Mock Trial Packet 1 MOCK TRIAL PACKET
An abbreviated trial case to be taught with
A Lesson Before Dying
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION……………………..…..2
PROCEDURES……………………….…..2-3
CASE DESCRIPTION…………………...4
WITNESS TESTIMONY………………….5-6
OTHER COURT CASES…………………7-9
HOMEWORK DUE………………………10
NOTES…………………………………….11-12
NAME:_______________________________ HOUR:________
SECTION:_______ ROLE: ______________________________
Mock Trial Packet 2 Introduction
For your final project you will put on a mock trial. The class will be divided into section A and section B. The sections will each have a day to put on the trial. Each section will have two teams (prosecution or defense). Each team will have the following roles: Witness (1) Attorneys (4) Leader (1-­‐2) What is a mock trial? The goal is to act out a trial as close to what the real format for a trial looks like. For this class you will be responsible for working with your team to defend your side of the case, whether or not you believe in it. There will be witnesses and attorneys to be determined by your team. You will have a team leader who will help orchestrate and organize everything that happens. Our mock trial, in class, will go as follows: PROCEDURE:
Opening Statement Plaintiff Attorney 1 (3-­‐5 minutes) Opening Statement Defense Attorney 1 (3-­‐5 minutes) Direct Examination Plaintiff Witness 1, Prosecution Attorney 2 (3-­‐5 minutes) Cross Examination Plaintiff Witness 1, Defense Attorney 2 (2-­‐4 minutes) Direct Examination Defense Witness 1, Defense Attorney 3 (3-­‐5 minutes) Cross Examination Defense Witness 1, Prosecution Attorney 3 (2-­‐4 minutes) Closing Statement Defense Attorney 4 (3-­‐5 minutes) Closing Statement Plaintiff Attorney 4 (3-­‐5 minutes) To get an idea of what a mock trial looks like, see these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvg62f4mya4 (General Overview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05uaOrBdtbE (Opening Statement) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jD4SgHyM2k (Direct Examination) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGybKYuTAU (Cross Examination) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLMbKJh15Ak (Closing Statement) We will be putting together a case to determine whether or not A Lesson Before Dying should be banned. As you read the book, look for evidence to use for your side of the case (whether that is defending the book to be taught in schools or rejecting the book and saying it should not be read in schools). See “Case Description” for more details. This is homework. –Look out for other highlighted information that will be for homework. All of the homework assignments within the packet are listed on the last page for your reference and to keep track. Mock Trial Packet 3 PROCEDURES
Vocabulary:
Theory of the case: Each side needs to determine their “story” or what they believe happened. Opening statement: Each side needs to explain their theory of the case and give a preface of what will be said in the trial. This should reflect what your witness will say in the direct examination and what information you will get out of your witness during the cross examination. Direct examination: The witness should help support your side of the case and your theory of the case. The witness should be able to tell their story naturally, with the help of questions from the attorney. The questions should be open-­‐ended to give the witness a chance to answer in a few sentences. This should be scripted, but at the time of the performance, only notes will be used to keep the attorney and witness on track. Cross examination: This is a chance for the other team to pick out information that points out flaws in the witness (personal flaws or flaws in their story). The questions here should be very pointed and direct the witness to answer with only a yes or no. Always know what the answer to your question is before you ask it. Closing statement: Each side will give a closing statement to recap what happened during the entirety of the court case. They can remind the jury about certain flaws in the other team’s witness and point out why their witness was better and more reliable. The theory of the case should tie in here too. This is your final chance to convince the jury that your side is the winning side. Roles: Attorney 1: Opening Statement Attorney 2: Direct Examination (asks questions) Attorney 3: Cross Examination (asks questions) Attorney 4: Closing Statement -­‐All attorneys will be able to help one another throughout the case. This is especially useful for the closing attorney. All four attorneys will have time to work together and develop a closing argument based on what just happened in the case. Witness 1: Direct examination and Cross Examination (answers questions) Leader(s): Determine which roles each person has, helps to stay organized, helps group come up with a theory of the case, helps research what to use as evidence from the book and how to use the previous cases to help in opening and closing statements. Mock Trial Packet 4 CASE DESCRIPTION
