The following article was printed in the Clermont Community Press on Wednesday, April 13, 2011:
MOCK TRIAL WAS FUN LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR ST. THOMAS MORE STUDENTS
By By Kellie Geist-May
(see trial photos below)
With all the pressure for students to do well on state assessments, many teachers are finding themselves teaching to the tests.
The St. Thomas More Mock Trial was held Friday, April 8, in Municipal Court Judge Ken Zuk's courtroom. The eighth-graders have been working with county law officials since early February. Luckily that doesn’t always mean keeping the kids at a desk staring into a textbook. At St. Thomas More, the eighth-graders learned civics, language arts and public speaking skills through the school’s second mock trial.
“The mock trial is really a great learning experience for the students,” said St. Thomas More Principal Peg Fischer. “Yes, they are learning civics, but they also are learning the power of language and practicing public speaking skills.”‘
The trial was coordinated and run by Clermont County Municpal Court Judge Kenneth Zuk’s staff as well as a variety of other county volunteers and school staff members. In fact, after Collin Threet and Jena Molitor were “arraigned” in February, the mentor attorneys came to school multiple times to work with the prosecution and defense teams.
This year’s case involved two couples who allegedly got into a fight at a rival basketball game. Threet and Molitor were charged with assault and the trial was held in Zuk’s courtroom Friday, April 8. The other two students involved in the fight testified as witnesses.
“It was a complicated case … but they really got into their roles and did a great job. When you start something like this, you never know how the kids are going to react, but they really bought into it,” Zuk said.
The defense team took an interesting approached to the situation – mentor attorneys Cathy Adams and Amelia Morgan spent the day in nun habits and, when Molitor was on the stand, she was clutching The Bible.
“We wanted to make them (Threet and Molitor) seem as innocent as possible,” said Rachel McGrath, mock defense attorney. “We also had to make sure our stories were together and without reasonable doubt.”
The prosecution, on the other hand, wanted to make sure the defendants looked like “animals with claws,” mock prosecuting attorney Katie Farr said.
“We studied the fact pattern and used those elements to prove our side,” she said.
The jury deliberated for about an hour after closing statements. In the end, only Molitor was found guilty. She was sentenced to three months of community service helping her family clean the house.
“In real life, she could have gotten 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, but she didn’t have a record and community service is the kind of the thing you do for people in situations like this,” Zuk said. “It was an appropriate punishment, I think.”
Molitor didn’t think so.
Clermont County Municipal Court Judge Ken Zuk explains the jury procedures to the audience at the St. Thomas More Mock Trial Friday, April 8. Normally the jury would go through the procedures, but this year's group of eighth-graders had talked about the rules before the trial started.
“After the sentencing, my mom got up and started dancing,” she said. Molitor said it was punishment enough to see her mother doing the ‘cabbage patch’ dance in public.
Overall the students said the experience was fun and educational.
“I think the mock trial is something they should do again – and maybe at other schools,” Threet said. “It was a good learning experience and it was fun.”