“All rise,” said the court bailiff. And as she spoke, roughly 400 students from about seven Napa County high schools got out of their chairs at Napa’s District Auditorium.

The California First District Court of Appeal was in session.

From there on in, the hearings proceeded normally. Justices in black robes lobbed questions at lawyers. The attorneys debated technicalities in legalese.

In its first visit to Napa, the court of appeal justices heard arguments in two cases in which convicted criminals challenged police procedures. The justices then took questions from students about issues such as First Amendment rights, the idea of double jeopardy— which bars the government from prosecuting a person more than once for the same crime — and the types of cases the justices see most.

Before the session began, Napa Valley Unified School District Superintendent John Glaser welcomed students with an anecdote from his youth. He described how the now-defunct Saturday Evening Post published a column that presented cases and the arguments for both sides. He remembered trying to guess what the judges would decide and finding the process fascinating. “You’re going to have a much richer opportunity than that today,” he said.

Many students will go back to class and track Tuesday’s cases to their conclusion, he said.

“Whether or not you agree with the opinions that are written, I hope you come away with a deeper understanding of the judicial system,” he said.

The session began with People v. Jason McCord Patten.

Patten was on parole, but had ceased making contact with his parole officer. He was also a suspect in a burglary.

Officers in Lake County searched him and a vehicle they believed he lived in. They found a jewelry box and briefcase that they believed had been taken in a recent burglary. They impounded the vehicle for a  more thorough search later. More than a week later, officers obtained a search warrant and searched the vehicle, finding evidence that led to Patten’s conviction.

Paul Kleven, the attorney for Patten, argued that impounding the car for so long was “unreasonable and capricious.”

“They’re basically putting the car away in the hopes that something will come up,” he said.

Officers at the scene could have done a full search at the time of the arrest, Kleven said.

As a parolee, Patten had limited privacy rights, both at the time of the original search and the one that came after the police obtained a warrant for the car search, said California Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ortega, arguing for the state.

“I don’t think he suddenly gets probable cause rights when they impound the car,” he said.

Just because the officers had another alternative doesn’t mean the course of action they took was wrong, he said.

The second case also involved a vehicle search. A clerk at a Fairfield convenience store told a police officer that he had seen a gun fall out of a car in the parking lot. The officer approached the driver, Timothy Thomas Rauen, who said the gun was not real. The officer searched him and found a knife.

When he looked in the vehicle, he discovered an “air soft” toy gun, which more closely resembles a real weapon than most toy guns. The officer stood up and shined his flashlight on a compartment in the door, where he saw a pill box containing suspected methamphetamine.

Kleven argued the drug charge against Rauen was improper because the search should have stopped when the officer saw the gun wasn’t real.

Ortega said that the officer had reason to believe there could have been another gun in the car. There were other people in the car, he noted, it was 2:30 a.m., and they were parked outside a convenience store. Such stores often are targets of robberies, he said.

The critical question in the case is whether the pill box was in plain view of the officer, who saw it as he was looking for the gun, or whether the officer continued the search after finding the toy gun, Justice Stuart Pollak said.

Presiding Justice William McGuiness told students that the three-judge panel will issue a ruling within the next 90 days.

Watching the cases play out live was an exciting experience for Napa High senior Veronica Delgado, 17, who wants to pursue a career in law.

"You thought to yourself that that might be you one day,” she said.

She sided with the state in Patten’s case, saying that police have rights to search parolees. In Rauen’s case, however, she thought the officer should have stopped the search after finding the toy gun.

Another student, whose career plans don’t include law, gave the session a mixed review.

“Kind of interesting, kind of boring,” said Tobin Thuma, 17, a St. Helena senior. “I’d say it was definitely worth coming down here.”

His classmate Sasha Martin, 17, said she found the session “enlightening.”

“I never really thought about how search and seizure could be so debatable,” she said.

Martin became interested in law after her class visited Napa County Superior Court one day. She said it was interesting to see an appellate proceeding, where the justices ask more questions than the judges do in Napa County Superior Court.

Arguing an appeals case in front of hundreds of students isn’t altogether uncommon, Ortega said in an interview, but most courts don’t do it more than once or twice a year. He tries to perform as usual, but such a large audience does add pressure, he said.

“I’m conscious, obviously, that there’s a lot more people there, but once it starts, once the questions start coming, you do what you usually do,” he said.

Judging from their questions, the students seemed to have prepared well for their part of the session, Ortega said.

 “I felt gratified to help them learn something about our system,” Ortega said.