30-07-2011, 07:58 PM
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/ED...L_5690100/
DALLAS In a room overlooking the very spot where President John F. Kennedy was shot, in a seat a few dozen feet from the Sniper's Perch, Lee Harvey Oswald waited for a verdict from a jury of his peers.
"Oswald" was actually Terry Cherry, a history teacher at Garland Independent School District's Forest High School. Friday's mock trial was part of a weeklong seminar for teachers hosted by the Sixth Floor Museum and the Library of Congress, with help from the law-related education office of the Texas Bar Association.
Friday's trial was the climax of the week, which included a bus tour to every important spot in Dallas related to the Kennedy assassination, and intense Internet training to help teachers navigate the extensive Library of Congress website.
"I have this job because this website is so overwhelming," said Peggy O'Neill-Jones, director of the western region of the library's Teaching with Primary Sources program.
The goal of the seminar was to help teachers from around the state bring primary sources into their classroom assignments, either by having students actually visit the places where history happened or by accessing the millions of documents digitized onto various historical websites.
It was also part of a continuing effort by the Sixth Floor Museum to move beyond simply being a place to see artifacts related to Kennedy's murder on Nov. 22, 1963. The narrow mission of keeping a memory alive is not enough as fewer and fewer people share that memory, acknowledged Sharron Wilkins Conrad, the museum's curator of education.
The exhibits in the museum itself have broadened to examine larger questions of Kennedy's legacy. And Conrad encourages teachers in the area to look to the museum as a resource for lessons that go beyond one presidential assassination.
"Teachers can look for a much larger context about what happened here in Dallas," she said.
Lessons about the presidency, issues of succession or amending the Constitution can all use Sixth Floor resources, she said.
Materials for a mock trial of Oswald have been available on the museum website for a while, but the Sixth Floor had never hosted this kind of event. This was also a first-time collaboration with the Library of Congress's primary sources project.
The curriculum was written for the state bar association a decade ago by Yvonne Greenwood, a former history teacher for the Richardson Independent School District.
On the day of the assassination, she was working in an office on the motorcade route and had watched Kennedy pass by.
"I was still caught in traffic when I heard on KRLD that he'd been shot," she said.
She served Friday as the presiding judge. Three teachers formed a prosecution team, another three sat as the defense. Several teachers were given roles as witnesses. A dozen were empanelled as a jury. The trial was held in a meeting room on the seventh floor of what is now the Dallas County commission headquarters building, one floor above where Oswald shot at Kennedy.
The two sides sparred in a legally appropriate fashion for a little more than an hour. The prosecution showed the famous photo of Oswald holding a rifle. "Marina Oswald" said she thought her husband looked guilty when she saw him on TV after the shooting.
The defense noted a lack of clear motive or eyewitnesses to Oswald firing the rifle and produced a witness who said the shots seemed to come from behind the famous knoll.
Greenwood instructed the jury to find the defendant guilty only if the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
"All defendants are presumed innocent, including Lee Harvey Oswald," she said.
While the jury deliberated privately, Greenwood said that convictions of Oswald with this mock trial are very rare. It's too hard to present enough circumstantial evidence in such a short time to beat all reasonable doubts.
Friday's result? A hung jury. Nine wanted to acquit. Jury foreman Jay Thompson, a teacher at Mesquite's John Horn High School, was one of the three wanting to convict.
"I came in very biased against the defendant," Thompson admitted.
"I was OK with a hung jury," said Jared Stewart, a history teacher at Richardson ISD's Pearce High School who was part of the defense team.
Ed Darnell is a history teacher at Molina High School in Dallas. Like Stewart, he'd volunteered to argue on Oswald's side.
"Everybody," he said, "deserves a good defense."
© 2011, The Dallas Morning News.
Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com/.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
DALLAS In a room overlooking the very spot where President John F. Kennedy was shot, in a seat a few dozen feet from the Sniper's Perch, Lee Harvey Oswald waited for a verdict from a jury of his peers.
"Oswald" was actually Terry Cherry, a history teacher at Garland Independent School District's Forest High School. Friday's mock trial was part of a weeklong seminar for teachers hosted by the Sixth Floor Museum and the Library of Congress, with help from the law-related education office of the Texas Bar Association.
Friday's trial was the climax of the week, which included a bus tour to every important spot in Dallas related to the Kennedy assassination, and intense Internet training to help teachers navigate the extensive Library of Congress website.
"I have this job because this website is so overwhelming," said Peggy O'Neill-Jones, director of the western region of the library's Teaching with Primary Sources program.
The goal of the seminar was to help teachers from around the state bring primary sources into their classroom assignments, either by having students actually visit the places where history happened or by accessing the millions of documents digitized onto various historical websites.
It was also part of a continuing effort by the Sixth Floor Museum to move beyond simply being a place to see artifacts related to Kennedy's murder on Nov. 22, 1963. The narrow mission of keeping a memory alive is not enough as fewer and fewer people share that memory, acknowledged Sharron Wilkins Conrad, the museum's curator of education.
The exhibits in the museum itself have broadened to examine larger questions of Kennedy's legacy. And Conrad encourages teachers in the area to look to the museum as a resource for lessons that go beyond one presidential assassination.
"Teachers can look for a much larger context about what happened here in Dallas," she said.
Lessons about the presidency, issues of succession or amending the Constitution can all use Sixth Floor resources, she said.
Materials for a mock trial of Oswald have been available on the museum website for a while, but the Sixth Floor had never hosted this kind of event. This was also a first-time collaboration with the Library of Congress's primary sources project.
The curriculum was written for the state bar association a decade ago by Yvonne Greenwood, a former history teacher for the Richardson Independent School District.
On the day of the assassination, she was working in an office on the motorcade route and had watched Kennedy pass by.
"I was still caught in traffic when I heard on KRLD that he'd been shot," she said.
She served Friday as the presiding judge. Three teachers formed a prosecution team, another three sat as the defense. Several teachers were given roles as witnesses. A dozen were empanelled as a jury. The trial was held in a meeting room on the seventh floor of what is now the Dallas County commission headquarters building, one floor above where Oswald shot at Kennedy.
The two sides sparred in a legally appropriate fashion for a little more than an hour. The prosecution showed the famous photo of Oswald holding a rifle. "Marina Oswald" said she thought her husband looked guilty when she saw him on TV after the shooting.
The defense noted a lack of clear motive or eyewitnesses to Oswald firing the rifle and produced a witness who said the shots seemed to come from behind the famous knoll.
Greenwood instructed the jury to find the defendant guilty only if the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
"All defendants are presumed innocent, including Lee Harvey Oswald," she said.
While the jury deliberated privately, Greenwood said that convictions of Oswald with this mock trial are very rare. It's too hard to present enough circumstantial evidence in such a short time to beat all reasonable doubts.
Friday's result? A hung jury. Nine wanted to acquit. Jury foreman Jay Thompson, a teacher at Mesquite's John Horn High School, was one of the three wanting to convict.
"I came in very biased against the defendant," Thompson admitted.
"I was OK with a hung jury," said Jared Stewart, a history teacher at Richardson ISD's Pearce High School who was part of the defense team.
Ed Darnell is a history teacher at Molina High School in Dallas. Like Stewart, he'd volunteered to argue on Oswald's side.
"Everybody," he said, "deserves a good defense."
© 2011, The Dallas Morning News.
Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com/.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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