Oxford Academy’s newly minted mock trial team participated in their first competitions against Tesoro High School on Nov. 7th and Rosary Academy on 14th at the Superior Court of Orange County in Santa Ana.
Formed as a branch of the existing OA Law and Politics club, the team was founded by junior Nandita Bussa through the Constitutional Rights Foundation to provide members with real-world experiences.
“Oxford’s very much a STEM-focused school…and so we have a lot of aspiring doctors, computer scientists, engineers, and of course [businesspeople],” Bussa said. “But we don’t really see any sort of classes [for law]. And…maybe Oxford doesn’t have the biggest demographic of students who want to pursue a legal career, but they should still have options.”
AP Government and Psychology teacher Mr. Taylor advises both the team and the club, supervising the team’s practices every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. As the school’s social studies department chair, Mr. Taylor has valuable experience to offer the students, and he hopes to show them the legitimacy of America’s legal justice system.
“[The legal system] isn’t perfect, but [it’s] still one of the best in the world,” Mr. Taylor said. “It’s problematic—again, like I said, it’s imperfect, but…it’s still a system based on justice and fairness and accountability.”
Mock trial competitions have high school teams compete by allowing students to portray attorneys and witnesses based on a fictional criminal case. The teams work with teachers and professional attorney coaches to strengthen their performances and advance through the competition.
Oxford’s team is split into prosecution and defense; the former concentrates on proving the defendant guilty of the crime, while the latter targets the problematic information to create reasonable doubt in the prosecution’s case. During practices, the team studies the case packet—the facts, witness statements, and case law—to create and review their scripts, which include their arguments and responses to potential objections.
The prosecution competed against Tesoro’s defense on Nov. 7th, ultimately losing the case but learning more about the particulars of mock trial. Bussa added that going up against an experienced team taught them “countless tiny things.”
“I’m still really proud of the team for making it this far,” Bussa said. “The score ended up being 418-375, which is good for our first time. We’ve got a lot to revise, but I have high hopes for the second round next week.”
Learning from the prosecution to face Rosary on the 14th, the defense proved the defendant not guilty through strong opening and closing statements, witness testimonies and cross examinations. Although they lost the round by 11 points, the team remains hopeful and will continue honing their skills for future competitions.
“We hit the ground running this year, you know,” Mr. Taylor said. “[We want opportunities to] build up organization, protocols, processes, all those kinds of things so that we can have a really streamlined, efficient team.”
