Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Young people’s court

After the prosecution rested its case in the affray trial of Durango High school sophomore Marco, the defendant testifies himself.

What followed might have been a tense courtroom drama on television.

Defense attorney Nathaniel Phillipps, 15: "Marco, before this incident, did (the other boy) tell you he wanted to fight?"

Marco: "Yeah, two or three times, but I said I wasn't going to fight him."

Phillipps: "So why did you?"

Marco: "He pressured me to."

Phillipps:"Do you know why?"

Marco:"We used to be friends, but I talked to this other guy that he didn't like."

Prosecutor Francisco Morales, 14: "Could you have left school without fighting?"

Marco: "Yes."

Morales: "Isn't it true you walked to the fight with a group of people?"

Marco: "Yes."

Morales: "Did they drag you?"

Marco: "No."

Morales: "What did you think you were going to do? Did you think you were going to dance?"

Phillipps: "Objection, your honor, argumentative!"

Hearing Master Sullivan: "The objection is sustained. Rephrase your question."

Morales: "What did you think was going to happen?"

Marco: "For all I knew, nothing was going to happen."

Morales: "Did you hit him?"

Marco: "Yes, I hit him."

Morales: "That's all."

Phillipps: "Marco, did you want to fight?"

Marco: "No, I was pressured to."

Phillipps: "The defense rests, your honor."

The 14-year-old lawyer rose from his chair at the prosecution table, eyes flashing. "Objection -- relevance!" he cried to thejudge.

The 15-year-old defense attorney shrugged. "Um, I'm just trying to show that Marco's a good student -- he's not the type that would normally get in a fight," he answered.

"The objection is denied," the judge intoned.

Here in a real Clark County courtroom, before a real judge, misbehaving high schoolers are on trial before juries of their peers -- other teens -- with fellow students also prosecuting and defending them.

The consequences are real, too.

If Marco is convicted of fighting, he will be sentenced to between eight and 40 hours of community service. The slightly built, buzz-cut Durango High School sophomore, sitting next to his two counselors at the defense table, is visibly nervous as the witness, the school's dean, testifies.

The idea behind the Trial by Peers program, a partnership of the judiciary, the juvenile justice system and the Clark County Bar Association, is peer pressure.

A 50-year-old judge telling a 15-year-old miscreant to shape up might have just the opposite effect. But a bunch of other 15-year-olds might be able to convince the troublemaker that his actions aren't cool.

The program has been around for more than a decade, but it is about to get a huge boost.

Officials expect the Trial by Peers caseload to double or triple in the coming year -- from 150 cases a year to as many as 450 -- as it begins accepting referrals directly from schools rather than from the juvenile justice system.

The distinction may seem technical, but officials say it is a substantial one.

Previously, to get into the program, students first had to be arrested, an experience that could make them feel like they had already been branded criminals and that it was too late to turn their lives around, said Hearing Master Frank Sullivan, one of the judges who presides over the youth court.

Juvenile judges for some time have been complaining about what they call the criminalization of school discipline. They say mischief that in the past might have merited detention or a note home to parents -- such as shoving in the hallways, or drawing on a locker -- these days too often leads to students being ticketed or arrested by school police.

The officials say the problem is a national one and chalk it up to the increasing presence of police on grade school campuses as well as parents' threats to sue.

The issue came into the spotlight locally in May, when an 8-year-old was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail for biting a school administrator, sparking an outcry among critics who saw the response as unduly harsh.

With the cooperation of the Clark County School District Police, schools will now be able to send first-time minor offenders aged 12 to 17 directly to the Trial by Peers program, keeping children out of the criminal system altogether. That, proponents say, will make the youths feel less disgraced and take some pressure off the juvenile justice system's overwhelming caseload.

In this recent session, 15-year-old Marco had pleaded not guilty to affray, or fighting. Marco's last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.

In her opening statement, 16-year-old Danielle Breglia, looking lawyerly in pinstripes and pinned-back blond hair, addressed the jury to outline the charges.

"Um, affray is basically a mutual fight between two people who cause chaos among public citizens," she began.

On Oct. 27, 2005, she explained, about 50 students were seen gathered off the campus of Durango High School. Parents alerted the school and an officer went to the scene. Marco was discovered to be one of the two central combatants.

