Teens Get Trial By Their Peers In Youth Court, Kids Learn About The Justice System And How To Mend Their Ways

Defense attorney Kelly Maestri works the jury with the casual confidence of a veteran.

“My client knows he was wrong,” she says, locking eyes with each juror. She paces behind her chair, firmly placing both hands on the back of the high seat for effect. “But he has been through hell for this.”

As Maestri pleads her client’s case, she tells the jurors of his addiction, of how sorry he is that he committed the crime. The accused sits beside her looking penitent.

By the time Maestri is done, her client has received one of the lightest sentences this court has seen. Not bad for a 16-year-old attorney who hasn’t even finished high school, much less gone through law school.

Welcome to Youth Court - where justice for young offenders truly is meted out by their peers. Here, the criminals are teenagers, the attorneys are teenagers and the jurors are teenagers. But the sentences are just as real - and just as binding - as those in adult court.

It is held at the Kootenai County Courthouse each Monday during the school year after the adult attorneys and their clients have gone home for the day.

Maestri’s client, a 16-year-old smoker convicted of being a minor in possession of tobacco, is ordered to do seven hours of community service, attend a smoking addiction class and go three weeks without any unexcused school absences. He also is supposed to meet a pathologist to look at the lung of a dead smoker.

If he doesn’t, he’ll be sent into the regular court system.

“We all hear about peer pressure and why kids start smoking and drinking,” said Robert Burton, the judge and former teacher who started the program in Kootenai County. “We wanted to create something that would use peer pressure to prevent them from doing those things.”

Youth Court, designed to educate kids about the legal system and offer an alternative for young offenders, is in its second semester in Coeur d’Alene.

A group of juvenile corrections officials picks which kids are eligible - usually first-time offenders caught drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. No serious offenses are allowed.

The kids are given the option of going to Youth Court or regular court. In Youth Court they first must admit their guilt, but the crime will be erased from their record if they complete their sentence.

Those who choose Youth Court go before a jury made up of fellow high school students. One teenage lawyer will defend them while another prosecutes them. Students also act as bailiffs and court clerks.

A grown-up attorney presides over the hearing as a judge while other adult lawyers give the kids pointers on good lawyering.

“Every hour of every day, one teenager dies because of alcohol,” Chris Schwartz, a 17-year old Lake City senior, says during his opening statement. He is prosecuting the case of a teenage girl caught with a beer. “We have to show the defendant that what she did was wrong.”

When the defendant takes the stand, she insists she didn’t intend to drink that night and doesn’t even like the taste of beer.

“Did you know that drinking while under 21 is illegal?” Schwartz pressures her.

“Yes,” she admits.

The jury orders her to do 15 hours of community service and write a 1,500-word essay on the effects of drinking on teenagers.

“I thought about my values and I thought about people I know that have been killed” in drunk driving accidents, said Heather Eacho, a 17-year-old juror.

Eacho admits that at first she thought Youth Court seemed silly. But by the time the evening session was over she took the program seriously.

She and other students say it has taught them a lot about the justice system.

“I though it was like on TV,” said Carrie Berdine, a 17-year-old who acted as the court clerk.

“I came in here and it just shocked me how different it was from the movies.”

So far, about 40 wayward teens have gone through the program, modeled after a similar one in Ada County. Burton says the sentences sometimes are tougher and more lenient than a regular judge would hand down.

Most have to do community service around their schools. Others have been assigned essays and collages or tobacco addiction classes. One was ordered to pick up hundreds of cigarette butts. One jury gave a teen so much community service - 50 hours - the adult judge had to step in and reduce it to 35 hours.

More than 75 percent of the students have successfully completed their sentences, Burton said.

“I’ve actually seen students change their cliques that they run around with - stop smoking and stop drinking,” said junior Randy Cooper, who has played several roles in Youth Court since it began.

More than 250 students have served as jurors, lawyers, bailiffs and clerks, Judge Burton said.

“It gives students an opportunity to learn about potential careers in the law,” Burton said. And it has helped decrease the heavy caseload in the regular court system, he said.

Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools alternate weeks in the courtroom.

Lakeland, Post Falls and Sandpoint school districts are considering setting up a similar system, said Barry Black, a Kootenai County deputy prosecutor who volunteers in the program.

“It gives the defendants a better understanding of what happens to them,” Schwartz said. “It’s not all adults preaching to them.”

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