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Editorial: A game worth playing
Op-Ed · March 26, 2015
After a month collecting evidence from a staged “murder” scene and preparing for a mock trial, several Scattergood Friends students representing the prosecution and defense turned their chairs around to face the rest of the school for questions about the process.
Head of School/Internal Operations Thomas Weber asked if, after a month working on the case in in geometry, advanced biology and government classes and the eventual trial where the “jury” found the defendant not guilty: “Is it still worth it?”
Both sides admitted doubts and saw gaps in the evidence, both for and against the defendant, yet senior Brias Galvin Sotelo answered: “The game is worth playing.”
Certainly, we agree.
No doubt many high-profile cases seem like a game. The O.J. Simpson trial comes to mind. How many people can remember “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” referring to the gloves found at the scene? Yet how many can come up with the name of the two victims? That trial took place 20 years ago, yet names like Judge Lance Ito and Detective Mark Fuhrman still come to mind. (The answer, by the way, is Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.)
One of the ripple effects: Simpson lawyer Robert Kardashian is the father of Kardashian sisters in Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
Yet hundreds of courtrooms across the country try thousands of murder suspects every year without a media circus surrounding the proceedings. People are found guilty every day for all sorts of crimes. Yet in 2014, 127 people were falsely convicted of crimes in America, a record-breaking number, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of Michigan Law School.
So the judicial system is not perfect.
In Scattergood’s exercise, the organizers determined in advance that the suspect was guilty. And Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Marc Laurie, father of one of the students, offered his expertise to the students trying to collect evidence and build their cases.
Interestingly enough, the students initially all thought the suspect was guilty. And, to make it more interesting, after the students were chosen for the defense and prosecution, no one was allowed to change sides, just like real prosecutors and defense attorneys. They had to press on and do their jobs despite their doubts and personal bias.
Both sides admitted putting on a confident front out of necessity when they appeared in the courtroom. West Branch Police Chief Mike Horihan pointed out to the students that, in real life, the system does eliminate a bit of that uncertainty by giving prosecutors a grand jury to hear evidence, somewhat like a “test run” for trial.
It is interesting to note that Scattergood purchased a DNA sequencing system prior to this experiment, and yet even that did not eliminate all doubts. But tools like this, as well as standardized approaches to gathering evidence, questioning witnesses and narrowing down suspects do help, as Sotelo pointed out, “reducing the flaws.”
The justice system cannot only operate on iron-clad evidence. How many families would never receive justice? But, as a whole, the system works well.
And the game is, indeed, worth playing.
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