Cartersville High School’s Mock Trial team had its first competition on Saturday, February 7th, at the Floyd County courthouse. Led by Judge Samir Patel and Attorney Zack Moore, the team consists of eight juniors and seniors playing the roles of attorneys and witnesses in a pretend murder case, State of Georgia v. Logan Haynes. Members include Issac Evans, Sofia DeRenzo, Jack Johnson, Ethan Nix, Emery Ponder, Maggie Sheffield, King Williams, and Brayden Yrabedra. The team placed second at the competition, with seniors Issac Evans and Sophia DeRenzo winning awards for Best Attorney and Best Witness, respectively. The team went on to compete again on Saturday, February 28th, in Dalton, Georgia.
Very little will prepare you for being accused of murder in front of an entire courtroom, including a jury of your peers who hold your fate in their hands – except, of course, Mock Trial.
As a disclaimer, I must include that those involved in Mock Trial do not condone murder under any means; however, they will encourage you to put your acting skills to the test.
Those who know me will attest to the fact that I am a very soft-spoken person, with a tendency to be introverted and reserved. Safe to say then, it certainly was a shock to me when I was asked to play an alleged loan shark and member of the Russian mafia, Alexandra “Sasha” Korchnoi. She was the first to be charged with the murder of Zoe Torrence, the crime at the heart of our Mock Trial case. Now, she is testifying for the state of Georgia to point the blame at the man Zoe co-owned a restaurant with, Logan Haynes, claiming she witnessed Haynes threaten Zoe at knifepoint the night she was locked in the restaurant’s refrigerator to die from hypothermia. Then, I was asked to fill another witness role, that of C.J. Morgan, a woman close to Zoe Torrence who claimed to know of her anxiety regarding Korchnoi and had even heard straight from Korchnoi’s mouth a confession that she had killed Torrence. Morgan testifies for the Defense, meaning I testified both when our Prosecution and Defense teams were up to compete.
Mock Trial allowed me to explore a love of theatrics that I had long since abandoned as a younger child. I had always imagined that I would become wracked with stage fright the moment I took the witness stand, but answering questions was easier when hiding behind the façade of a character. There is no room to stop and cringe with embarrassment when everyone else is caught up pretending with you, the round moving at a lightning pace.
To be a witness, you’re required to know the statement that has been provided for your character back and front. Things can turn difficult quickly when the opposing counsel catches you blurring certain facts, throwing quotes from the statement back at you to catch you in a lie, intentional or not. Whenever that happened to me (maybe once or twice throughout the entire competition), it was always a challenge to find a way to justify what I had just said without making my character look like a liar and myself look unprepared. In the first two trials of the day, I did not always meet those challenges the way I would have hoped. But that’s the thing about Mock Trial – there is only so much you can study; the rest of it is cultivating the ability to think fast on your feet.
The competition consisted of three rounds. To keep us fully immersed in what we were doing, there was a shroud of mystery around the whole event. We weren’t allowed to know which school the team we were going up against was from, nor were we allowed to know whether our side had won the trial after a round concluded. In between rounds, all eight of us, as well as our advisors, squeezed into a crowded conference room, debriefing, celebrating little successes, and going over our mistakes. It’s not as if we forgot to have fun, though – we snacked on pizza and chips while cracking jokes as well.
When the long day of competing concluded at long last, every team and their advisors squeezed into a crowded courtroom to hear awards read out and the final results announced. I held bated breath, even as I tried not to get my hopes up. Only the top three teams would be given the chance to advance to the next level. After all our hard work, I couldn’t imagine just being done with these characters and roles; my mind was already thinking up ways to improve my performances. My confidence only started to grow when my teammates Issac and Sofia began claiming awards, until finally, it was revealed that we had secured second place. Perhaps much like my characters who claimed to realize the truth of the circumstances they had borne witness to, hindsight was 20/20 for me, too. It seemed impossible that we couldn’t have won after the fact. As a team, we had all worked to lift each other up, and that strength was the foundation on which we successfully forged the path to victory. I am excited to see what is next in store for Mock Trial!
