Seating the Blind Juror

• NCJ Number: 169941
• Journal: Judicature Volume: 81 Issue: 3 Dated: (November-December 1997) Pages: 104-110
• Author(s): M J Crehan
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 7 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Adapted from "Seating the Blind Juror: Is It a Judicial Dilemma?", a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, December 1996.

Annotation

In a telephone survey, 11 blind jurors expressed confidence that they could weigh and consider evidence, participate in discussions with fellow jurors, apply the law to the facts of the case, and reach their own decision.

Abstract

The 11 respondents were from eight States in various regions of the country; they had served in 16 trials (11 criminal and 5 civil). Three had served on more than one jury. None of the trials was factually complex; and none dealt with large amounts of documentary, demonstrative, or photographic evidence. In some interviews, it was necessary to hypothesize to assess the juror's ability to handle such a case. The interviews focused on the blind jurors' ability to assess the credibility of witnesses, evidence that involves visualization, documentary evidence, and identification issues. The jurors were confident in their ability to judge witness credibility through such witness features as tone of voice, pauses, and vocabulary. When a person who is blind hears a description of a scene, the speaker will in many cases refer to distances and spatial relationships between objects. Notions of time and distance are intimately related in the experience of people who are blind. In their determinations of relative distances, they rely upon internalized standards based on units of body functioning, such as the number of steps and rate of breathing. According to the blind jurors interviewed, the key to their understanding visual evidence of visual aids is the amount of verbal information furnished. Controlled experiments have confirmed these jurors' experience. The more detailed and descriptive the explanation of the visual material, the better the understanding. If blind jurors are competent to serve in a case with visual evidence, then they should be similarly competent to serve in a case where identification is an issue. If the blind juror needs additional clarification of visual evidence in deliberations, he/she must rely on sighted jurors' descriptions of the appearance of visual evidence.