Exonerate ​“Cop-Puncher”? You Decide

“Taylor Reynolds” pulled ​“Tracy Edwards” to the hard ground in the midst of a concert on of the New Haven Green, instigating a fight over a shattered iPhone.

Patrol Officer ​“Pat Smith” lunged in. Mistaking him for Reynolds’ friend Sydney, Edwards swung with all they had.

Smith’s jaw caught in the crossfire; his lip split open. Edwards bolted, two officers catching up to him as he ran.

That episode unfolded in a fabricated legal universe based heavily on New Haven.

Reynolds, Edwards and officer Smith aren’t real people, although their iPhone-spurred fight is based loosely on similar events that have transpired in the city. Their case isn’t a real case.

Instead, it was the fodder for the fifth annual LAW Camp for Teens, a week-long summer program administered out of the Public Service Committee of the New Haven County Bar Association to increase diversity in the still-very-white legal profession.

From July 11 to 15, 36 high school students from LEAP, Achievement First Amistad Academy High School, New Haven Public Safety Academy at James Hillhouse High School, New Haven Public Schools, and New Haven Youth Court worked together in six randomly assigned teams — three defense, and three prosecution — to pick the above case apart as real lawyers would, presenting their findings, defenses, and conclusions at a mock trial held at the end of last week.

From the moment they entered camp last week, filing into a classroom at Quinnipiac Law School, to the moment they left New Haven’s Superior Court Friday afternoon, students were asked to grapple with one big question: Was Tracy Edwards, a promising New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) student and upstanding high-schooler who had ultimately injured Officer Smith, guilty beyond reasonable doubt? Or was there a chance, given his insistence that the blow had not been intended for Smith, that all of this was just an accident?

Presiding over New Haven’s Superior Court, Justice Richard Robinson came to one conclusion. Follow along and see what you decide.

Stipulation Of Facts

In a fact pattern created by Joe Murolo, an attorney who works with the BAR Association’s Public Service Committee and volunteers with its ​“Ask a Lawyer” clinics, students were presented with a play-by-play of the case’s contested events. The following is a condensed version.

On Saturday, June 20, 2015, 18-year-old New Havener Tracy Edwards was en route to A&I concert on the New Haven Green, and late meeting up with his/her friend Riley, having almost been hit by a car on his/her way to the event. In miming the action of the car — hands flailing, according to the fact pattern — Edwards accidentally bumped classmate Taylor Reynolds, a student of considerably larger physical proportion with a history of disciplinary problems and reputation as a school bully.

In his/her wild gesticulations, Edwards knocked Reynolds phone out of his/her hands, unwittingly setting off the day’s fateful events as Reynolds stepped on his/her phone in looking for it. Reynolds was angry, and demanded that Edwards pay for the damages. Edwards refused. Reynolds shoved Edwards, falling to the ground on top of him/her. There, ​“the two tussled on the ground for a moment.”

A crowd gathered. Seeing the fight, Officer Pat Smith broke through the crowd and approached the two. Edwards was top of Reynolds; Officer Smith grabbed Edwards’ shoulders in an attempt to separate the two. Edwards swung and made contact with Smith’s jaw. Edwards then extricated him/herself, ran, and was handcuffed at the scene by other officers, who charged him/her with assaulting a police officer, assault in the third degree, interfering with an arrest, disorderly conduct and breach of the peace.

Working Through The Case

Students pored over details of the case with a team of real-life legal experts. They picked apart nuances that could either prove Edwards’ innocence, or condemn him — or her, as no team could come to a consensus on Edwards’ or Reynolds’ sex — to a future marred by criminal charges.

Thursday morning at Yale Law School, they were still working assiduously, scrambling over questioning patterns and opening arguments as they entered the final 24 hours to the mock trial. Warming students up with a game of ​“objection” — think tag and telephone, but with legal terminology — Judge Angela Robinson, who founded the camp in 2011, gave them a few words of encouragement.

“We really need new young lawyers like yourselves,” she said. ​“If you’ve seen what’s going on in the country the last few days, weeks, you’ve seen that we need good lawyers and that you can make a difference.”

That was enough for two members of the red team to keep pressing ahead as the camp’s current director, New Haven Bar Executive Director Gillian Fattal, bounced from group to group to check up on progress. Crouched over pages of handwritten notes, 15-year-old Sofia Yanza and 14-year-old Emma Houston were working through Edwards’ intent, preparing a strong defense for their client as two coaches, professional attorneys Arnold Amore and John Parese, gave the group pointers on eye contact and intent to cause physical injury.

