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Where am I now? Lawlink > Homepage > Research Report 14 - Deaf jurors' access to court proceedings via sign language interpreting: an investigation (by Jemina Napier, David Spencer and Joseph Sabolcec) > Research Report 14 - Deaf jurors' access to court proceedings via sign language interpreting: an investigation (by Jemina Napier, David Spencer and Joseph Sabolcec)
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Research Report 14 - Deaf jurors' access to court proceedings via sign language interpreting: an investigation (by Jemina Napier, David Spencer and Joseph Sabolcec)
Updates and background for this project (Digest) A project funded by the NSW Law Reform Commission and
the Macquarie University External Collaborative Grant Scheme.
8. Recommendations and suggestions for further research
RECOMMENDATIONS
8.1 As a consequence of the findings of the study and our conclusions, we make the following recommendations.
- That deaf people be permitted to serve as jurors in criminal cases in NSW, with access provided through a team of interpreters, and additional support through the provision of written documents (in advance) and access to a transcript at the end of each trial day.
- That deaf people serving as jurors must have reasonable competence in English (as does any juror), in order to understand English legal terms when they are borrowed into Auslan by interpreters, and to understand any written materials.
- Interpreters should receive specific legal training on how to interpret for deaf people in different roles in court.
- Only experienced legal interpreters should work with deaf jurors and they should be qualified at NAATI Interpreter level, as is current practice.
- That deaf jurors and interpreters be allowed time to brief and debrief at the beginning and end of each day during trial, in order to check for such matters as understanding and agreement of signs.
- A predictive screening test for court interpreters of all languages be developed as per the United States Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination (FCICE),109 which requires that interpreters in US Federal Courts be certified through a criterion-referenced performance test. The FCICE is a two-phase certification battery for Federal Court interpreters. Phase I is a multiple-choice Written Examination (WE) used to screen candidates for eligibility to take the Phase II criterion-referenced Oral Examination (OE), and thus filter out interpreters who do not have adequate skills to interpret in court.110 This would be particularly important for Auslan/English interpreters working with deaf jurors.
8.2 This research can only be considered as a pilot due to the small number of participants. Furthermore, this study has demonstrated that a small number of deaf people can understand excerpts from a judge’s summation through English to Auslan interpretation, and that they are willing to participate in the judicial system as jurors. It does not, however, provide evidence for how deaf people can participate in, and make a significant contribution to, jury deliberations. Neither does it explore the potential impact of deaf jurors on the administration of justice from the perspective of the advocates, the bench, the accused and witnesses. Further research is needed to investigate deaf juror participation in court proceedings.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
8.3 We make the following suggestions for further research:
- Administration of the comprehension test on a larger scale to deaf and hearing people throughout Australia, in order to collect data with statistical significance. This will feed into further law reform developments and the issue of comprehension of judges’ directions, as discussed in Dick.111
- Following on from Berk-Seligson’s112 and Russell’s113 research in the US and Canada respectively, conduct a mock trial over several days, filming the proceedings and jury deliberations and sentencing; and conduct interviews, comprehension tests and discourse analyses of all participant utterances.
- Following on from Brennan and Brown’s114 (1997) research in the UK, when deaf people are permitted to serve as jurors, carry out courtroom observations of real deaf juror experiences wherever possible (and if allowed).
- A collaborative study between the USA and Australia to compare comprehension and participation of jurors relying on signed and spoken language interpreters (ie, Spanish, ASL and Auslan).
Footnotes
109. Enacted by the Court Interpreters Act (28 U.S.C. §1827), US Congress, 1978.
110. Stansfield and Hewitt, 2005.
111. Dick, 2007.
112. Berk-Seligson, 1990.
113. Russell, 2002.
114. Brennan and Brown, 1997.
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