CROWN POINT – If you stepped into Lake Superior Court Judge Julie N. Cantrell’s courtroom on May 20, you may have wondered why the prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors and witnesses looked so young.
That’s because seventh graders from St. Mary Catholic Community School in Crown Point and St. Paul School in Valparaiso were conducting three mock trials to cap off a year of studying the legal system under the tutelage of real-life lawyers. In all, 78 students were involved in the Big Shoulders Fun Law Program.
“I hope we are developing some future attorneys,” said George Carberry, an attorney at Burke, Costanza and Carberry LLP, who mentored the two classrooms of students at St. Mary Catholic Community School in Crown Point along with colleagues Carol Colomba and Julia Barley. “It’s been very interesting meeting with the students about every two weeks since last October, and very rewarding. As we went through the facts, I could see the light bulbs go off in their heads.”
Joseph Jaskowiak, of Hoeppner, Wagner and Evans, put a class of seventh graders through their paces at St. Paul School in Valparaiso. “I didn’t tell them what questions to ask the witnesses, but talked about the issues of the case and how they fit into the story,” he said of a “kid-friendly” script that involved a rock thrown through the front window of a home belonging to “Mr. Wiley,” an elderly neighborhood man. Wiley believed he saw a familiar youth, “Taylor,” throw the rock while gathered with a group of young bicyclists outside Wiley’s house, leading to a vandalism charge. Other witnesses included a mail carrier and another youth.
“It was another way for students to get a well-rounded education and gave them a different way of looking at things, which broadened their perspective, helping them with their confidence and self-esteem,” added Jaskowiak, who coached his pupils to “Speak up, slow down (their speech) and remember that you are here to persuade.”
The attorneys took requests and then selected the witnesses and teams of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and jurors.
Both Carberry and Jaskowiak said they’d return to the classroom as mentors, which is just what Dan Kozlowski, executive director of Big Shoulders Fund Northwest Indiana, hoped for based on a similar exercise initiated by Big Shoulders Fund in Archdiocese of Chicago schools during the 2022-23 school year.
“Any kind of experiential learning, where students get exposure to different professions, is good, and we hope to continue the program next year,” Kozlowski added. “We’d love to get more partners from the legal profession and offer the class in all 17 Diocese of Gary schools. One of the skill sets is critical thinking, of which there is no shortage in the legal profession, and in court they get to test that out.”
Kate Bogan, social studies and religion teacher at St. Paul, agreed that the mock court program taught her students valuable skills. “They not only learned the material, but it was a good exercise in public speaking and improved their self-confidence,” she said. “We met in between the attorneys’ visits and made sure the students formed intelligent witness questions that pertained to the case, and we did some ‘dry runs,’ including a timed trial. They were sending notes back and forth to their fellow ‘attorneys’ to fine-tune their case, and were not afraid to tell their colleagues that they were wrong. It was fun.”
“The most fun part was learning the case leading up to the trial,” said St. Paul seventh-grader Patrick Bramfield, of Valparaiso, who gave the opening statement for the prosecution. “The most important thing was setting a good example so the jury can base their verdict on your statements, having the right inflection in my voice and making eye contact.”
The most important question she had to ask the accused, said St. Paul “defense attorney” Gianna Chargualaf, of Valparaiso, was “Did you throw the rock?” and also “to work in that Mr. Wiley didn’t have on his glasses and it was dark,” which could put doubt in his identification of Taylor as the culprit. “My dad is an attorney, and he told me to speak loudly and get my point across,” she added.
Ellison Barnett, also of Valparaiso, received some valuable advice from her mother before giving the opening statement for the St. Paul mock trial. “She went to law school, and she told me to have all my facts straight, to be confident and make sure everyone can hear me,” Barnett said.
Judge Cantrell came down from the bench to speak to attorneys and witnesses during each trial when the jury left the courtroom to deliberate, complimenting them on their presentations and asking them questions. “I was impressed,” she told the St. Paul students. “Getting this type of experience in seventh grade is wonderful. It’s really important to listen to the answers as you question witnesses, because you may have to pivot (if they say something unexpected).”
The judge also singled out St. Mary “defense attorney” Annabella Chase for her well-prepared and confident cross-examination of the victim, noting that she saw evidence of thorough preparation and collaboration by the student legal teams.
“I was nervous to go ‘on stage,’ but I thought we had a good case,” said St. Mary “defense attorney” Bruno Okoroafor, of Crown Point, who handled the direct examination of the accused. “I had to come up with a lot of questions.”
T.J. Raggs, of Gary, who cross-examined Taylor for the prosecution in the first St. Mary trial, said he didn’t realize there were “so many people involved in a trial,” and enjoyed the preparations for the mock trial, especially the practice sessions. “My dad said I’m good at asking questions when I practiced with him,” Raggs added.
During the last mock trial of the day conducted by teacher Brittany LaMere’s St. Mary’s class, Lake County Prosecuting Attorney Bernard Carter slipped into the courtroom to observe. “You did a fantastic job,” he told the students, admitting that he wanted to be an attorney since he was in fifth grade. “No matter what your chosen field, put your mind to it and you can complete it.”
As to whether the prosecution or defense did a better job, it was a tough call, since all three mock trials ended in a hung jury.
Caption: With fellow “defense attorneys” and the real attorneys who mentored students watching, seventh-grader Annabella Chase of Brittany LaMere’s class at St. Mary School, Crown Point, cross examines the victim in a mock trial held in Judge Julie N. Cantrell’s Lake Superior Court on May 20 at the Lake County Courthouse in Crown Point. The trial was the culmination of a year-long program teaching junior high students about the legal system, sponsored at St. Paul School in Valparaiso and St. Mary School by Big Shoulders Fund NWI. (Marlene A. Zloza photo)
