D.C. visit inspiring to aspiring lawyer
Nov, 24-2009 11:39 am
By STEVE PRISAMENT
Staff Writer
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP – A local girl who aspires to become an attorney got a real dose of legality at a six-day National Youth Leadership Forum of Law and Forensic Science in Washington, D.C., Nov. 3 to 8.
Briana Saddler, a 16-year-old junior at Absegami High School, was nominated by one of her teachers to attend. The daughter of Yvonne and Toney Saddler, she said about 350 students from all over the country attended.
Saddler runs track and is in the Key Club and Freshman Transition at school. She also plays first chair cello in the Atlantic Youth Orchestra and is a volunteer junior camp counselor at Highland Academy’s summer camp.
“I’ve lived all my 16 years in Galloway,” she said in an interview Saturday, Nov. 14. “I like it because it’s really diverse.”
Her mother said the trip was a big deal for Briana.
“It’s something we knew she was interested in,” Yvonne Saddler said. “She jumped up and down. It was hard, but we let her go. We drove her down and stayed overnight. Then we picked her up.”
Visiting the Supreme Court building was a thrill, but the best part of the trip for Briana involved mingling with legal scholars.
“I think my favorite part was going to George Washington University,” she said. “The law students had a mock trial. We were the Supreme Court. We were all sitting. The students presented their case. We were the judges. We’d ask questions and they’d have to answer us.”
She said the students voted on the outcome.
“It was pretty close,” Saddler said. “We must have been right. We got the same answer as the teacher.”
The visitors all had special parts, she said.
“I was a special witness, the CSI person in the case,” she said. “We got evidence and checked fingerprints. We used powder and actually matched the prints. I’m not into that, but it was pretty cool.”
She said it psyched her up for appearing in court.
“I want to do criminal court just because it’s exciting,” she said. “I want to be a prosecutor.”
Her mother said she already gets plenty of practice.
“She does a lot of that around the house,” she said. “She’s a teenager. That says it all. I’m not surprised she wants to be a lawyer. She doesn’t miss a ‘Judge Judy’ show – all of those episodes, she records them. She likes to debate everything her father and I tell her.”
Other places she visited in Washington were the Capitol building and the Library of Congress.
“We only had three hours to look at everything in the library,” Saddler said. “There are a lot of books on Lincoln and the founding fathers. We went to the National Mall. Then we only had time to go to the Holocaust Museum.”
Yvonne Saddler said the group was up at 6 a.m. and back at 10 p.m. – “No time to fool around.”
Briana Saddler said she heard some interesting speakers at seminars.
“There was Ms. Mary Beth Tinker from the case Tinker vs. Des Moines,” she said. “When she was a kid she wore a black wristband to school to mourn those who died in the Vietnam War. She got in trouble by the principal, and a case was formed. Now she's an activist for youth rights.”
Another was Moses S. Schanfield, who has a Ph.D. in human genetics from the University of Michigan.
“He's been a forensic scientist for 25 years,” Saddler said. “He's been involved in a bunch of famous DNA cases like the O.J. Simpson case and the Jon Benet Ramsey case.
Rebecca Brown is a policy analyst at The Innocence Project, a program that reopens cases to try to free wrongly convicted people. She helped prove the innocence of Bruce Godschalk,” in a famous case, Saddler said.
“She helped prove Mr. Godschalk's innocence,” she said. “Godschalk was falsely accused of rape and was jailed for 15 years. Brown helped presenting as evidence the DNA that proved his innocence.”
While she enjoyed going to Washington, Saddler said she wants to go to college in New Jersey.
“I’m thinking Rutgers,” she said.
Saddler said she saw all the memorials and would advise anyone with the opportunity to attend a youth leadership forum.
“It’s great for networking. You meet kids from all over,” she said. “I met someone who lived on a military base in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. I want to learn Japanese. I like the culture. I want to visit Tokyo.”
She said the students are placed in juvenile activity meeting groups of about 15.
“You meet in between trips and after dinner,” she said. “You debrief everything you do, and you bond as a group.”
Saddler said she has a whole new Facebook gang and she also came back with a lot of phone numbers.
To comment on this story email steve.prisament@catamaranmedia.com.
