Springfield high school students experience the legal world through moot court

HADLEY — A group of Springfield high school students competed in a moot court competition last week, stepping into the shoes of attorneys and judges to consider what rights young people have when questioned by police.

In the Hadley courthouse, 10 students from Springfield’s High School of Commerce reenacted the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court case JDB v. North Carolina, using their own notes.

The proceedings were held in Hadley Juvenile Court, through a program called Upward Bound, a federally sponsored year-round program.

While students Amari McKoy and Heaven Lee Anderson served as attorneys for the appellant, representing 13-year-old student JBD, students Mariana Ortiz and Jondreus Rodriguez served as prosecutors for North Carolina.

Claudia Smith, who helps teach the program, said students had a total of six hours to prepare for the test.

“We started from the bottom up and looked at how courts work and how they fit into the larger system,” Smith explains.

Students delved into Miranda rights, analyzing the landmark 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, in which the court ruled that U.S. law enforcement must warn a person in custody of his or her constitutional rights before interrogating him or her. Otherwise, that person’s statements cannot be used as evidence at trial.

That brought the students to the case they were arguing in the moot court: JDB v. North Carolina.

In this case, a police detective pulled JDB out of class and questioned the seventh-grader in the presence of two school administrators about a number of burglaries that had occurred in the community, according to the United States Courts website.

When the student was pressed for more details, he eventually confessed and police gave him the Miranda warning. He did not have to answer any questions and was allowed to leave.

JDB provided further details about the alleged incident and was able to leave after school ended.

In its 2011 ruling, the Supreme Court held that a child’s age must be taken into account when determining whether a Miranda warning is required.

But for the students in the Hadley courtroom, the question had yet to be discussed.

“He is 13, he is not allowed to sign any contract,” said student Baruwani Wilondja, who served as a clerk during the show trial.

Five student judges questioned the arguments and subsequently decided to quash the case.

The entire moot court lasted about an hour, after which students listened to speakers such as Bridget Hynes, director of Upward Bound at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“I saw that you guys really studied the material hard,” Hynes told the students. “When you study and you know the facts, you can feel confident and you can bring the ideas forward. So just a big thank you to everyone who took the Upward Bound leadership course this summer and the great final presentation today.”

Massachusetts Juvenile Court Judge Judith Phillips was also in attendance and said she was honored to attend the trial.

“The jobs that lawyers do, as you know, are very hard,” she said. “And then we have court clerks, clerks, probation officers, and their jobs are very hard. So we really do our best to create a justice system that the public can have confidence in, and I’m glad you get the chance to experience a little bit of that.”