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Big Bad Wolf cleared by kids' jury

The jurors in Courtroom 675 at City Hall giggled yesterday when court officer Mark Colangelo, a towering hulk of a man at 6-foot-5 and more than 300 pounds, asked the first witness to "swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth."

The jurors in Courtroom 675 at City Hall giggled yesterday when court officer Mark Colangelo, a towering hulk of a man at 6-foot-5 and more than 300 pounds, asked the first witness to "swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth."

"And could you please state your name and spell your last name?" Colangelo asked in a squeaky, cartoonish voice that seemed absurd coming from a man his size.

"Curly Pig, P-I-G," the witness replied. (She was really lawyer Alexandra C. Gaugler.)

"Good morning, Ms. Pig," Common Pleas Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello said.

A similar scene took place in five other City Hall courtrooms yesterday where 200 children from Philadelphia-area schools acted as "jurors" in "trials" based on "The Three Little Pigs," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and "Jack and the Bean Stalk."

The Law Day program, in which the Philadelphia Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division acted as attorneys, defendants and witnesses, was planned to help pre-kindergarten through third grade children learn about the justice system.

In Carrafiello's courtroom, Nancie Stupp's third-grade class from the Greenfield School in Center City, heard the case of B.B. Wolf, who was charged with destruction of property and frightening the Three Little Pigs.

On the stand, the defendant identified himself as Brutus Benedict Wolf. (In real life, he is lawyer Craig Sobel.)

Wolf's defense attorney, Christopher Iacono, argued that Wolf was simply trying to make friends with the pigs: "He wanted to invite them out to dinner."

But prosecutor Tara Gill Nalencz said that Wolf didn't want to invite the pigs out to dinner.

"He wanted to have them for dinner," Nalencz told the jurors. "He was hungry for some pork chops."

The young jurors fidgeted only a little during the 45-minute proceeding, listening as Iacono claimed that Wolf had "sneezed" the straw and twig houses down because of allergies and had been "prejudged . . . because of the way he looks." At one point, the prosecutor called two other pigs to the stand.

A couple of jurors sucked their thumbs. One girl twirled a strand of hair. A boy played with both hands in a waving motion.

The jurors came back with a verdict after only 10 minutes.

They skipped to the jury box as jury foreman Greyson Sobel announced that Wolf was found not-guilty on all counts.

The jurors pumped their arms up in the air and almost cheered the wolf as the verdicts were announced. Carrafiello gently warned them that such outbursts are not allowed in court.

"This is the first time they got me to be the wolf," Craig Sobel said later, after describing the day as "a lot of fun."

"Actually, now that I've been acquitted, I would do it again." *