The students have tried him over and over.

Sixteen Marshall High School students will assemble in a Sacramento Superior Court today to grapple over the guilt or innocence of a fellow student who got caught up in the war on drugs.

They’ll argue that high school dropout Chris Willow had a First Amendment right to distribute an alternative newspaper in which she wrote: “I found the answer to all your problems. . . . It’s CRACK,” and “Come talk to me in my ‘office’ next to Sandra’s Pizza Place on Thursday around 7:30 p.m.”

They’ll argue that it was humor, not an inducement to buy drugs, and that it proved nothing when Willow was later arrested for selling drugs outside Sandra’s Pizza Place.

Then they’ll turn around and argue just the opposite.

Whether Willow is convicted or not is really inconsequential. The youth is a fictitious character created by the Constitutional Rights Foundation as the subject for the annual California State Mock Trial Competition. By winning the city title for the second year in a row, Marshall qualified for another shot at the state championship, which barely slipped away last year. If the team does well today, it will move on to the finals Friday.

Since October, instructors David Tokofsky and Claire Goldblum have been leading the team through a rigorous examination into Chris Willow’s case and the constitutional law that goes with it.

The students have tried her over and over. Last Thursday afternoon they did it one last time in a kind of dress rehearsal without the dress.

The judge was the bearded Tokofsky. He wore a green polo shirt and jeans and lounged at a student desk set front and center in his classroom under the steady eyes of all the American Presidents.

He issued orders such as:

“Could we please have a bailiff at the door to discourage mobile student units?”

The attorneys sat at a table facing him. Defense attorney Arisa Mattson wore blue shorts with white polka dots and T-shirt. Prosecutor Ana Liza Fulay wore a print skirt and tank top.

The jury sat to their right, 10 teachers who stayed after school.

They listened to a blistering cross examination of defense witness Jody Sills, a teacher being played by student Shira Myrow.

According to the case notes, provided by the sponsors, Sills was “tired of seeing good kids like Chris Willow completely ignored and abused by this school system.”

She was called to tell what she saw the afternoon the vice principal kicked Willow off campus for distributing her newspaper and then informed the police.

The notes said Sills could “see and hear everything that was going on.”

But the prosecutor picked that notion apart. She did so by taking advantage of the rules allowing the witness to state no facts except those gleaned from the notes.

“Miss Sills,” Fulay said, in a sharp aggressive tone, “why did she have to call the police if Chris did not leave?”

“I do not know.”

“You didn’t hear that part?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hear everything that was said that evening?”

“I guess I missed that.”

“You didn’t see everything that happened below, did you? It was Chris’ voice that attracted you to the window?”

That raised an objection.

“She’s asking a compound question,” Mattson snapped.

Fulay rephrased the question.

“So you didn’t see Chris when she first arrived?”

“No.”

“You can’t tell us what Chris was giving these students when she did arrive?”

“Um, not when she first arrived, no.”

“Thank you. No further questions.” In closing, Fulay argued that the newspaper was an advertisement for drugs rather than legitimate commentary. She reviewed the testimony of Willow who said she wasn’t thinking when she ran reflexively from Officer Dana Allen and threw a notebook in the bushes.

“She was thinking,” Fulay asserted. “She was trying to escape. The only reflex was a well-developed criminal reflex.”

The defense used the prosecution’s own evidence--that Sandra’s Pizza Place was a common drug trafficking spot--to cast doubt on the contention that the bag of cocaine found near the notebook had fallen out of it.

Mattson characterized the newspaper article as juvenile hyperbole. Anyone familiar with teen-age humor would know it was all a joke, she said.

The jury rendered both a verdict and a critique.

The verdict was 8-2 for acquittal. The jurors thought the prosector harsh in her comment on the youth’s “well-developed criminal reflex.” They were impressed by the point that the bag of cocaine in the bushes could have belonged to anyone.

The critique got down to fine points. The teachers didn’t catch the prosecutor saying “evening” when she meant “afternoon.” But they did notice that Officer Allen was sometimes “he” and sometimes “she.”

The attorneys confessed. It turned out that the boy who was playing Dana Allen was sick. A girl took his place. The confusion that followed was an object lesson:

Even after months of practice in the high plane of Constitutional law and courtroom procedure, the tiniest detail can unravel a case.

Today, the Marshall attorneys will be in proper courtroom attire. And they’ll try to remember who is a boy and who is a girl.