Brittany Kazmirski has stood in court as a judge, prosecutor, defense attorney and bailiff, and she’s only a junior in high school.

Kazmirski is part of the Syracuse City School District’s student court program, in which students sanction other students who have broken the district’s Code of Conduct with the guidance of Syracuse University law students. Inside a classroom that resembles a courtroom setting, three student judges sporting black robes sit behind a table with a gavel, two defense attorneys defend their client and two prosecutors represent the school. The court officials are all students.

‘It’s like a feeling of power but not too much at once,’ Kazmirski said. ‘You don’t get carried away with it because you have to keep in your mind that you’re trying to help the student.’

The program has remained in high schools since its inception in 2001, but the district plans to expand it this year to four middle schools: Clary, Danforth, Ed Smith and Bellevue Academy.

Judy Wolfe, the student court program supervisor, met with Clary students last week and will meet Ed Smith students this week to teach them court procedures and eventually start mock trials.

A panel of school district, college and federal government officials selects four SU College of Law students each year to come to the high schools at least once a week and help the student courts. The law students teach the high school students about law and criminal cases, aid them in writing opening or closing statements and relate personal experiences to the students, some of whom have dealt with crime and the courts in their own lives.

There are a total of 45 students, mostly juniors and seniors, enrolled in the student court program, which is a part of two business law classes David Voltz teaches. The class averages one to two cases per week, during which freshmen receive most of the punishments, Voltz said.

The students in the court program are usually nervous the first time they run a trial and initially struggle with the law vocabulary they have to learn, Voltz said. But the students grasp onto court procedures through mock trials, and many of the judges bring the case down to a personal level to tell the sanctioned students that they don’t want to make the same mistakes they did.

‘I think it means more coming from other kids, not from some old guy telling them what to do,’ Voltz said.

Most students who face the courts receive sanctions for disruptive behavior in the classroom, chronic tardiness, skipping school or disrespectful behavior toward a teacher, Wolfe said.

‘It’s not a bad kid. It’s a kid who might be lost in the classroom, and they’re trying to cover it up,’ Wolfe said.

The student judges make the student defendants write apology letters, visit a student assistance counselor, attend tutoring, perform community service or write an essay about their offense, among other rulings. The referral does not show up on the student’s discipline record.

‘Instead of sending kids to suspension, we actually talk to them and try to figure out what’s going on,’ Wolfe said.

When the high school students are not trying cases, SU law students teach them anything, from rape to domestic violence to obeying police officers.

Law student Ali Benchakroun taught the student court class last week how to talk and behave toward police officers if they pulled the students over or interrogated them. Benchakroun shared his experiences of getting pulled over as a cab driver in New York City, telling the students he put both hands on the wheel and talked to the officer in a nice or pleasant manner, he said.

‘I would just comply with the officer’s demands and say something like, ‘Good afternoon, officer, how are you,” he said.

Benchakroun said he wanted to enhance the relationship between police and the students, as some automatically have a negative perception of police from growing up in rough neighborhoods where they hear about cops firing their weapons. Some students would rather take matters into their own hands than report to police, he said.

‘What we basically tell the kids is, ‘Put yourselves in the officers’ shoes,” he said.

Benchakroun grew up in Queens near the projects and uses his personal experiences living in the area to relate to students in the court program at Fowler High School, he said.

‘I know exactly what they’re going through because it’s an inner-city high school,’ he said.

Many of the high school students have had to deal with family court, criminal court or domestic violence issues at home, said SU law student Jessica Trombetta, who visits the court students at least once a week.

‘It’s a wide variety of situations that kids are coming from on the home front,’ she said.

Kazmirski, the high school student who has been a judge, prosecutor, defense attorney and bailiff, had to face the courts first before joining them because a teacher caught her copying part of a friend’s homework assignment. Kazmirski faced two options: go to in-school suspension or face the student court. She chose the latter.

The judges spoke to her like they actually cared and told her to write an apology letter to the teacher, she said. She joined the program afterward because she wanted to become a lawyer and prevent other students from making the same mistakes, she said.

‘I wanted to help people like me who strayed a little bit,’ she said. ‘And some of them actually learn from it.’

mcboren@syr.edu

 

Published on November 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm