This past weekend, Middle Creek's Mock Trial Team (Maddie Putman, Bailey Watson, Jack Ross, Kirk Porter, Nicole Divers, Claire Leonard, Caroline Burkart, Owen Hayes, and Ceci Putman) won Regionals at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice (NCAJ) High School Mock Trial Competition and will advance to State Finals next month.
In September, the NCAJ released a case for the Mock Trial team to prepare for, providing teams with six witness statements and six pieces of evidence. This year, the case involved a woman who was accused and arrested for the murder of her husband. Mrs. King, the mock trial team's coach, works with the team to develop arguments for both the prosecution and defense to present at trial. She teaches each of the attorneys the rules of evidence and how to properly object as they would in a real courtroom setting.
According to Mrs. King, this is the first time Middle Creek has advanced this far in the competition in four years. She describes their win as "super exciting," and notes, "In the recording of the competition, you could hear everyone gasp after the winner was announced."
As Regionals were done via Zoom this year, the team had to adjust their preparation and presentation for the competition. In an in-person competition, there's a lot more memorization involved. Witnesses cannot use their notes at all, while attorneys are not recommended to use their notes and need to memorize their opening and closing statements. Being online gave the team the opportunity to use their notes and to verbally discuss strategies with each other.
Maddie Putman, who was a witness for the prosecution and an attorney for the defense at Regionals, says that overall, the team enjoyed being online. "We had to memorize less, which was nice. We also didn't have to be on camera the entire time, which was also great!"
The team has just begun preparing for State Finals, planning for fewer all-club meetings and more one-on-one, attorney-witness pair meetings. As the competition approaches, they hope to put together a clean and confident presentation for the judges and finish with the feeling that they did their best.