FACTS: Ms. Mallory is trying to start a new unit on the book A Lesson Before Dying for her seventh grade class. Her class is learning about social justice, and she wants to bring this into the discussion. Before adding it to the curriculum, Ms. Mallory has to get approval from the school. The school decided that the book should not be taught in the school and banned it from the library. Ms. Mallory believed that this was unreasonable and took it to the court. ISSUE: Did the school unjustly ban the book, or is it inappropriate for a school setting? How does this relate to first amendment rights versus school’s right to censor the information presented to students at a certain age? WITNESSES: Ms. Mallory (Plaintiff) Principal Gordon (Defense) EVIDENCE: A Lesson Before Dying Previous court cases Mock Trial Packet 5 WITNESS TESTIMONY:
MS. MALLORY: My name is Joyce Mallory. I am from Highland, Illinois and live on 1234 Sawgrass Lane. I live in a small apartment with my Pomeranian puppy. I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and received my bachelors in English with a minor in Education and a social studies endorsement. Ever since I was a small girl I wanted to be a teacher. I have learned how important it is to educate young minds and how rewarding it is to see students grow. Teaching students about social justice is one of my favorite topics. Learning how different texts can make people take action or even just understand a topic more deeply is very important to me. After teaching the same old boring books for years, I decided I wanted to try something new. This is when I decided to teach A Lesson Before Dying. I know that I have to get approval before teaching a book, but I was so excited about adding this to the curriculum that I forgot to go through the proper steps. As soon as Principal Gordon heard that I was teaching this book, he got pretty nervous. I told him it was a great, educational book, with so much to teach the kids, but he was not convinced. He told me that I could not teach the book and that my job depended on it. I get that there are some parts that may not be entirely appropriate for an eighth grade student. There are topics about race, gender, and sexuality, but also some great comments about what it means to be a man and how to important it is to be educated. The students can get past the mildly inappropriate parts to see the really great side of the novel. I think they could learn a lot from it. I had already started teaching the book, so it was difficult to stop in the middle. My students were very disappointed so I let them know that they could finish it on their own time. I’m not sure how many actually read through the rest of the book but I hope that they actually learned something from it. After we stopped that book I had to create an entirely new unit for the rest of the time we should have been reading A Lesson Before Dying. This extra work is unfair and definitely difficult to plan for while in the middle of the year. I wish I would have gotten it approved ahead of time, but really, there’s no reason for it to be banned anyway. Mock Trial Packet 6 PRINCIPAL GORDON: My name is Joseph Gordon and I am the principal for Highland Junior High. I live in a grand house on Mulberry Road here in Highland with my wife, Millie and kids, Joe, James, and Jory. I have lived in Highland for most of my life and my kids will all go to Highland Junior High when they are old enough. I received my Bachelors of Science Education from DePaul University in Chicago many years ago and my Masters in Administration from Loyola four years ago. This is my second year as Principal and I love what I do. It is important that I work closely with parents, students and teachers to make the best possible environment for everyone. The issue over A Lesson Before Dying came to me from a parent phone call. It is always a shock when I receive a call relating to something I had no idea about. I am always trying to stay on top of everything that goes on in the school, but this slipped past me. I heard that Ms. Mallory decided to teach the book, but this parent was very upset by the content. She was afraid that her child was getting the wrong impression about African Americans and was concerned about the considerable drinking and sexual content in the book. I took it upon myself to read a few reviews and get information from sparknotes.com about the book. I never had enough time to read through the book itself, but I feel like I got the main idea. After this disgruntled parent called and I looked into the book myself, I went to talk to Ms. Mallory. I was disappointed that she chose to change the curriculum without going through the proper channels and told her she could not teach this book for the year. Ms. Mallory was very upset by my decision and chose to take it all the way to court. Banning this book from the school was a necessary step to not only protect the students from the content of this book but to help appease the parents who support our school. It is key to have a great school culture and the parents and students need to feel safe. The book does not foster, on balance, a valuable learning experience over the negative content. It is clear that Ms. Mallory did not think clearly about this book. There are plenty of examples of content that is not appropriate in public movies or television, or on the radio that are nestled in the pages of this book. The content is not appropriate for eighth graders and had to be taken out of the curriculum. Mock Trial Packet 7 OTHER CASES
PRECEDENSE FOR THIS CASE
