[blindlaw] Criminal prosecution/defense in court

[Elizabeth Rene]

Hi Kelby,
I think all of the suggestions offered so far are very good, especially Mr. Hardy’s advise to break the question down into its smaller parts to address different situations.
It’s interesting to me that employers (or maybe only one employer?) Challenged your ability to handle evidence in the courtroom on visual terms in your interview at this late date in our history. I was born blind and took my first job as an assistant prosecuting attorney in 1980. I represented the city of Seattle in criminal cases for nine years and then went to the civil side for another three before moving on to practice administrative law with the state of Washington for another four years before doing something else. I had two or three little jobs in law-clerk settings before hiring on at the City, and of course did a bit of job interviewing during that time.
I wanted to be a criminal trial lawyer from the very start. I had had three years of intensive work in criminal justice reform between college and law school, launched by the publication of an expose of conditions in the county jail and city work house that I ended up co-leading on behalf of the Minneapolis Urban Coalition and the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, followed by a year-long law school internship in public defense. I didn’t know any blind people then, so I just had to wing it when it came to encountering new situations in the state’s fastest-paced courtrooms. But I weighed 95 pounds and showed up with my guide dog every day, so the resistance I faced in job interviews had as much to do with my being a woman as with being blind. I didn’t get called “honey” Buy potential employers, but it sure happened in relation to police officers, judges, and churlish defense lawyers. All this might be to say that sighted people see “evidence“ every day and still miss its significance.
My suggestions to you might be to know your evidence rules cold, to use pre-trial discovery to its fullest advantage, to voir dire opposing witnesses closely as they authenticate evidence, and to elicit detailed verbal testimony describing accident reconstruction diagrams, maps, photographs, crime scene evidence, etc. This will all help you paint pictures in the imaginations of the jury and help the exhibits make sense (or nonsense as you wish) to them as you gain a firm grasp of the evidence yourself. If a judge challenges you about this in bench trials, you can point out that you are strengthening the record for purposes of appeal. The appellate court doesn’t reevaluate pieces of physical evidence, it reviews the transcript.
Lastly, if a potential employer asks “how would you do that?“ remember that you are not the only brand new lawyer they might be talking to. Maybe just the only blind one. Your competition won’t know the answers to those questions either because they don’t have the experience. Every new trial lawyer flubs up here and there before learning how to do it. That’s why they call it practice. The difference between you and your competition is that you are thinking these questions out in advance and seeking the advice of experienced trial lawyers. You can tell your interviewers that you are developing a circle of mentors among the best trial lawyers you know and that you will learn as much as you can from them as you master the courtroom.
Good luck!
Elizabeth


Elizabeth M René 
Attorney at Law 
WSBA #10710 
KCBA #21824
rene0373 at gmail.com