What's Mock Trial You Ask?

by Roberto Borgert


About a month-and-a-half before Saint Johns prep students go on their Christmas break there begins an extracurricular activity that never fails to draw participants. It is not boys' basketball--it isn’t even the spring musical--it is an activity that forces students young and old to think on their feet and battle wits with peers from different schools. If you are thinking that perhaps this activity is mock trial then you are right. Each year the program grows and has become increasingly successful. Therefore, as a member of mock trial, I am constantly surprised to hear that some people don’t even know what it is.

Mock trial is basically a bunch of students getting together in a courtroom and performing a trial...well, mocking one. Students play the roles of attorneys and witnesses. However, this isn’t the same as a play where everyone has a script and knows exactly what comes next. It is something far more than that.

At the beginning of each season the Minnesota state bar sends all high schools within the state either a criminal or a civil case to be the subject of the mock trial competition. For example, this year’s case is about vandalism of a cemetery, and the defendant is Jesse Dubois. Long story short: Jesse claims that she was at her home with Pat Dowling and Shelby Cullom and that they never vandalized or trespassed on the cemetery. This seems like a clean story right? Except that Shelby has plead guilty to being at the cemetery at night, and she has a college scholarship at stake. Simply put, each team has both a prosecution group and defense group. Some team members play the role of the prosecution and argue that Jesse did in fact vandalize and trespass on the cemetery, while others are the defendant’s attorneys and argue that Jesse was at her home the entire night and that Shelby is lying. The trick to winning is to argue your side of the case better than the other schools team. You have to twist things to your advantage; you also have to come up with explanations for things that hurt you. For example, fingerprints of Jesse Dubois were found on damaged gravestones, and the prosecution claims that they are there because Jesse vandalized those gravestones. Meanwhile, the defense claims that Jesse was at the cemetery during the day and touched those monuments because it was slippery due to the ongoing rain. To list all the elements of this case would take far too long but as I said earlier, the outcome of a trial depends on who argues their side better.

I have been doing mock trial for two years now, and I must say that winning a trial is a wonderful feeling: Knowing that through pure wit and intelligence I, along with my friends, were able to defeat fellow teenagers in a courtroom environment. It’s not all thinking on your feet though; you must prepare for everything the other side will throw at you, you have to know when to object to unfair testimony and it is essential that you know which objection to make i.e. “hearsay” or “Lack of proper Predicate.” Along with knowing the hard facts participants are also given the chance to act. They are playing a role. I have seen attorneys who are soft spoken, to the point, and sometimes appear quite pompous. On the other side of the spectrum (myself included) are attorneys who are loud, arrogant, and overly dramatic. Both types of attorneys can receive high scores; it just depends on how you perform. The same goes for witnesses. Is a protective mother who is convinced her child is a good kid and would never do anything wrong more believable than a mother who accepts teenagers screw up and that her child is a teenager? It all depends on who performs better.

Mock trial is a great experience for all students, grades 7th-12th, and I would love to see the program grow even more. We usually make it to the state tournament and do well there also. We stay in a hotel overnight and do all that fancy lawyer stuff; it’s good fun. You will not regret joining up, and it’d be wonderful to have more new faces for the 2007-2008 season. Until then, let’s all cheer and pray for our Hot Pink team’s success. Go Pink!