran is scheduled for parole in 2043, when he will be 74 years old. He then would be deported. At the time of his arrest, the native of El Salvador was in the U.S. on an expiring visa.