Palos Verdes Students Show Real Skill in Mock Trial Contest : An occasional look at South Bay classroom news

The Mock Trial Team at Palos Verdes Intermediate School, a semifinalist in the Constitutional Rights Foundation’s Los Angeles County Mock Trial Competition, competes tonight for the title of county champions in the junior high school division.

The 24-member team has competed against 14 county schools at the Los Angeles Superior Courtbuilding in downtown Los Angeles and presented its cases in actual courtrooms for the past month. Tonight it faces Walter F. Dexter Intermediate School in Whittier.

This year, the fictitious case assigned to the contestants was whether an inflammatory song played at a public gathering could have incited a riot, and whether the defendants could be charged with arson for an ensuing fire.

The teams were divided into prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses, court clerks and bailiffs. Superior Court judges presided over the mock trials, and professional attorneys judged each team’s performance.

“These kids put on a full defense trial,” said Madeline Melka, a lawyer and assistant coach for the PVI team. “They have to make objections, cross-examinations, direct examinations, put exhibits into evidence and argue against objections.”

To prepare for the competition, the students studied First Amendment case law and arson, said Lucy White, coach for the PVI team.

“The mock trials teach them to think logically, listen, be prepared but be flexible,” she said. The students come in with a prepared statement but their strategies can change depending on their opponent’s arguments.

This is the 15th year of the competition and only the second year PVI has participated, said Elenor Taylor, director of state mock trials for the Foundation. Last year the team was eliminated in the first round.

About 47 senior high school teams participate in a separate mock trial competition. Winners in the senior division will also be announced tonight and will be eligible for a state competition in Sacramento in April and a national competition in Atlanta in May.

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More than 100 students from Eucalyptus, Jefferson, York and Washington elementary schools in Hawthorne decorated Christmas trees in the Hawthorne Plaza on Friday with ornaments made of recycled materials.

The students adorned the trees with gingerbread men made from grocery bags, candles made of toilet paper rolls, geometric balls cut from old Christmas cards, stars made from straws, and garlands fashioned from plastic foam packing kernels. They decorated the trees according to themes.

Washington School teacher Robert Enciso’s fifth- and sixth-graders selected “Have a Merry Bedrock Christmas” as their theme and decorated their tree with multicolored dinosaurs made from toilet paper tubes and construction paper.

Ruby Mendoza, third- and fourth-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School, said her students selected the Dr. Seuss story “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” as their theme.

They decorated their tree with handmade miniature toy drums and bicycles, items that the Grinch stole, and with three-dimensional hearts symbolizing his growing heart in the story.