to be shocked that in 2019 it is still newsworthy to have a deaf juror

[Sadik]

Article here. Surely with all the technology available these days it should be possible to overcome any barriers to communication (eg video link signing to avoid the 13th person in the room). It just seems very wrong that a whole section of society are being excluded from something so important.

Maybe it's because most people would rather avoid jury service as you end up out of pocket, so most deaf people have argued against doing it rather than for doing it?

Great, thanks to this man deaf people now get included in something most people in their right minds don't want to do

Maybe - but on a recent thread lots of people were saying that they'd found jury service actually a rewarding thing to do - and it just seems odd in this day & age to exclude people.

The court system is very very short on funds.

Jury service is awful, why anyone would volunteer for it is beyond me. I've been stiffed with it twice and had about 5 other citations I've managed to dodge. In my opinion jury trials need to go.

I don't believe it does exclude people.

People are chosen randomly, there's no way the court knows if someone is deaf or has any other disability. The guy in this article was summoned despite being deaf and I've been summoned 3 times.

It's bollocks basically, but this guys may now have made it harder to deaf people to avoid a summons if they want to.

Jury trials do not need to go. What an utterly bizarre thing to think.

Um... I politely call bull on this story. My sister is profoundly deaf, has a cochlear implant and lip reads just like this gentleman... and she was selected for jury duty in England and was on a jury in court about 4 years ago.

Yesterday 19:46 Henhophouse

‘Jury trials do not need to go. What an utterly bizarre thing to think.’

Why is it bizarre?

There are disadvantages to trial by jury as well as advantages. Being pretty thick and also holding prejudiced views aren’t a barrier to jury service. In many ways a bench trial where the verdict is decided by a smaller group of legal people, or alternatively properly trained lay people, sounds a far better option in many respects