The Trial of the Century: 21st Century Justice Helps Students Prepare for 18th Century Trial
By PBA Pro Bono Coordinator David Keller Trevaskis
Posted to the PBA Web site, January 2008

Most Supreme Court justices have put fifth grade behind them long ago, but Pennsylvania Justice Max Baer returned recently to the elementary classroom for what Mt. Lebanon School District's Markham Elementary School teacher Matthew Mikesell called a "magical hour and a half" during which Baer helped Mikesell's students prepare for their upcoming classroom mock trial.

And this was no ordinary mock trial they were preparing for - the students were putting the father of our country, George Washington, on trial for murder! The mock trial made the 18th century come fabulously alive at Markham Elementary during a cold January week.

The students tried a young George Washington for the murder of French Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. Though the mock trial was a fiction created by Mikesell, Jumonville's death was an actual event that helped spark the French and Indian War. Washington's involvement in that death remains a mystery of history, but Mikesell's students gathered enough information on both the history of the period and the conduct of real trials to hold three separate mock trials, with Washington being convicted twice and acquitted once by the three different student groups.

"These kids were preparing as hard for their trials as real lawyers getting ready for a significant trial," Baer said of the students, who dressed in period costumes that had been carefully researched and authentically prepared. They conducted a realistic modern courtroom exercise thanks to an extended course of study that included instruction from such guests as Baer.

At a time when the First Lady of Pennsylvania, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Midge Rendell, is encouraging student participation in mock trials as one of her Keystone Programs for promoting civic education, Mikesell showed how a committed educator can combine history with creative teaching to promote the civic values of the rule of law, jury service and more. Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak featured the Markham Elementary School's mock trial as a model civics program at the Jan. 25 Pennsylvania Coalition for Representative Democracy School Summit.

Mikesell gives the credit for his lesson to many others, starting with Steve Bullick, school district curriculum coordinator, who provides the administrative support needed for teachers to try new ideas. Others are PA Citizen's Jim Wetzler and Pennsylvania Department of Education Social Studies Coordinator Jeff Zeiders, because it was in attending their Governor's Institute for Social Studies on the French and Indian War that Mikesell located the scholars who shared with him the story behind the trial.

In the photos below, Justice Baer helps students prepare for their upcoming classroom mock trial.