[blindlaw] Grand jury service

[Elizabeth Rene]

Joe, I served as an assistant prosecuting attorney, at trial and on appeal, 
for nine years.  Here is my perspective.

 if you are summoned to serve on a grand jury, you will be asked to 
determine whether someone should be indicted for a felony offense.  The 
question will be whether there exists enough evidence to bring that person 
to trial on the charges proposed by the prosecution.

Like Mike, I'm from Washington, and we don't use grand juries here.  So I 
don't know, or remember, whether there will be a voire dire examination to 
seat you on the grand jury panel.

I doubt, though, that your blindness will be a factor, since your job would 
be to assess the sufficiency of the evidence needed to support a charge, 
rather than to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.  The 
evidence would probably be presented in a different way than at trial, and 
different standards of proof would apply.

If the grand jury voted to indict, the evidence could be further developed 
for presentation at trial.

So even the kinds of evidence that might make some less informed lawyers 
nervous about having a blind juror seated for trial--traffic accident 
reconstruction evidence, say,
or the nonverbal cues as to a witness's credibility that never make it into 
the record, might not even be put before  a grand jury.

Either way, the Constitutional right of the accused person to be  tried by a 
jury of his or her peers, and the duty of the prosecution to bear its burden 
of proof, would be paramount to the court.  Lawyers have a duty to present 
their evidence in ways that allow each juror to understand it and to weigh 
its significance.  But, in selecting a jury panel, they also get to assure 
themselves that each juror will have the capacity to receive the evidence, 
to remember it, and to evaluate it in deciding the issues in question.

We blind citizens have a duty to serve on a jury if called to do so, but we 
don't have an enforceable right to be there.  Nobody does.

So, as obnoxious and demeaning as it is to be the subject of questions about 
our abilities to serve as jurors, I think it's in our best interest as blind 
citizens to present ourselves in court in ways that effectively communicate 
our competence, and to not allow under our skin questions and conduct from 
lawyers whose jobs require them to defend interests conflicting with our 
own.

On the other hand, though, if I am ever accused of a crime, and go to trial, 
I hope that my lawyer will demand, as a matter of my Constitutional right to 
a jury of my peers, that the panel seated to decide my guilt or innocence 
include some blind people.

Elizabeth