[blindlaw] FW: An Article about a judge who is blind

[Nightingale, Noel]

-----Original Message-----
From: CMPDL's mentor program - participant discussion
[mailto:CMPDL-MENTORPROGRAM at MAIL.ABANET.ORG] On Behalf Of Stephanie
Enyart
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 3:06 PM
To: CMPDL-MENTORPROGRAM at MAIL.ABANET.ORG
Subject: An Article about a judge who is blind

    First blind judge in Kentucky to take bench
kcengel at courier-journal.comThe Courier-Journal
    img
    When David Holton II is sworn in this afternoon as district court
    judge for the 30th Judicial District, Division 16, he will become
the
    state's first blind judge "as far as we know," said Kentucky Chief
    Justice Joseph Lambert.
    "Those kind of records are not kept," said Lambert, but people who
    have been around the court system for a long time said they know of
no
    other blind judges ever having served in Kentucky.
    Holton, 46, has worked as a prosecutor with the Jefferson County
    attorney's office for 19 years, but as a judge, his workload will
    probably be even heavier, said Karen Wolfe, who directs professional
    development for the American Foundation for the Blind. The amount of
    reading and writing alone can be challenging even for a sighted
    person, she said. Holton will have to depend on an assistant to be
    "his eyes" in court, reading him information on the computer and in
    case jackets. At first, secretaries in the building will help, but
    district court Judge Deborah Deweese said the Administrative Office
of
    the Courts likely would provide funds for a helper.
    Nationally, there is no way to track the number of blind judges,
Wolfe
    said. But of the 1,000 or so successfully employed blind and
visually
    impaired mentors in the national nonprofit's database, only five are
    judges.
    While the legal profession has been open to the blind, she said, a
    visually impaired judge is still rare and a "huge deal." Rehearsing
    this role with Deweese recently, district court secretary Judy Smith
    said she was surprised by all the other matters with which she will
    need to help Holton.
    "There's just so much that I see that he won't be able to, that I'll
    have to point out to him," said Smith. "Such as, 'The defendant is
at
    the podium; the police officer is in the witness box now.' "

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