By: Samantha Ginsberg and Alexavier Wan
Justice has been served by the Murrow Mock Trial team.
Murrow’s Mock Trial Team competed in February in the 2024 New York State Mock Trial Competition at the US District Courthouse in Brooklyn. The team had some early success only to be ousted in the second round of the tournament.
The team won its opening-round match against Staten Island’s Tottenville High School before losing to Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn.
“The best thing about our team is how we can honestly make the experience so fun,” said team president Penelope Day, who is co-editor in chief of the Network. “Whether we win or lose, we’re always making memories and inside jokes together.”
Image: The Mock Trial team at their first competition in 2024.
According to its website, the New York State Mock Trial Competition gives thousands of high school students first-hand knowledge of civil/criminal law and courtroom procedures.
The program is a joint venture of the New York Bar Foundation, the New York State Bar Association, and the Law, Youth and Citizenship Program.
High schools can compete against each other with hypothetical cases with the goal of obtaining more points than the opponent. In a match, the two teams get three attorneys and three witnesses for the prosecution and defense halves, as well as a person to keep track of time called the Time Keeper.
There are multiple preliminary rounds before a school can make it to the top eight, and out of the eight only two would move on to the final round which then the winner would be named NYS Mock Trial Champions for whichever year they participated in.
This is the first Mock Trial Team since the Covid pandemic. Although the school’s been doing Moot Court for a couple of years, Mock Trial is a whole experience, especially since the school named a new team advisor, Ms. Cayla Pellegrino.
“What I learned from being in charge of the Mock Trial Team was educating myself about the law and learning more about the country’s legal system,” said Ms. Pellegrino, a social studies teacher.
Ms. Pellegrino also said she gained a lot of insight about how the government deals with cases at court when managing the Mock Trial Team.
“We learned how to compete in a Mock Trial and grew the necessary skills,” she says.
Ms. Pellegrino also said that despite being eliminated from the competition, she was pleased with the team’s results this year. Out of a possible score of 69, the team recorded 59 points, and debated about The People of the State of Nirvana v. Lindsay Gordon, a case related to arson.
Day, who served as a prosecution attorney, said she was pleased with the performance but, “We have a long way to go and I definitely feel that we can improve as a team,” she said.
Mock Trial Team member Alice Donohoe, who was a part of the matchup against FDR and served as the second defense attorney, said she enjoyed the experience but it was challenging at times.
“There was definitely stress,” the sophomore said. “But getting the correct answer from a witness, my teammates, and sometimes winning makes it very much worth it.”
Featured Image: The team poses in front of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse in Cadman Plaza before a competition.
The Murrow Network 