Their day in mock court

With all the grace of Atticus Finch, high school student Steve Harris sauntered toward the witness stand. With papers in hand and a crooked tie hanging from his neck, Harris sometimes apologized before delivering a lightning bolt question in court.

Even though the case facts were fictional, the drama was very real Friday in a federal courtroom in downtown Spokane. Students dueled through court precedents, procedures and legal principles in a mock trial for a lesson on the legal system.

Shadle Park, Ferris and Lewis and Clark high schools competed through most of the day as two teams debated the same case.

LC teacher Dave Jackson said he receives the cases from Winston & Cashatt, a local law firm. Jackson is a former practicing attorney who switched to teaching several years ago. Now his experience is shared with students.

Harris, from LC, represented a fictitious school district being sued by a student who was thrown out of school and lost his basketball scholarships. Officials searched his car and locker when they heard he was planning a student boycott to protest the dress code. That’s when a vice principal found a bottle of Johnny Walker Red in his car. An alcoholic father and a girlfriend both claimed to have left the bottle of booze in the car.

Harris stood up from the table and made a deliberate walk toward the witness on the stand, like Finch, the small-town attorney in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” His red ears and cheeks hinted at his emotions. Then he let fly the day’s last question to a key witness whose courtroom testimony was different from the story she gave during her deposition.

“Which one of your testimonies is lying?” Harris said.

An LC student called Harris the star of their legal team. His teacher said he was smooth from day one.

Bekah Stinson, 17, from Ferris, also was impressed.

“He’s intimidating the witness,” Stinson said.

Harris frequently clashed with the opposing attorney over objections until judge Jason Keene – actually a third-year law student and intern at Winston & Cashatt – reminded them to direct their questions to the bench and not argue with each other.

Ferris student Cody Waldroup, his mother watching from the audience, held his own as the basketball player’s lead attorney. He said his drama training helped him keep his composure.

Ferris team members were all dressed in dark jackets and slick shoes. The LC team went without jackets. In fact, one team member wore his slacks well below his waist and another wore a new pair of white-and-red basketball shoes.

Jackson loaned his tie to one of the students.

“To me that’s just perfect and emblematic of (the notion) that what really matters is what’s inside,” Jackson said.

Through the years, students have gotten smoother with their presentations, Jackson said. Maybe it’s their increased exposure to slick court dramas on television, he said. Maybe it’s part of their increasing sophistication at earlier ages.

“Kids are changing, they’re more worldly and aware of things,” Jackson said. “I think they’re more mature.”

In the end, Keene threw out the claim of monetary damages and gave the case back to the school district to rehear the student’s challenge to the expulsion. Meanwhile, the student was reinstated into school.

“That’s how it would have probably gone in a real courtroom,” Jackson said.