Order in the court! At six p.m., May 5, witnesses gathered at Buena High to hear the Mock Trial team present the case of  Cobey v. Smith. Defendant Jaime Cobey was accused of murdering her landlord, Erik Smith, by putting a rattlesnake in his mailbox. 

Mock Trial teaches students to examine evidence and practice how to present it to a jury.  Students in Mock Trial get to learn from real, trained  lawyers and are taught how to present opening statements,present evidence to a jury as well as perform closing statement

Freshman Solana Warren played two roles during the showcase, the defendant and the defendant’s lawyer. Warren was not the only one since many students on the Mock Trial team had to fill multiple roles as the program was short participants. 

Hoping to connect to the audience and keep their attention, Warren made eye contact with the audience which also helped her arguments become more convincing.

“I’ll make eye contact with someone in  the audience, and I can see that they’re kind of like ‘Oh, you’re right.. That does make sense, ” Warren said.  

However, Warren’s favorite part was embodying the role of a lawyer when she’s up there giving her statements. The satisfaction when people gave her the ‘I agree with your statement’ look and continued to support her speech motivated her more to keep working. 

“Then we finally had a date set in May, because we were having trouble with sports, the spring musical and with just generally not being ready,” Warren said. 

Warren explained that they started preparing in September. The showcase was originally in February but since the Mock Trial team is almost entirely freshman, they needed more time to prepare. They kept pushing back dates due to some people not being available and with sports.