[blindlaw] Accessibility issues in criminal public defense

[Daniel McBride]

Elizabeth:

You are welcome to call me anytime, seven days a week, between 8am to 8pm central time. Without requesting it, anyone on this listserve is free to call me as stated above.

I doubt that I have anything of real value to offer anyone, but I am always open to all on this list for what I might have to offer.

Daniel McBride
Fort Worth, Texas

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindLaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Elizabeth Rene via BlindLaw
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 1:16 PM
To: blindlaw at nfbnet.org
Cc: Elizabeth Rene
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Accessibility issues in criminal public defense

Hi Derek, Daniel and Shannon,
Daniel and Shannon, may I call you too?
I’ve been admitted to practice in Washington since 1980 and am going back into court after a long time in office practice. I’ll be taking private clients for the first time, and would especially be interested to know how gender matters might be safely handled in  criminal defense  as a blind lawyer. Thanks. 
Derek, I was an assistant prosecuting attorney in Seattle for nine years when I started out, and was in court with my guide dog all the time in municipal, superior, and appellate courts. My dogs became a local institution. The judges said they had more sense about how to behave in court and how to judge character than most of the lawyers there. When or two lawyers tried to get my dogs excluded from the courtroom because juries might like the dogs better than themselves, but just ended up looking bad. They lost their motions. All in all, when I started out, I had more to worry about from misogyny than from discrimination against my dogs or against me because of blindness (although I can’t say that never happened). Washington Supreme Court justices who practiced with me back in the 80s still tell stories about being called Honey all the time. I had to be quite direct with police detectives, older judges would sometimes bully me, and men would plunk down beside me in restaurants and ask if I did rape trials.  Where I went to law school, pregnant women weren’t allowed to appear in court at all. But I digress.…
I do almost all of my work now on an iPad. I’ve just installed the KNFB reader, and expect that to be a great help. I keep confidential files in PDF Expert, which has its own build-in speech utility, and in BOX, which works pretty well with VoiceOver. I use Dropbox all the time to send attachments.
In court, if I needed something described, such as a photo, an accident scene diagram, etc., I would insist that the witness verbalize everything for the record, pointing out to the court that there needed to be a verbal memorial of what was in evidence for purposes of the transcript in case of appeal.
I knew my criminal codes, rules of court, and evidence rules cold, and kept up with the advance sheets weekly, having a ready memory of the most important cases to cite in court. I wrote and argued appeals all the time too, which made that memory task a lot easier than it might have been otherwise.
I think the best advice that I could give to a new lawyer, blind or sighted, would be to urge that he or she be as courteous to judges and to court staff as possible, and to opposing counsel, without being a pushover. Incivility is the best way to get people to let you sink.
Good luck with your internship and with getting hired as a public defender.


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