Briannas' Blog

In the seventh and eight grade, we had a mock trial. We had one last year, with John Fraher as our teacher, but that was pretty much reading off of a script, and the final decision, like whether the person was guilty or not, was already chosen for us. This trail we had another lawyer from the school who came in. He taught the defendant lawyers and John taught the prosecution. I was a defendant. I really enjoyed being from this side. I felt like the defendant was a lot easier than the prosecution and Kasra explained why. It was because the prosecution had to have the jury think “beyond a reasonable doubt” that my client did the crime. So if there was any doubt, which there was a lot of with the evidence, as to whether she did it or not, the prosecution would have to come back with something so strong, it brings the negative beck into positive, but even furthur. I really enjoyed this process and the way Kasra taught us how to go about writing everything. And I want to thank John for writing the whole case out for us, because we had a large and detailed packet.

In this trail we had 8 defense layers and 8 prosecution layers. We then had 4 trails, 2 going on at the same time, then another 2. So we were each on a team with a person and had to split up the jobs which were the opening, 4 examinations, and a closing. The defense had once direct examination, because it had one witness, Monica Hewitt how was our client, and we had 3 cross-examinations because the prosecution called three witnesses to the stand. I was in one of the the first trials and I was in the common room.

I thought that being a lawyer is a lot of fun when you are in the court, but the preparing process is very difficult. You just have so many facts and things that you need to bring up. And so many rules as to what you can say. Well, not that many but every rule makes it harder. In this trail I was paired with Tobin, and I did the opening and two cross examinations. And he did the closing and one cross exam and one direct exam. I really didn’t care what I did so I let him choose. Looking back I realize that I would have had a lot of fun doing the closing, but I am glad he did it. Honestly I think that’s what wrapped the whole thing up for the jury mind wise.

I really liked what Kasra said about when your in court it is like a show. And I like acting. So I really enjoyed my opening more than all the things that I did. I really like to speak, and the questions really didn’t let me speak in the way I wanted to. As for the questions, I really didn’t do a good job on the interview with Robert Diamond. I don’t think my questions were that good, and they just didn’t emphasize the stuff against the prosecution like how I thought they would. As for Sandra, I thought I did ok. I meant, it didn’t put the nail in the coffin as far as questioning, but I did provide doubt in the juries mind.

When I was saying my opening I got lost for a second when a class came in late, but other than that, I thought I did pretty well. I was so amazed at how hard it was to bring all the information that I had for the trial, into my opening. I had so many notes, so many thoughts, that it was hard to get it onto paper. I want to thank Kasra who really helped out the defendants just making it so clear what to do, he had so many methods and ways to get around being argumentative, which was something you can’t do in the opening. All you have to do is put, “the evidence will show….” then your all fine as far as argumentative goes. I ended up taking a lot of time redoing my opening, writing all different things, most of which i didn’t end up using, two days before, because I thought my opening was really bad and I had to change everything. I woke up the next morning refreshed, finished the opening, and added  and took away a ton of questions for the witnesses. So lessoned learned, is that you have to have a refreshed mind sometimes to get something done. I think being a lawyer would be way to overwhelming for me, but I liked this process a lot and will look forward to it next year.