"We are confident that the defendant is guilty of affray. Thank you," Breglia concluded.

Then it was the defense's turn. Alexis Merced, 15, with clear blue eyes and tawny-colored hair, gave the jury a different take.

"Tonight you're going to hear another side of the story -- you're going to hear that the defendant did not willingly participate in affray," she declaimed, with a defense attorney's combative confidence. Witnesses would confirm this, she said.

"Please keep an open mind," Merced concluded. "We're confident you'll return a verdict of not guilty."

The student lawyers, called peer counselors, are your usual overachievers, often enrolled in advanced academic programs and participants in their schools' speech and debate clubs.

They take a six-week summer course to prepare, learning legal terms, trial procedures and rules of evidence, and culminating in a miniature bar examination of 80 multiple-choice questions and five essays.

The jurors consist both of would-be peer counselors, who must serve on juries as part of their training, and of youths who have been found guilty in the program, who must serve on juries as part of their sentence.

The experience that the teens get serving as a lawyer or on a jury is an ancillary benefit of the program, officials point out. Their service teaches them about the criminal justice system as they go on to become the Clark County jury pools -- and even lawyers -- of the future.

In Marco's trial, two witnesses testified for the prosecution, Durango Dean Gilbert Mestas and School District Police Officer Joseph Barris.

In cross-examination, the prosecutors established that Marco agreed to meet and fight another student at the off-campus location after school let out, and then was caught brawling with the other boy, who fled.

But the defense used its questioning to point out that Marco was a good student with no disciplinary record, that he had repeatedly been provoked by the other boy, that he apparently bore the brunt of the fight -- his shirt was ripped and his face was bloody -- and that he did not run from the police when he was caught.

When the prosecution rested its case, Marco testified in his own defense. What followed might have been a tense courtroom drama on television.

Defense attorney Nathaniel Phillipps, 15: "Marco, before this incident, did (the other boy) tell you he wanted to fight?"

Marco: "Yeah, two or three times, but I said I wasn't going to fight him."

Phillipps: "So why did you?"

Marco: "He pressured me to."

Phillipps: "Do you know why?"

Marco: "We used to be friends, but I talked to this other guy that he didn't like."

Prosecutor Francisco Morales, 14: "Could you have left school without fighting?"

Marco: "Yes."

Morales: "Isn't it true you walked to the fight with a group of people?"

Marco: "Yes."

Morales: "Did they drag you?"

Marco: "No."

Morales: "What did you think you were going to do? Did you think you were going to dance?"

Phillipps: "Objection, your honor, argumentative!"

Hearing Master Sullivan: "The objection is sustained. Rephrase your question."

Morales: "What did you think was going to happen?"

Marco: "For all I knew, nothing was going to happen."

Morales: "Did you hit him?"

Marco: "Yes, I hit him."

Morales: "That's all."

Phillipps: "Marco, did you want to fight?"

Marco: "No, I was pressured to."

Phillipps: "The defense rests, your honor."

With all of the evidence presented, Sullivan instructed the jurors on the elements of the alleged crime and how they were to draw conclusions from the evidence. The two sides gave impassioned closing arguments, and the jury left the room to deliberate.

With the jury absent, something happened that would not occur in an adult trial. The other boy in the altercation was summoned and he and Marco stood in front of Sullivan, who made them shake hands and promise to let go of their grudge so there would be no more fights.

Then the jury re-entered. The foreman, a boy with dark buzz-cut hair wearing baggy jeans and a plaid hooded sweatshirt, stood to read the verdict: "Not guilty."

Marco breathed a sigh of relief. Sullivan affirmed the judgment and sent the jury home.

The result might tempt you to think that teens go easy on each other, but in fact, not-guilty verdicts are rare, Sullivan said later.

"These kids are tough," he said. "Sometimes they're tougher than I am."

In any case, everyone involved learned a lesson, one that Sullivan hopes will sink in better because it came from their contemporaries.

"They will say something for their peers that they wouldn't tell us adults," he said. "And their peers will tell them it wasn't right."

Molly Ball can be reached at 259-8814 or at [email protected].

archive