Three cars slow to form a sharp line before the red light at Gardner and Main.
They are illegal racers at the starting line, all between the ages of 18 and 20, challenging city law. Before the light turns, one of them, a girl of nineteen years, drives up alongside the lead car and onto the wrong side of the road. She revs her engine daringly. Green — they take off, and the girl immediately loses control, and she smashes into a light pole. Her passenger escapes, but the wreck pins her down as the flames from the engine spread. Paramedics take her to the hospital, but she is dead. The police arrest the man in the lead vehicle, and charge him with vehicular manslaughter. Fortunately for him, government authorities do not care about fictitious crimes. Only the Mock Trial team does.

Each year, the team deals with a realistic, but fake case for which they must practice and prepare throughout the year in a coordinated effort. “We have the same case all year,” said Laura Brown, the president of Mock Trial, “We keep working until we have it nailed.”

The Constitutional Rights Foundation takes credit for the competition, which occurs each year during February. According the CRF web site (http://www.crf-usa.org/), they are, “a non-profit, non-partisan, community-based organization dedicated to educating America’s young people about the importance of civic participation in a democratic society.” To compete in their competition is the main goal of Mock Trial.

“You get scored by each performance: your opening statement, cross-examination, closing statement," said teacher Suzan Stewart, the advisor of Mock Trial, speaking on the mock trial competition. "It’s not whether you win or lose. The competition is held in the courthouse in San Jose, and it’s scored by real lawyers.” Eventually, the scores of each performance are compiled and the winner is thus determined.

Before the preliminaries begin on Feb. 1, there will be the pretrial hearing, in which members must determine the bearing of past Supreme Court decisions on this case. The results of pretrial become the premise for the main trial. “The pretrial is important because it determines if certain information will be included or excluded from the trial based on constitutional decisions,” said senior Daniel Sheehan, the prosecuting pretrial attorney. There are two attorneys during pretrial (one for prosecution and one for defense.)

During the main trial, the team must be ready to argue for and against the defendant. “We have to prove that Vanessa [the victim] was in control of her own destiny, and it didn’t matter what Damien [the defendant] did,” said junior Matt Sheehan, one of the three defense attorneys. “One of the things we’ll argue to prove that is that his accelerator was broken. We also talk about Vanessa’s state of mind.”

“This year I think it’s going to be harder for the defense,” Sheehan continued, “the burden of proof is always on the prosecution, but this year there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that makes that easier for them.”

In addition to the attorneys, there are four witnesses for each side, who must all memorize the details of the case. “There’s a lot of acting,” Brown said, “To play a part in this, it’s really important to think on your feet.”

The team plans to scrimmage Menlo this December, as they have done in the past. “We won last year,” Brown said. “It’s always fun to beat Menlo in the scrimmage.”

The scrimmage at Menlo is informal as the team wears normal clothes. "It’s a good way to see where we’re at," D. Sheehan said. As the year goes by, trials become progressively more trying. “We have more formal scrimmages in January.”

According to Brown, there are four really good schools in Mock Trial. “They’re called “the three Ls and the P — that’s Lincoln, Leeland, Lynbrook and Paly. We only won state once in 1991.”

Many of the schools have Mock Trial as an official class. “They get a lot of help from real attorneys… That’s why it always feels good to beat them, like we did last year," D. Sheehan said.

“For people who are interested in the legal process, Mock Trial is a great opportunity to learn what that’s like,” D. Sheehan said. Though it’s too late to join the team this year, there’s always next year.