Summer Academy Students Go To Court

by Lisa Reisman

Inside the leaded glass windows of a Neo-Gothic building Tuesday morning, Lionel McFadden Jr. approached the podium. “May it please the court,” he began. “Attorney McFadden for the defense.”

Judge Brandese Wooten-Harvin, 13, robed in a black gown, nodded, gavel in hand. “Go on,” she told McFadden, 14. Her marshal, Brelyn Wooten-Harvin, 13, looked on, stone-faced.

The scene was a courtroom in the Connecticut Judicial District of RE-CEE, otherwise known as a conference room on the second floor of Yale’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall on the corner of Grove and Prospect streets.

The brainchild of Newhallville Fresh Starts founder Marcus Harvin, currently a second-year law student at Western New England School of Law, RE-CEE — a summer youth academy — is short for “reconsidering your role and rights in the system.” It’s designed to be a process that will have the participants literally re-seeing themselves and what they can do.

Yale Law Professor Elizabeth Hinton is providing space at the university to host the program, which is open to anyone from the ages of 13 to 18 and meets three times weekly from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. throughout the summer.

The counselors include a team of Western New England Law School classmates sharing their expertise in an effort to give the participants “the tools, the knowledge, and the confidence to stand up, command a room, and prove their capacity to shape the future,” as second-year law student Rickey Howard put it.

Tuesday was the opening session in State v. Tom Robinson, a reference to the 1960 Harper Lee classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” that has the lawyer Atticus Finch defending Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of rape. It’s in preparation for a late-August mock-trial presentation, “To Convict a Mockingbird” through due process, that will be open to the community.

“We are going to pick out of a hat who’s going to be prosecution, who’s going to be defense,” Harvin earlier told the students, who were assembled in the jury box, near the witness stand, and at the attorney’s tables. “We’ll have evidence, witness statements.” The winner, he said, will be the participant who puts together the most persuasive argument.

The Courtroom for Becoming. Credit: Lisa Reisman photo

At stake in a larger sense: the future of the seven recruits. “Welcome to the Courtroom for Becoming,” a sign read on the door leading to the courtroom. It’s an idea that Harvin encoded in the RE-CEE decree and has each person in the group reciting at the end of each session. “I shall be the best version of myself because I have too much inside of me which the world needs and deserves,” it reads.

“You are going to practice in here and you’re going to dress courtroom appropriate because that spells success in any arena,” said Harvin, who assembled the podium and otherwise designed and outfitted the courtroom. “And we’re going to give you the tools you need to advocate for yourselves and others.”

Last week, the RE-CEE team brought in Patrick Rivers, an ethnomusicologist at the University of New Haven, who challenged the students to sharpen their listening skills. Attorneys Andrew O’Shea and Jennifer Bourn, high-level leaders for the CT Division of Public Defender Services, have agreed to provide training on the finer points of opening statements, closing statements, and direct and cross-examinations.

According to Harvin, the Connecticut Bar Association has accepted RE-CEE Academy as a community team in its mock trial program. “This is the first team to compete in the program that is not from a prep school or a school from the suburbs,” he said.

Learning the fundamentals, with Lionel McFadden Jr. (left), Telihl “TK” Streater, Brandese Wooten-Harvin, Brelyn Wooten-Harvin, Marcus Harvin, Mariah Harvin, Mi’ah Harvin, and RE-CEE’s Catherine Robinson, 2nd year law student. Credit: Lisa Reisman photo

As in every session, there was the mastering of fundamentals, which on Tuesday took the form of rapid-fire speaking exercises. “Stand up and introduce yourself,” Harvin told Lionel McFadden Jr. before grilling him on the meaning of the First Amendment.

Mariah Harvin was next. “May it please the court,” she began. “Like LJ [Lionel] said, you can basically say what you want without being scared.”

“Don’t say ‘you,’ say ‘we,’” Harvin said. “But I liked how you put it in your own words. Each of your voices is important and distinct.”  

“All of us come from the ‘Ville and all of us come from survivors,” Harvin said toward the end of the session, after Telihl “TK” Streater, an incoming freshman at Achievement First Amistad High School, mentioned his single mother had four kids and worked two jobs. “You are survivors, but you can be so much more. You all can go further than anyone in your family ever has. It’s all there for the taking. It’s up to you.”