“I just like like the idea of helping someone get the justice they need,” said Yanza before asking Amore if they could get into the nuances between cross and direct examination.

Beside her, Houston started to refine their list of questions for witnesses — Edwards’ friend Riley Johnson, Reynolds’ friend Sydney, a few unwitting A&I bystanders sucked into the fight — who would be called to the stand.

Meanwhile, others were getting ready to face off for the state. On the green team, High School in the Community’s 16-year-old Emily Lucke and Hillhouse’s 14-year-old Tamia Scott were knee-deep in the prosecution.

“I think you have to focus on the evidence,” Lucke told Scott as the two referred back to the fact pattern. ​“You can tell the story, but it’s about how Tracy did wrong. She was instigating this fight. I mean, she was flailing her arms … how reckless can you be?”

Scott nodded avidly, drafting an opening statement in a lined notebook she had brought to the session. But how would they phrase it? she asked.

“You could say something like … gross negligence of the safety of the public,” mentor Vincent Crotta, a sophomore at College of the Holy Cross, suggested.

The two smiled. That sounded good, they said as they scribbled it down, and made a few suggestions to three team members behind them. The clock was ticking down before the trial began. 

State v. Edwards

”Let me tell you a story about recklessness,” purple team member Jack Kaiser was saying as he approached Judges Jon Blue, Steven Ecker and Mohammad Nawaz Wahla.

It was Friday morning just past 9:30, and teams were packed into a fourth-floor courtroom at New Haven’s Super Court. His team would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, he continued, ​“that Edwards is guilty.”

But was he/she, really? (The teams, it turned out, never agreed on the gender — and sometimes Edwards would switch from male to female from one examination to another.)

Split into threr courtrooms, where three defense-prosecution pairs faced off for a place in the mock trial championship round that afternoon, the three judges heard so many accounts of the events that had transpired that it seemed, at one point, that there were six Tracy Edwardses and six Taylor Reynoldses fighting across six New Haven Greens.

Had Edwards, as Scott now suggested firmly for the green team, ​“ignored all the rules without a care in the world?” Was it, in the blue team’s Cedric Smith’s words, ​“a violent assault with intent to harm?”

Or was Edwards actually, as Mia Joseph opened for the orange team, ​“a good student, planning to go off to college” who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Was it ​“clearly an accident, not some villainous assault” in which Smith failed to make himself known? Or was Edwards reckless, loud, and rude, unable to apologize when in the wrong?

Was it even simpler than that — that he/she was simply ​“not the assailant, but rather the victim,” as put forth by Liam O’Donnell of the black team?

For two grueling hours, that was the central question to hit the fourth floor of the court building. Judges deliberated. Students strained to push their arguments forward, pressing ahead with apologies when they were called out on mistakes like opening with a question, and pulling out evidence on TrialPad, a new law app that lets litigators present evidence on devices like iPads. Objections were raised and sustained. A disciplinary report on Reynolds was dredged up and presented as ammo against him/her.

Suddenly, it was 2 p.m., and only the green and black teams remained, pitting the day’s strongest prosecution against its strongest defense against each other.

Packed into one courtroom at the end of a long forth-floor hallway, the day’s four losing teams waited with bated breath as their classmates took the floor and the witness stand, stepping into the roles of defense attorney, prosecution, Tracy Edwards, Taylor Reynolds, Officer Pat Smith and several bystanders to the fight.

The defense zeroed in on Reynolds’ large size. O’Donnell and teammate Ramzia Issa insisted that Edwards had no intent to hit Officer Smith, and had simply been acting in self-defense. This was a promising student with no record of trouble and a promising future; why would they throw it away in a fight?

One by one, mock witnesses — played by members of the black and green teams — came forward. The black team was interested in hearing the answer to one focal question: Could Edwards, with a body so much smaller than Reynolds’, have been acting in self-defense?

It was possible, many of them answered. Scott was determined not to give up the case, protesting that the whole ordeal would have been avoided with greater caution on Edwards’ part.

The green team bought it. Robinson did not.

“I thoroughly enjoyed this,” Robinson said, awarding the win to the defense but noting that it had been close. ​“To see some people who haven’t even finished their schooling argue as well as some attorneys who have been in this courtroom … I hope all of you will consider a career in law.”

Students looked forward, if a little bleary-eyed, and hung on to his every word. ​“The court,” he said, ​“should really reflect our population.”