Mock Trial Generates Real Enthusiasm : Education: Two teachers at San Marino High find it argues a good case for student interest in civics, law, history, English, journalism, art and math.

The defense attorney was 17. But Kristi Adams was cool and composed as she argued the constitutional rights of her white supremacist client.

“A swastika is . . . a symbolic form of political expression,” she told the assembled judges. “It’s not hostility directed at one individual.”

The senior from San Marino High School was among 70 students who took part in a recent mock trial at the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena.

Her team won the competition by persuading judges to overturn a disorderly conduct conviction of a security guard who was wearing a swastika on her uniform when she allegedly attacked an Asian burglary suspect. It was a timely case, pitting freedom of expression against protection from hate crimes and going to the heart of the 1st Amendment.

The mock trial was part of an unusual project called “Spotlight on a Right,” which is sparking enthusiasm from educators and legal experts nationwide.

“If some of the attorneys who appeared before me presented their cases as well as this, I’d be most appreciative,” said Ruby Theophile, a state administrative law judge in Pasadena.

For the two teachers at San Marino High who designed the project, the hypothetical “People vs. Stover” provided a way to stimulate student interest in civics, law, history, English, journalism, art and math.

Teachers Peter Paccone and Taylor Morton based their inter-disciplinary project on an annual mock trial competition sponsored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation. But they expanded the concept by having their students continue the case through the appeals process, and by weaving the issues it raised throughout curriculum at the school.

U.S. history and government classes, for example, composed a survey to gauge community support for the 1st Amendment. Calculus students converted the raw data into a statistical analysis. English and journalism students published a newspaper that covered developments in Lakerville, the mythical town where the incident occurred.

“This project will offer a valuable model for replication in schools across the country,” said Gary D. Watts, senior director of the National Education Assn.’s Center for Educational Improvement and Innovation. “It puts kids in an activist learning role.”

Watts said Saturday’s event was videotaped for broadcast on the cable show “Teacher TV.”

Both students and judges praised the project for stimulating critical thinking. Some teen-agers said their moral objections to white supremacists helped them prosecute the case convincingly. Others, such as the defense team led by Kristi and Ally Ferry, said they believe passionately in freedom of expression.

All said the project had inspired them to learn.

“I could sit in English class and fall asleep,” said Schuyler Youkstetter, 17, a “prosecutor” who estimated he put more than 150 hours into the case over six months. “But this keeps me interested. Every day, I go home and I work on it. I’ve been to the library to look up Nazi history. This isn’t something we have to do, it’s something we want to do.”

Eight teams of five students presented oral arguments to a panel of judges. Many drew on legal precedent in their appeals, including the Skokie vs. National Socialist Party of America case of 1978 in which the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the objections of Holocaust survivors and ruled that neo-Nazis could parade in full regalia.

“If a swastika isn’t a fighting word in ‘Skokie,’ how could it be a fighting word in Lakerville?” one judge asked Ken Cooper, 17, who teamed with Milena Edwards in the finals against Adams and Ferry.

“The swastika is an epithet likely to provoke the average person to retaliation,” Cooper answered.

Paccone, 33, said the project grew out of a desire to alleviate classroom isolation. “We’re all walled up in our own little classrooms, where we carry out little blocks of learning,” the U.S. history and government teacher said. “I wanted to break down those walls, bring legal issues into real life.”

With law teacher Morton, he rallied support from teachers and about 250 students at San Marino High School. In addition, about 50 students from La Canada High School took part in some of the mock legal proceedings. Over the past school year, some dropped out as they realized the U.S. judicial system isn’t like “Night Court”; it often moves at a glacial pace.

“A trial, by definition, is boring,” Paccone said. “But our judicial system is like that--cumbersome, time-consuming. That’s real life.”

Paccone and Morton persuaded civic groups and local businesses to make donations.

As they waited for the judges to announce the winner, Kristi and Ally gripped each others’ hands tightly under the table, and shot glances at the other three members of their team, Rachel Spencer, Devon Muir and Alex Papanastassiou. After judges pronounced them the winners, Kristi called the project “the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my whole four years of high school.”

“We had fun, I’ll tell you that.”