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COURTS ARE BLIND TO DUKE'S
CASE
By Susan Snyder, Valley Views,
Las Vegas Sun, 10-01-00
All Anya Duke really wanted was her day in
court.
She already has maneuvered through nine years of motions,
stipulations and postponements in a legal system that seems focused on
figuring out who can last the longest, rather than who is
right.
She has drained her finances, expended the services of five lawyers
and has been to the end of her emotional rope and
back.
But all the lawyers, money, paperwork and years haven't been able
to give the 62-year-old woman either of the things she wants most - her
eyesight or the change to explain to a jury how she lost
it.
On Aug. 9, the day finally set for Duke's trial, District Court
Judge Nancy Saitta dismissed Duke's complaint against a doctor Duke claims
misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated an injury to her right eye in
1991.
Because of motions to dismiss certain facts that were successfully
presented by the physician's attorney during previous hearings, most of
what Duke wanted to say in her opening arguments wasn't
admissible.
She wasn't allowed to say she is blind. Jurors weren't
allowed to see the special machine Duke used to read. Her husband,
Jim, had to cover it with black cardboard. She wasn't allowed to
mention being disabled or ill.
She wanted to tell jurors that the injury occurred when one of her
dogs bumped her eye and that she went to a specialist for a diagnostic
ultrasound. Instead, he performed an experimental gas bubble
treatment that went horribly wrong within hours. He refused to see
her that evening, citing his daughter's birthday party. By the next
day it was too late.
But Duke never got to tell anyone that story. She was
representing herself because she had run out of money and Las Vegas had
run out of lawyers willing to take the case. With so much evidence
stricken from use, no one would touch it, Duke says.
She was allowed to say only what had been deemed legally
acceptable, truth be damned. She figures no one will ever know what
the truth is now.
"I felt that I was choked there in the court," Duke said.
"Everything coming out of my mouth was controlled."
Duke is no whiner. Her voice cracks with emotion when she
speaks, but whose wouldn't after nearly a decade of daily
frustrations?
Her husband calls her a fighter.
"This is the most courageous person I've ever met, and I've met
some pretty brave people" says Jim Duke, a retired U.S. Green
Beret.
Anya Duke was born in Ukraine. She escaped the Gestapo with
her family during World War II and met Jim years later while teaching
languages to U.S. servicemen in Germany.
She speaks seven languages, but says English isn't her best
one. It added one more obstacle to the difficult task of
representing herself. "The court doesn't want to deal with
plain people. They want to deal with attorneys," Duke
said.
This time the attorneys won. Duke has filed an appeal in
hopes her case will one day be heard by a three-judge panel. But as
the loser in this round she now faces paying $350,000 of her former
physician's legal costs.
All Anya Duke really wanted was her day in
court.
And she's not going to get
it.
WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN
FAIRNESS | 
