by Cate Waters
North’s mock trial team ended its season in the final four out of 150 Massachusett teams Wednesday, March 18. The team’s final score against Windsor was 112-110 at the John Moakley Courthouse.
The team was proud of their performance against Windsor.
“Everyone put in the time, the work, the commitment, and at the end, it all just clicked. I’m especially proud of our newer members, who stepped up to the tasks they were given and did exceptionally well,” said senior SeungWan Kang, team captain.
The team has been waiting to make it to the final four for a few years.
“It’s been eight years since we made it to the sweet 16 and 10 years since we made the final four. I really like how we improved each trial and went toe-to-toe with Windsor,” said Elghazzawi.
The case this year was about a man who was charged with first degree murder, but the defense claimed he shot the man out of self-defense, according to senior Adam Elghazzawi.
The scoring is based off of how many roles, eight attorney roles and three witness roles, are performed in each case. Each team had a total of 11 roles, each worthy of 10 points, the total possible points is 110. The “judge” can also give a maximum of an additional five points to either team, if they felt the team did an overall good job.
“Each judge for mock trial is either an actual Massachusetts judge or a lawyer,” said senior Cameron Hunt.
The team that wins the court’s verdict is not always the team that wins the competition. The score given by the “judge” “is based on knowledge of the law, quality of the materials presented, as well as performance, composer, witness strength, and also, to an extent, the thoroughness of the teams overall case theory,” according to junior Eric Chen.
Each year the team is given one case in October which it work on and present in January.
In a regular mock trial practice “we each work on whatever roles we chose and improve it. We have two coaches who help us, one of them being an attorney,” said Elghazzawi.