In Cold Blood part 2

Earlier this school year, I wrote a post on the collaborative In Cold Blood project we initiated this spring at Franklin Academy. The project involved two 10th grade ELA Classes and three Forensics Science classes re-creating the crime scenes and the trial from Truman Capote's book. The project came to fruition at the end of April when we held our mock trial. All of the students gathered as a field trip for an entire afternoon. The trial was loosely based on the actual Clutter murder trial, with the inclusion of modern forensics techniques, new evidence, and new witnesses. The Forensics team acted as the prosecution, and the ELA team was the defense. Each of the defendants (Perry Smith and Richard Hickock) had a separate defense team, but in the interest of time we tried them together (in the real trial, they were tried together with the same defense team). The Perry Smith defense team decided to plead Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on his behalf (which did not happen in the original trial). The jury included all of the other students that did not have direct trial roles. 

We found that we had underestimated the students' understanding of how trials work, and therefore not all of the students were as well-prepared as we would have liked, but overall we were very pleased with the results. The big shocker: both defendants were found innocent! (In real life, both Smith and Hickock were found guilty and executed.) We believe that this twist was due to the fact that the students in the jury didn't realize that they could convict the defendants of second degree murder instead of first degree murder. Next time, we will likely have a teacher act as judge so that we can better guide the trial process. After the trial, we had a large group discussion plus some student polls to assess and analyze the results of the project. The students were very enthusiastic about the trial (although most of them reported disagreeing with the trial outcome), and the students that participated to the greatest extent reported the greatest satisfaction with the learning experience.

As teachers, we had purposely remained fairly hands-off during the project in order to allow the students to guide the project themselves in a more authentic, inquiry-based process. We intend to do the same thing next year, but will spend more time preparing students in key roles to make sure they understand what to do during the trial. I can't want to try this again now that we know how much fun it was!

I produced a short video showing the highlights of the project. I hope you enjoy it!