Impact131

Mock Trial 2011 Reflection

This year the 7th graders and the 8th graders did another mock trial. Last year we did the trial on the Scopes Monkey trial which was about someone who was arrested for teaching evolution even though it was against the Butler Act. Last year the trial was quite scripted and we pretty much just read what was in the packet and added a few things. This year, the case was a lot less scripted. The case though was about a girl named Monica Hewitt who was blamed for the murder of Jennifer White (I was the defense in case you were wondering) who died in a skydiving accident when her chutes failed to open. They thought it was Ms. Hewitt because they found a smudged fingerprint on the pack, and Ms. White was dating an ex-boyfriend of Ms. Hewitt. Many other things played into this main idea. There was the manager of Blue Skies (the skydiving club) who thought he saw Monica looking at her ex and Jennifer kiss. There was Monica’s ex who’s name was Robert Diamond. And there was the crime scene investigation police women, Sandra Rothstien. They all played very important roles, like Martin (the manager) said that he saw Monica looking at Jennifer and Robert kissing at around 7:00 but she said she got there at 7:30. The important part about that fact was that the car was far away, Martin wasn’t wearing his glasses and the fact that he said he saw a Honda but Monica said that she drove a Camry.

The first thing that John Fraher told us when we were about to get started with the mock trial was that last year was to scripted. This year we would be writing our own opening or closings statements and some of the examinations. The first thing we did do though was get split up into the defense side and the prosecution side. The defense went with Kasra Sadr who was also a lawyer like John Fraher and the prosecution went with John. We also then split up into groups of two. I was partnered with Brianna. We then chose which parts of the trial we were going to do. There was the option of doing a closing or opening statement and the option of either doing two cross examinations or one direct cross examination and one cross examination. I ended up getting the closing statement and one direct examination and one cross. I was quite happy about getting the closing statement. This is because in your opening statement you have to talk about the case, and why your person is innocent with out being too argumentative. The closing statement however, you get to say whatever you like, you can tell the jury that the prosecution has been telling them lies about the whole trial. You can do whatever. But, once we had gotten our different parts, we then went over the important facts and what questions we should ask our witnesses. This was very fun because Kasra was a very nice and funny guy. He would tell us how to make the jury laugh and like you and your client. He also told us how his partner always told him that he had to fit the word ‘cheeseburger’ into his closing statement every time. That also got a few laughs and some people inspired to use statements like, “That time gap, is a hamburger sized hole in the information.” We also tried to come up with ways to fit cookies in and it was really a very enjoyable time.

Whenever I would get home from a day working on mock trial, I would go over my notes a read everything I wrote down. One nigh I had written everything, my questions and my closing statement. The next day we went into the mock trial practice and that night, I rewrote everything, my questions and my closing statement. I really enjoyed getting to write my own questions and my own closing statement. It could be whatever you wanted it. You weren’t following a script. You got to make it sort of fit you. You didn’t have to read something that you wouldn’t actually say to a witness. You got to make it whatever really. 

In all this was a very fun experience. On the final day everyone was well prepared and we all gave it our all. Brianna and I though, our client was innocent unanimously. That felt really good and it felt like I had put the time into my work to get that goal. What I did for homework was mostly only mock trial. I read it over and I was really happy with how it all turned out. I also would really like to thank everyone who helped out with it, the 5th and 6th grade jury, all of our witnesses who were played by teachers and mostly John Fraher and Kasra Sadr who acted as our judges.