Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

James Barnett worked as a machinist at a plastics company owned by his long-time friend, Scott Speer. In August of 2002, Barnett agreed to help Speer work on his 24-foot boat that was docked up at the Ohio island of Put-in-Bay in Lake Erie. After a long, extended weekend of working on the boat (and no doubt frequenting the nightspots on the island) Speer and and Barnett embarked on a Tuesday afternoon from Put-in-Bay for destinations unknown.

At 1:57 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Speer put in a frantic call to 911, claiming that Barnett had fallen overboard and that he hadn't been able to find him. The call was placed while the boat was speeding through rough waters, with the winds howling around him at 28 miles per hour.

Barnett's death was originally ruled an accident, as Speer claimed. But the case was never closed, due to inconsistencies in Speer's story, starting with that call to 911.

At times on the call, the noise from the wind made Speer difficult to understand, but he eventually told the operator that he was near Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay. When found, however, he was near Mouse Island in Lake Erie, several miles from Sandusky Bay. Even at 2:00 in the morning, an experienced boater familiar with the area should have been able to tell the difference.

Then there was the circumstantial evidence. According Barnett's family, Speer owed Barnett money, perhaps as much as $10,000. Speer was also going through a divorce at the time, and Barnett was scheduled to testify at the proceedings. Barnett was expected to testify to the fact that Speer had been unfaithful to his wife.

Later, a witness came forward and said that Speer told him that he had pushed Barnett overboard. In fairness, he claimed that Speer coughed up this interesting nugget of information when both of them were drunk AND preparing to ingest crack cocaine, so he wouldn't exactly be the Father Flanagan of witnesses. But that was enough for the prosecutors. Speer was arrested and charged with murder, aggravated murder, aggravated vehicular manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.

Speer went to trial in October of 2007 in a case that was broadcast nationally on Court TV. He was convicted of aggravated vehicular manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter and acquitted of the murder charges. Speer was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

During the trial, Speer's lawyers filed a motion to have a juror named Linda Leow-Johannsen removed for cause. The judge refused. Based on this decision, Speer's lawyers filed an appeal of the verdict to the Court of Appeals and won -- the conviction was overturned.

Why did Speer's lawyers want Leow-Johannsen removed from the jury? Had someone in her family once been murdered? Was she friends with the victim's family?

No. They wanted her removed because she was deaf. Speer's lawyers felt that her inability to hear the actual 911 call - let alone the statements of the witnesses and the questions of the lawyers - rendered her incapable of being a juror in this case. They didn't use one of their challenges on her, a right given to both sides to remove jurors for any reason. They instead appealed to the judge and were denied. My hunch is that they had no reason to believe she would be a "bad" juror for the defense, so they kept her around, knowing the judge's ruling could be the basis for an appeal should he be convicted.

The case is now scheduled to be heard before the Ohio Supreme Court on a fundamental issue - should deaf people be allowed to serve on juries?

Normally, the automatic response would be "of course." But when you are on trial for your life, the answer is not that clear cut.

When people testify at trial, the words that you hear are the evidence. In fact, in the rape-kidnapping case where I served as the jury foreman, they wouldn't even ALLOW us to have transcripts in the jury room. How people present themselves is very important, and part of what juries deliberate on at trial's end. This construct can take on added meaning when part of the evidence is available only on audiotape.

Think about these two scenarios: (1) You purposefully kill someone - with malice aforethought - in your home; or (2) someone dies accidentally in your home, an accident in which you played no part.

These two situations are miles apart psychologically. But the words you say to the 911 operator - what the court transcript would show - could be exactly the same in each scenario. It's just that in one case you would likely be lying, or acting, to defect suspicion. People in scenario 1 would likely try to sound like people calling in scenario 2, which can be tough to do, I would imagine.

And what role does the interpreter play in a case like this? Couldn't an interpreter have an impact on how an audiotape is interpreted?

Linda Mamhood, president of the Ohio Association of the Deaf board of directors, said that this situation is handled by using competent, professional interpreters:

''In the 911 call, it was a challenge because there was the added complication of following the emotions expressed,'' she wrote in an e-mail. ''However, an oral interpreter would be an option for the juror to understand the conversation; and all qualified interpreters should be able to present the emotion objectively, as communication, not as personal judgment."

If a case before the court specifically requires the ability to hear - say, where one musician is claiming that another plagiarized his song - then you couldn't have deaf people serve in that situation.

In the end, though, you have to let deaf people serve on most juries. For one thing, they are citizens, and thereby carry the same civic responsibilities everyone else does. Secondly, deaf people are no less able to consider such things as manner, appearance, posture, and facial expressions of witnesses, and to ascribe meaning to them.

Deaf people live in a hearing world, and are therefore forced to interpret things without the benefit of hearing them all the time. I don't think that our system of justice requires that all jurors process information in the same way in order to make determinations about guilt or innocence.

I did my time on jury duty. I see no reason why deaf people shouldn't have to do it as well.