Revere High School’s Mock Trial team spent the year preparing their case; however, the team lost at the OCLRE district competition but won individual awards.

Mock trial started work in mid-September and ended on January 30. Senior Devin Seay said that the team got the case in September and met every Tuesday.

The team spends the year preparing their case, then argues their case in front of a judge against an opposing school and hopes to defeat the other side.

Adviser Ellen Friery spoke of mock trial’s activities.

“Mock trial is a competitive extracurricular activity. Every school that does it gets the case for that year at the same time in September, and the competition is in February, so every school gets five months to prepare,” Friery said.

Friery also commented on how they prepare.

“It depends on the case [which are about] 200 pages of legal documents. Every student who is interested starts by reading the case. We have to go to real court,” Friery said.

Friery also explained how the team analyzes the case.

“We break the case down and divide it into two parts. One part is analyzing the case ,which [takes] about half an hour to forty five minutes with our legal adviser, [who]comes to help the kids learn the vocabulary, issues, the laws . . . and then we spend part of the class learning procedure,” Friery said.

Students have competitions with other schools and have roles in the case. Senior Abbey Niemi commented on the competitions.
“The students who worked as attorneys argued the case, and the students portraying witnesses testified as their characters,” Niemi said.

Seay explained the positive effects mock trial has had on his high school experience.

“Mock Trial has helped me to become a better public speaker and it improved [my] friendships. I would recommend, it,” Seay said.

This year the case involved a food fight at a prison. A guard fractured a prisoner’s wrist while the guard tried to restrain the prisoner.

The seniors on the team include Megan Gilroy, Jessica Hill, Aaron Kelley, Brady Marks, Niemi, Maddie Newingham and Seay.

Tom Kelley is the team’s offical legal adviser and Friery is the teacher advisor. They did not win at districts, but Niemi and Garrison Peter won best witness awards and Newingham won best attorney.