Technology triumphed at the first meet of the Mock Trial season, held over zoom on Jan. 26 after months of preparation and uncertainties caused by Covid-19. Despite these difficulties and courts being shut down, the team compiled an impressive three-team roster and watched two of those teams win their respective trials.

Having so many students apply this year, the program, which normally features two teams, brought three separate squads to preliminaries. The Varsity team (SLUH Navy) competed as the prosecution against Visitation and won an impressive two of the three ballots. The JV-I team (SLUH White) competed as the prosecution against Lutheran South, losing all three ballots. The JV-II team (SLUH Blue) competed as the defense against Lindbergh, and, despite being the most inexperienced team, won two of their three ballots. 

Each year, the Mock Trial team receives a different case to work on. Roles are divided between witnesses who take on the identity of one of six assigned witnesses and attorneys who are responsible for questioning the witnesses and presenting the case. This year’s case is themed off of the board game Clue and is a murder mystery where defendant Parker Crimson is accused of murdering billionaire Charles Grey in his mansion. Brought to testify for the prosecution in the trial were Detective Jaylen Curry (played by junior Andy Harris for the SLUH Navy team and senior Alex Unseth for SLUH White), Professor and a potential alternative suspect Landry Chartreuse (played by star senior witness Nathan Malawey for SLUH Navy and Tommy Riley for SLUH White), and butler and Grey confidant Arizona Waddlesworth (played by junior Eli Dernlan for SLUH Navy and sophomore Christopher St. John for SLUH White). 

Senior captain Carter Fortman led SLUH Navy attorneys along with fellow senior Charlie Albus and juniors Peter James and Jack Rybak. SLUH White was led by juniors Patrick Mooney, Matthew Leight, Adam Fennewald and freshman Declan Richards. SLUH Blue (the defense team) was anchored by a witness cast of Grey nephew Jamie Oliver (played by Alex Eckert), Crimson’s private security guard Reece Warren (played by freshman Drew Winkler), and reporter Dakota Forest (played by freshman Ian Taylor). Freshman captain Grayson Stevenson presented the case alongside fellow freshmen co-counsel Patrick Busch, Andrew Reily, and Ben Robert. 

Both students and Mock Trial moderator Anne Marie Lodholz thoroughly enjoyed this year's case.

“It’s fun, it’s a great case, theres a lot of detail, as you can imagine from a murder mystery based off Clue. It’s a fun case, it’s entertaining, there’s good character development. It’s the classic who did it. It is a good entertainment piece, which is what I think everyone needs this year,” said Lodholz.

The two teams made up of mostly underclassmen performed admirably. Even though the meeting was over Zoom, the students performed very well, with almost no technological troubles.

“The guys handled Zoom really well, they handled it exceptionally well. There’s a lot of lawyers right now who are trying to figure out how the heck do you Zoom, in order to get depositions and run cases. And these guys handled it really well, that was the least of their challenges,” said Lodholz. “But for the underclassmen, you can never really prepare anybody for their first trial, it’s kind of like when you get behind the wheel, you just have to drive, or when you get on a bike. So to hold their own is impressive.”

“It has been pretty stressful with everyone online for the most part. It has been kind of hard to organize everyone and group them together. But we all put in the effort and the devotion and we did pretty well in our trial,” said Stevenson.

The end of the first meeting of the year brought with it a win in two out of the three ballots, but a negative nine point differential for the SLUH team, since one out of the three ballots had a very low score. Overall, the result was good for the first meeting of the year. 

“A weakness we have is we don’t always have a really finessed theme, which is like a catchphrase that gets people, it’s sort of like the one-liner. And again it's because we don't have a totally scripted trial. So finding that balance, where you can have a catchphrase that doesn’t feel cheesy and awkward, but yet still gets the jurors attention,” said Lodholz. “Our guys are really logical, they have a very good understanding of the law, and with some practice they are very good at objections, and understanding the federal rules of evidence. They’re very good at thinking on their feet, we don’t script a lot, we come up with an agenda of what we want to get out of each witness.”

“Right afterwards, I thought we had lost all three ballots for Varsity and all three trials in general so winning two trials was a great surprise for me,” said Fortman. “But for the first meeting of the year it was a good result, especially considering the lack of preparation we had in comparison with other years.”