The CTE Center Competitive Mock Trial Team competed against the Mock Trial classes at the CTE Center on Monday and Tuesday. While the competitive team has been preparing one case for months, the class focuses more on overall knowledge and processes of a mock trial.

For this trial, the case used was Musee D. Orso v Seascape Property and Casualty Insurance Company.

“The Musee D. Orso case was the one we used for competition this year,” Wakeland senior and CTE team member Nikitha Bolla said. “We’ve been working with the case for the past few months, and with our arguments, we were able to place second in the state.”

While the competitive team is stepping back into roles they’ve had for months, students in the Mock Trial class have been working on the case for a much shorter period of time.

“We got the case in class three weeks ago,“ senior Isra Mohammed said. “Every day in class we’ve been working together in small groups to get ready for the trial.”

Due to the differences in how long both sides have had the case, the process of preparation was vastly different for those in the class and those on the CTE team.

“We started off by making pro and con lists for each witness,“ Mohammed said. “We then worked together in class on direct examinations, and the attorneys worked on the cross examinations on their own.”

As a witness, Bolla’s preparation was much more concise than Mohammed’s.

“I did some brief preparation before the trial, like reading my fact statement and reviewing the direct examination,” Bolla said. “I mainly relied on the months of work I had already done, almost like muscle memory.”

While the two sides had different experiences in the trials, both found it beneficial.

“This was the first time I’ve been impeached as a witness and the most intense cross I’ve ever experienced,” Mohammed said. “It was nice to compete against a team that was more prepared than we were, and it showed me how beneficial practicing cross examination is.”

Centennial senior Prisha Mehta is an attorney for the CTE team, and while she’s had the case for months, she still found the trials to be a worthwhile experience.

“It was interesting to see how their case theories and structure differed from ours, especially with how much we changed all of our content over the season,” Mehta said. “They brought up some really great points, and I was really impressed by how well they were able to put together a strong case with only a few weeks to prepare.”