[gui-talk] Fwd: Article: Some may see a problem, but I do this job as well as anyone, says blind judge

[Steve Pattison]

From: "Bruce Atchison - author" <batchison at mcsnet.ca>
To: <access-l at access-l.com>

Some may see a problem, but I do this job as well as anyone, says blind
judge

Frances Gibb, Legal Editor

Justice is blind, so we’ve often been told, but the saying now has a new
meaning with the appointment of Britain’s first blind full-time judge to 
sit
on jury trials.

Judge John Lafferty, 58, has been sworn in as a circuit judge, presiding
over criminal trials at Snaresbrook Crown Court in northeast London. He
makes his notes on a Braille machine and a woman comes to read him 
papers
every morning for three hours. His law books are on CD-Rom and in 
Braille.

The judge previously sat part-time as a recorder (appointed in 1990) 
after a
career as a solicitor with a firm in East London. Managing paperwork for
trials is no different, he says, from when he was a civil litigation
partner.

“If counsel needs to introduce a new piece of evidence in the middle of 
the
trial, I get it read out to me.”

He rejects the notion that he is at any disadvantage in not being able 
to
see witnesses or read evidence.

As for not being able to assess the demeanour of witnesses, he said: “I 
don’
t use visual cues when I interact with people in my ordinary life and I’m
not conscious of being less competent in being able to deal with people 
than
a sighted person is.”

He added: “In a jury trial, the assessment of the demeanour of the 
witness
is ultimately for the jury. I am there to rule and direct on the law.

“Most good judges are not influenced by appearance but I am obviously 
even
less so: if someone turns up impeccably dressed, it’s not going to 
affect
how I assess them – or, conversely, if they dress inappropriately.”

He was encouraged to apply for the job part-time in 1999 because a blind
solicitor, John Wall, had been appointed a deputy Chancery master, 
dealing
with applications in civil disputes, and another, Amir Majid, was 
appointed
a special immigration adjudicator. “So it seemed that the possibility of 
a
judicial career was opening up.”

He added: “I didn’t have concerns that I would encounter any problems – 
only
with the perception from other people that there might be a problem. I 
had
been very successful as a lawyer.”

When it comes to exercising authority in court, his early experience as 
an
English teacher at a comprehensive school in Motherwell has served him 
well.
“I was able to control 30 pupils – I never felt insecure. I found that 
if
you were reasonable with them, they were with you.”

In court, if he has to ask counsel to read out a document, he explains 
to
the jury why, but otherwise his blindness is not announced to the court.

As a child Judge Lafferty was partially sighted but lost his sight
completely in his twenties. He left his special school at 15 with no
qualifications.

It was an experience of discrimination that turned him to the law. He 
had
failed to secure a higher teaching post at another school and put it 
down to
being blind. “I became very cross and decided to change to law, where it
seemed that ability speaks for itself.”

He went to Leeds Polytechnic and did his solicitor’s examinations, 
securing
a place with a law firm. He has also done a part-time masters degree in
Scottish literature at Glasgow university.

He has one blind precedecessor on the bench (in the magistrates’ courts
rather than the Crown court): in 1754 Sir John Fielding, known as the 
Blind
Beak of Bow Street, succeeded his brother, the novelist Henry Fielding, 
as
magistrate. He remains an encouragement to the 66 per cent of visually
impaired people aged 29 to 49 who are unemployed.

Judge Lafferty said: “I would hope that I am not seen as exceptional – 
if
you work hard you can be successful. And I hope that my appointment will
encourage actual or prospective employers of other visually impaired 
people
to look positively not at what we couldn’t do, but at what we could, 
with
support, do as well as anyone else.”

© Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
Wishing you a wonderful new year,

Bruce Atchison - author of Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a 
Blind
School) and When a Man Loves a Rabbit ((Learning and Living With 
Bunnies).

http://www.bookstream.biz/cgi-bin/bookstream/bookstore.cgi?overlord=Details&store_id=132

http://www.bookadz.com/whenaman.htm

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
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Skype:  steve1963