Evans v. Selma Union High School District of Fresno County, 222 P. 801 (Ca. 1924): The California State Supreme Court held that the King James version of the Bible was not a "publication of a sectarian, partisan, or denominational character" that a State statute required a public high school library to exclude from its collections. The "fact that the King James version is commonly used by Protestant Churches and not by Catholics" does not "make its character sectarian," the court stated. "The mere act of purchasing a book to be added to the school library does not carry with it any implication of the adoption of the theory or dogma contained therein, or any approval of the book itself, except as a work of literature fit to be included in a reference library." Rosenberg v. Board of Education of City of New York, 92 N.Y.S.2d 344 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 1949): After considering the charge that Oliver Twist and the Merchant of Venice are "objectionable because they tend to engender hatred of the Jew as a person and as a race," the Supreme Court, Kings County, New York, decided that these two works cannot be banned from the New York City schools, libraries, or classrooms, declaring that the Board of Education "acted in good faith without malice or prejudice and in the best interests of the school system entrusted to their care and control, and, therefore, that no substantial reason exists which compels the suppression of the two books under consideration." Todd v. Rochester Community Schools, 200 N.W.2d 90 (Mich. Ct. App. 1972): In deciding that Slaughterhouse-­Five could not be banned from the libraries and classrooms of the Michigan schools, the Court of Appeals of Michigan declared: "Vonnegut's literary dwellings on war, religion, death, Christ, God, government, politics, and any other subject should be as welcome in the public schools of this state as those of Machiavelli, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Melville, Lenin, Joseph McCarthy, or Walt Disney. The students of Michigan are free to make of Slaughterhouse-­Five what they will." Minarcini v. Strongsville (Ohio) City School District, 541 F.2d 577 (6th Cir. 1976): The Strongsville City Board of Education rejected faculty recommendations to purchase Joseph Heller's Catch-­‐22 and Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and ordered the removal of Catch-­22 and Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle from the library. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against the School Board, upholding the students' First Amendment right to receive information and the librarian's right to disseminate it. "The removal of books from a school library is a much more serious burden upon the freedom of classroom discussion than the action found unconstitutional in Tinker v. Des Moines School District." Right to Read Defense Committee v. School Committee of the City of Chelsea, 454 F. Supp. 703 (D. Mass. 1978): The Chelsea, Mass. School Committee decided to bar from the high school library a poetry anthology, Male and Female under 18, because of the inclusion of an "offensive" and "damaging" poem, "The City to a Young Girl," written by a fifteen-­‐
year-­‐old girl. Challenged in U.S. District Court, Joseph L. Tauro ruled: "The library is 'a mighty resource in the marketplace of ideas.' There a student can literally explore the Mock Trial Packet 8 unknown, and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. The student who discovers the magic of the library is on the way to a life-­‐long experience of self-­‐education and enrichment. That student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom. The most effective antidote to the poison of mindless orthodoxy is ready access to a broad sweep of ideas and philosophies. There is no danger from such exposure. The danger is mind control. The committee's ban of the anthology Male and Female is enjoined." Salvail v. Nashua Board of Education, 469 F. Supp. 1269 (D. N.H. 1979): MS magazine was removed from a New Hampshire high school library by order of the Nashua School Board. The U.S. District Court decided for the student, teacher, and adult residents who had brought action against the school board, the court concluding: "The court finds and rules that the defendants herein have failed to demonstrate a substantial and legitimate government interest sufficient to warrant the removal of MS magazine from the Nashua High School library. Their action contravenes the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, and as such it is plainly wrong." Loewen v. Turnipseed, 488 F. Supp. 1138 (N.D. Miss. 1980): When the Mississippi Textbook Purchasing Board refused to approve Mississippi: Conflict and Change for use in Mississippi public schools, on the grounds that it was too concerned with racial matters and too controversial, the authors filed suit. U.S. District Judge Orma R. Smith ruled that the criteria used were not justifiable grounds for rejecting the book. He held that the controversial racial matter was a factor leading to its rejection, and thus the authors had been denied their constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of speech and the press. Kreimer v. Bureau of Police for Morristown, 958 F.2d 1242 (3d Cir. 1992): In detailed analysis, the court of appeals held that a municipal public library was a limited public forum, meaning open to the public for the specified purposes of exercising their First Amendment rights to read and receive information from library materials. Such exercise could not interfere with or disrupt the library's reasonable rules of operation. The court then upheld three library rules