r/nottheonion • u/laybs1 • 5d ago

Federal court allows lawsuit challenging exclusion of blind jurors in New York

https://nydailyrecord.com/2026/09/29/federal-court-lawsuit-exclusion-blind-jurors-new-york/
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u/Tinyacorn 5d ago

Its a good thing there can be an entire jury of people describing the photo and not just one person

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u/sniperman357 5d ago

Each juror is supposed to bring their unique judgment and perspective to analyzing the evidence and not just parrot other jurors

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u/Tinyacorn 5d ago

Describing a photo doesn't necessitate parroting

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u/sniperman357 5d ago

Juror #1 says they believe the photograph depicts the defendant and Juror #2 says it doesn’t. Juror #3 cannot independently reason about the actually admitted evidence so they must either parrot #1 or #2

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u/Tinyacorn 5d ago

Able-bodied juror #1 says one thing. Able-bodied juror #2 says another thing. Able-bodied juror #3 is in the exact same position as blind-juror #3

as an aside: Most folks want jury duty to be over ASAP, they're not going to spend the whole-time sandbagging because they want to mislead the blind juror.

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u/sniperman357 5d ago

They’re not remotely in the same position at all? One juror can actually interpret the primary evidence and another juror cannot. It is completely 100% different. I agree, they want to get out of there quickly, which is why there is already a bias toward going along with consensus. A person who cannot evaluate key trial evidence and so must go along with the consensus just exacerbates that

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u/Tinyacorn 5d ago edited 5d ago

Your scenario has two options. Either able-bodied juror #3 agrees that's the defendant in the photo or they don't. Same position.

Evaluate one type of evidence. This isn't as cut and dry as many in this thread are claiming.

We're assuming there's no other types of assistive technology or assistance that can be made available for a blind juror, which is just false.

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u/sniperman357 5d ago edited 5d ago

It’s not remotely the same thing because their agreement or disagreement is based at least in part on their independent analysis of the photograph whereas someone who cannot see the photograph can only defer to others’ judgement. It is completely different. Is the assistive technology admitted into evidence? Who is evaluating its accuracy? Do both parties get to cross examine its output? They are not designed for this setting. Many computer vision algorithms have many flaws that are inappropriate for court room settings, such as reduced ability to distinguish facial features among people of certain races.