U.S. District Court, Central District of California Contact: Lydia A. Yurtchuk (on behalf of Sherri R. Carter, Clerk of Court) Special Projects, Clerk's Office U.S. District Court U.S. Courthouse, 312 N. Spring Street, Rm. G-8 Los Angeles, CA 90012 E-mail: lydia_yurtchuk@cacd.uscourts.gov Central District of California Law Day 2002 Activity Summary: The primary focus of Law Day was a mock trial. The second part of the program included speakers from Jury & Naturalization, Interpreter Department, Human Resources, Pretrial Services, and Probation. The program concluded with demonstrations from the K-9 unit and a tour of the Marshall's holding area. Activity Narrative: In order to integrate the students' visit with their on-going government lesson plans, we provided each of them with an extensive package of written material, which explained the federal court and some federal agencies. In addition, we mailed other written material to participating teachers, for them to incorporate into their lesson plans in advance of their visit. The program began with a staged arrest by U.S. Marshals. A judge presided over the subsequent trial. After the verdict, the judge spoke about the trial and entertained questions and answers. From the arrest to the jury verdict, the trial was presented so that the students could see the legal system in action by being involved in a number of ways: students were pre-selected by their teachers to serve as counterparts to the judge, attorneys, courtroom clerk, bailiff, and court reporter. The remainder of the students served as the jury. The students experienced the justice system, from witnessing the arrest to voting, as jurors, on the arrested person's fate. Classes were deliberately divided so that for the most part, no courtroom had more than 45 students. Our Law Day activities highlighted this year's theme of "Celebrate Your Freedom -- Assuring Equal Justice for All." Not all of the jury members voted the same way after seeing the exact same events as their fellow jurors, which indicates that they entered the jury phase unbiased and voted on the basis of the evidence. The court extended its invitation to Law Day to 300 public high schools in the Los Angeles County area. The court set up 13 sessions (i.e., 13 mock trials, speakers, etc.) throughout the 4 days of Law Week. Although we had a deadline for schools to respond, we accepted school RSVPs up until a few days before the first program. We did not turn any school away, nor did we limit the number of students a school could bring -- we just found more volunteers for our sessions. We invited the media to attend, but because it is district court policy to not allow cameras in the courthouse, no media was in attendance. Our program did, however, appear in one of the visiting high school's student newspapers. The U. S. Attorney and Federal Public Defender offices have always been included as part of our Law Day event. This year, we extended the invitation to Pretrial Services and the Probation Department and asked that they provide speakers to talk abut their function in the court system as well as job opportunities. All of the speakers that did participate were specifically asked to do so because they were from diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds and it was important to us to show the students that with education and perseverance, they can serve any function in the court system. Our program was unique in that our mock trial was developed and scripted by court personnel with the assistance of representatives from the offices of the U.S. Attorney and Federal Public Defender. Our script starts with an arrest and progresses through a trial with student participation. One of the district court judges served as legal/technical advisor during the script writing process so that it was not only legally correct, but also understandable to the students and not boring. The message of the script was so successfully communicated to the students that some of the teachers suggested that we expand the script to include even more student participation next year. The second part of our program featured speakers from various departments of the Clerk's Office (Jury & Naturalization, Interpreter, Human Resources), Pretrial Services, Probation and the U.S. Marshal Service. Those presentations, which lasted 5 minutes each, were mostly about job requirements for various positions in their respective departments, and were very well received by the students. In fact, some teachers have already contacted some of the speakers to speak at their schools at career day. The K-9 demonstration and tour of the marshal's lock-up area are always a success (and surprise) to the students. One of the Law Day sessions was attended by a representative of the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, accompanied by a few people from the Los Angeles Superior Court. The Human Relations Commission was interested because they can provide future funding for Law Day in the form of transportation for the students. The Superior Court was interested because they would like to put on a program similar to our program. Our court is more than willing to not only share ideas and practical tips with other federal or state courts should they want to emulate our program, but also to share our written script. Sample Programs Home | By Audience | By Location | By Sponsoring Organization