Elite Eight Shodown: Santiago v. Murrieta Black- who advanced to the elite eight?

The Mock Trial Team of Santiago High School experienced a devastating loss this past Saturday, February 25th, 2016 as they faced off against Murrieta Black. Santiago’s defense council brought the motion in the pretrial argument with their pretrial attorney, Haley Metz (9). Haley clashed with the judge, answering every single question thrown her way until the devastating mention of the exclusionary clause, which had never been covered in any of the mock trial practices. The exclusionary clause stumped this young attorney and played a part in her loss against her opponent from Murrieta High School. With the judge denying the defense’s motion to exclude a statement made by the defendant, the trial began and the trial attorneys took their seats at their designated tables- prosecution closest to the jury box with the scoring attorneys.
Opening statements were made and then the trial began. Witness after witness, our attorneys battled with objections and intense lines of questioning, but was that enough?
Our witnesses acted to the best of their abilities, stumping Murrieta’s attorneys on the occasion and their witnesses doing the same to ours.
One of Murrieta’s attorneys called the objection of badgering a witness- this is NOT an objection used in mock trial, and Santiago’s attorneys missed their opportunity on calling the other team out on their wrong doing. The judge even agreed with the other team, telling Santiago’s newest attorney, Collin Holstein (11), to calm down. This could have been a major point loss for the defense, had it not evened itself out with one of Murrieta’s attorneys later overstepping their boundaries and badgering one of our own witnesses. At least our attorney made the right call with an argumentative objection against the prosecution team, which the judge sustained and told Murrieta’s team to calm down.
The direct and cross examinations of the witnesses were soon over with and the closing arguments were made. Followed by wisely chosen rebuttals from both sides. Sadly, there were a few stumbles on the execution of articulation for Santiago, and none for the prosecution.

This was a close match, but Santiago lost its spot heading into elite eight and Murrieta went in undefeated. The loss was a mere 20 points, which might sound like a lot in soccer or some other sport/activity, but in mock trial land, it’s more like 2 or 3 due to the way multipliers work.

The staff writers of the Shark Attack would still like to congratulate the Mock Trial team on a job well done and wish them luck and support as the team members go on to explore new chapters of their lives- and congratulations to Dominic Santilla (11) on his second place blue ribbon win. Don’t give up mock trailers, you still have next year! Maybe you’ll make elite eight and… WIN!!!