Law School conducts mock trial during Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day.

After decades of slander in the press, Big Bad Wolf finally got a fair trial. But Wolf, charged with vandalizing the homes of two little Pig brothers, will have to face trial one more time: the jury was deadlocked.

 Despite a compelling argument by the prosecution that Wolf intended to turn the Pigs into bacon, some members of the seven-girl, two-boy jury believed Wolf’s claim that he accidentally sneezed the houses down. “When you have to sneeze, you have to sneeze,” said juror Devonette Montez. 

Montez and 22 other students from local schools took part in the mock trial April 22 at Stanford Law School as part of Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day. The students acted as judge, jury, co-counsel, and witnesses. 

As star witness for the defense, Wolf insisted that he was knocking on the door of his neighbors, the Pigs, to borrow a cup of sugar so he could make a cake for his granny. Suffering from a bad head cold, “I sneezed, and the whole darn straw house fell right down,” said Wolf (played by Natalie Johnson). 

In her closing argument for the people and pigs of the State of California, Professor Pamela Karlan presented strips of bacon to bolster her argument that Wolf intentionally blew down the houses so he could eat the Pigs. “If this jury acquits, they will be baco-bits,”asserted Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law. 

Defense attorney Barbara Babcock, Judge John Crown Professor of Law, countered that Wolf was a victim of species prejudice. “If it had been a collie, like Lassie, would we be here today?” she asked. 

After jury foreperson Dot Gasner announced that the jury was hung, Karlan asked Hon. LaDoris Cordell ’74 and fellow judge Charlotte Williams to place Wolf under house arrest with a collar around his leg until he is retried. Babcock objected that such a restriction was further species oppression, noting that during the trial, Wolf was sitting with the three little Pigs “and they’re getting along fine.” 

The judges agreed that Wolf should remain free, without a collar, until the new trial, but on one condition: he must stick to a vegetarian diet.