which: 1) required patrons to read, study, or otherwise use library materials while there; 2) prohibited noisy or boisterous activities which might disturb other patrons; and 3) permitted the removal of any patron whose offensive bodily hygiene was a nuisance to other patrons. Case v. Unified School District No. 233, 908 F. Supp. 864 (D. Kan. 1995): When the Olathe, Kansas, School Board voted to remove the book Annie on My Mind, a novel depicting a lesbian relationship between two teenagers, from the district's junior and senior high school libraries, the federal district court in Kansas found they violated the students' rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the corresponding provisions of the Kansas State Constitution. Despite the fact that the school board testified that they had removed the book because of "educational unsuitability," which is within their rights under the Pico decision, it became obvious from their testimony that the book was removed because they disapproved of the book's ideology. In addition, it was found that the school board had violated their own materials selection and reconsideration policies, which weighed heavily in the judge's decision. Mock Trial Packet 9 Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board, 64 F.3d 184 (5th Cir. 1995): Public school district removed the book Voodoo and Hoodoo, a discussion of the origins, history, and practices of the voodoo and hoodoo religions that included an outline of some specific practices, from all district library shelves. Parents of several students sued and the district court granted summary judgment in their favor. The court of appeals reversed, finding that there was not enough evidence at that stage to determine that board members had an unconstitutional motivation, such as denying students access to ideas with which board members disagreed; the court remanded the case for a full trial at which all board members could be questioned about their reasons for removing the book. The court observed that "in light of the special role of the school library as a place where students may freely and voluntarily explore diverse topics, the school board's non-­‐curricular decision to remove a book well after it had been placed in the public school libraries evokes the question whether that action might not be an attempt to 'strangle the free mind at its source.'" The court focused on some evidence that school board members had removed the book without having read it or having read only excerpts provided by the Christian Coalition. The parties settled the case before trial by returning the book to the libraries on specially designated reserve shelves. Sund v. City of Wichita Falls, Texas, 121 F. Supp. 2d 530 (N.D. Texas, 2000): City residents who were members of a church sought removal of two books, Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate, because they disapproved of the books' depiction of homosexuality. The City of Wichita Falls City Council voted to restrict access to the books if 300 persons signed a petition asking for the restriction. A separate group of citizens filed suit after the books were removed from the children's section and placed on a locked shelf in the adult area of the library. Following a trial on the merits, the District Court permanently enjoined the city from enforcing the resolution permitting the removal of the two books. It held that the City's resolution constituted impermissible content-­‐based and viewpoint based discrimination; was not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest; provided no standards or review process; and improperly delegated governmental authority over the selection and removal of the library's books to any 300 private citizens who wish to remove a book from the children's area of the Library. Counts v. Cedarville School District, 295 F.Supp.2d 996 (W.D. Ark. 2003): The school board of the Cedarville, Arkansas school district voted to restrict students' access to the Harry Potter books, on the grounds that the books promoted disobediance and disrespect for authority and dealt with witchcraft and the occult. As a result of the vote, students in the Cedarville school district were required to obtain a signed permission slip from their parents or guardians before they would be allowed to borrow any of the Harry Potter books from school libraries. The District Court overturned the Board's decision and ordered the books returned to unrestricted circulation, on the grounds that the restrictions violated students' First Amendment right to read and receive information. In so doing, the Court noted that while the Board necessarily performed highly discretionary functions related to the operation of the schools, it was still bound by the Bill of Rights and could not abridge students' First Amendment right to read a book on the basis of an undifferentiated fear of disturbance or because the Board disagreed with the ideas contained in the book. CITATION: http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/firstamendment/courtcases/courtcases Mock Trial Packet 10 HOMEWORK DUE FOR FINAL PROJECT
HOMEWORK YOUTUBE VIDEOS OPENING DIRECT CROSS CLOSING WITNESS TESTIMONY MS. MALLORY PRINCIPAL GORDON YOUR ROLE (OUTLINE—LEADER OR SCRIPT—WITNESS OR ATTORNEY) YOUR NOTES FOR PRESENTATION DUE DATE COMPLETED Mock Trial Packet 11 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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