Yosemite wins county Mock Trial

by Lacey Rees - of the Sierra Star

 

MADERA — Yosemite High School has won the Madera County Mock Trial competition and will represent the county at the state Mock Trial to be held in March.

Yosemite competed against Madera High School last Sa­turday, and the results were an­nounced on Wednesday morn­ing.

Mock Trial competition is a simulation of an actual criminal court case in which students are trial participants. Each school provides a prosecution team and a defense team. Each round consists of one school’s defense team going up against another’s prosecution team.

This year’s case, provided by the Constitutional Right Foun­dation, is a trial on the crime of arson. It featured a pretrial argument on the Fourth and 14th amend­ments to the Consti­tu­tion.

This year’s Yosemite students whose presentations were noteworthy and merited special re­cognition were: Sarah Scott, pretrial motion attorney for both prosecution and defense; Ryan O’Hanlon, prosecution trial at­tor­ney; and Colt Hardcastle, witness for the prosecution.

Also meriting special recognition were: Saranya Srinivasan, de­fense trial attorney, and Brook Bullock, witness for the defense.

Other students participating were Shane Deckert, Nekayah Goe­dert, Dalene Herrera, Jen­nifer Kurtley, Josef Lucan, Kris­tin Lucan, Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, Gary Smith, Veronica Stew­art and Amanda Vawter.

 

Teacher is coach

Yosemite’s mock trial coach this year is YHS English teacher, Jimmy Lee. This is his first year to coach Yosemite’s Mock Trial although he has had prior Mock Trial experience.

Each round is presided over by a volunteer judge from the Madera Superior Court. This year it was Judge Ed Moffat.

The rounds are also scored by working attorneys. Those were Gina Barsotti, Julia Brungess, Joe Gasperetti, David Jenkins, Bruce Kennedy, Kimberly Kratt, Bryan Martin, Steven Mortimer, Roberta Rowe, Leslie West­more­land, Robert Williams, and Eric Wyatt.

 

Coach adds praises

“I want everybody know that Sarah Scott, Joseph Lucan, Ryan O’Hanlan, and Saranya Srini­vasan were, in my estimation, outstanding,” says Mr. Lee. “They spent hours and hours preparing for this, and they helped coach the team since the latter part of September” because they had experience other years.

“Their effort was simply stellar,” he continues.  “We couldn’t have done as well without those four on the team.”

Individually, Sarah Scott, showed some “signs of brilliance” during the pretrial when questioned by Judge Moffat, says Mr. Lee. She was quick on her feet and answered every question [the judge] asked.

“Joseph Lucan’s performance as both a prosecuting and de­fense attorney was outstanding, and his closing arguments were persuasive,” says Mr. Lee.

Saranya’s performance as defense attorney was also outstanding especially when it came to cross-examining the prosecution witnesses.  “She verbally pounded a couple of them into submission,” Mr. Lee remembers.

And Ryan O’Hanlan as a prosecuting attorney, in terms of mock trial, “was almost phenomenal. He used no notes whatso-ever, and made objections which halted the defense’s line of reasoning to the point of confusion,” says the YHS coach.

Mr. Lee commends all the witnesses for “doing such an outstanding job of memorizing their witness statements and being professional on the stand under cross-examination.”

The witnesses for the prosecution were Shane Deckert, Colt Hardcastle, Nekayah Goedert and Gabriella Ripley-Phipps.

Witnesses for the defense were Kristin Lucan, Gary Smith, Veronica Stewart, and Brook Bullock.

Dalene Herrera was the bailiff and Kristin Lucan was both the clerk and timekeeper.

“Kristin’s position as time keeper was essential to our success in the competition and she is to be commended for the job she did,” lauded Mr. Lee.

 

Scrimmages, too

The team scrimmaged with Buchan­an High School before Yosemite’s competition which was “very, very helpful,” says Mr. Lee. Before the state competition the team will probably go down to Clovis and scrimmage again with Buchanan before Buchanan’s county competition in mid-February.

The teams scrimmaged in the courtroom of the San Joa­quin Col­lege of Law.

Mr. Lee also thanks Richard L. McMechan, retired Mariposa County Superior Court judge. “He presided over our practices and was invaluable in teaching the kids what it is really like in a court room.”  He taught the students proper courtroom decorum and the proper use of objections and the best way to direct questions to elicit the proper testimony.

Mock Trial is coordinated by the Madera County Office of Education.