The junior high students referred to in this question appear at the end of a lengthy piece of narration on Thursday, July 9. The answer to this question is subjective; therefore, reader opinion could vary wildly. More than likely, that variation is going to be due to cultural experiences. I would imagine that some readers could be quite shocked that a teacher and a school would allow a group of junior high students to be taken to a murder trial. I understand that it is a valuable learning lesson for students to see how a courtroom and trial operates, but that teacher could have chosen any number of trials. The fact that this particular trial is a murder trial that is deciding the fate of another teenager has to be quite an eye-opener for those junior high students. I believe that most of the students are likely shocked and a bit scared. That could be the teacher's intention—scare the students so that they don't get pulled into similar temptations within their own neighborhoods.

Steve Harmon gives readers a small piece of textual evidence that would support the idea that the junior high students are scared: he tells us that the students quickly looked away from him when he looked at the students. Nobody stares back at him a challenge of any kind. They fear him, and the entire room probably makes them nervous.