Santiago’s Mock Trial team had their first official scrimmage this past Friday at the Riverside County  Court House against one of their biggest rivals- Hemet.

The highlights of the event are as follows:

For Defense: One of Santiago’s newly appointed attorneys was able to impeach the opposing team’s prosecution’s expert witness during the cross examination.  Following the reading of the witnesses statement to said witness, the attorney giving the cross examination asked the following line of questions, “Mrs. Greyjoy, you just contradicted your own witness statement, didn’t you?” to which Hemet’s witness responded “in your terms, I guess I did”. The final question that followed was something that stayed with those in the court room for the rest of the trial, “were you lying then, or were you lying now?”, the witness responded with “neither”, which did nothing to help her or her team. This is something that hardly ever happens in Mock Trial and an event that our Mock Trial Captain, Michael Kiely (12), has dreamed of happening since his freshman year.

For Prosecution: A few hours before the trial began, Miles Waites (12), has informed that he could be conducting the trial without his co council, Youseff Jakher (12). Jakher had a high running fever and was unable to attend the scrimmage. Waites conducted the trial using Jakher’s notes, but otherwise was on his own. The team’s attorney coach went in with little expectation, but was pleasantly surprised by the outcome of Miles performance. A big round of applause went up for this one man show after the trial had ended.

Although still early in the year, the trial went on decently enough. The main issue was timing; which the team is working out by shortening their line of questioning and openings/closings, which are given at the beginning and end of the trial as an introduction/closer. The other issue? Kindness. The team will be working on being more aggressive with the witnesses in order to better control the direction of the questions and the witnesses’ answers.

As your (Santiago Sharks Mock Trial Team of 2016-2017 ) season approaches, the Santiago Journalism Team (Shark Attack) would like to wish you: Good luck!