A bill referred to as “Sam’s Law” is currently making its way through the Washington State Legislature. Just last week, the House Community Safety and Reentry Committee held hearings on the potential new statute that would increase the penalties for hazing on college campuses from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor and/or felony. The motivation driving the bill is the 2019 death of Washington State University freshman, Sam Martinez, of alcohol poisoning at a fraternity hazing event.
The current disposition of Washington state law regarding hazing loomed in the background of the CHS Personal and Business Law class’s criminal mock trial last week. A mock trial is a competition – in this instance an intra-class competition - in which students simulate a real trial. This semester, the “Biz Law” class tackled a disturbing case in which an 18-year-old fraternity pledge who, while rushing and with a blood alcohol content three times the driving limit, fell to his death from a concrete plant tower.
Should the members of the fraternity be charged in the student’s death? If so, should those charges be misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, or a felony like manslaughter? These are some of the questions that the “Biz Law” students had to work through as they prepared for “trial.”
Personal and Business Law teacher, Kirk Sunitsch, describes mock trial as “‘relevance of coursework.’ When I teach, the biggest thing I want the kids to do is take what they learn in class and apply it. We have gone over criminal law and court procedure. Now, it's time to bring those learned skills to relevance. My students, in a trial simulation, learn how to become a juror, how voir dire – or jury selection – works and then they head into the ‘court room’ to further demonstrate what they have learned in class while applying the appropriate law, which they have also learned, to the case at hand.”
The four-to-six-week project, culminating in the actual trial, involves a lot of preparation: securing a judge to hear the case – in this instance appellate judge Kenneth Grosse; reserving space to serve as court rooms at the firehouse across the street from CHS; finding willing students to serve as the jury pool; assigning roles to the class (attorneys, witnesses, bailiffs, court room artist, etc.); putting together prosecution and defense teams; and more.
Sunitsch is no stranger to the process though, having conducted mock trials “just about every time [he] has taught a law class, which is somewhere between 12 and 15 times over [his] 23 years [at CHS].” Sunitsch continued by relaying that “case packets are given to the ‘lawyers’ before Christmas break so they can prepare over the holidays.
When they return, they meet with witnesses, select a jury, get court rooms set up, etc. The prep work for the kids is substantial. They all have to learn their parts. It’s almost like being in drama with witnesses learning their stories and becoming their part. The lawyers' job is to make their case. The prosecution represents the state and bears the burden of proof. Both they and the defense team have to decide which evidence they will use, prepare their witnesses, their opening and closing statements, and more. It’s a lot.”
Junior Cassidy Gillespie, a lawyer for defense agreed with Sunitsch in that “mock trial is a lot of work, but ultimately fun when we get to the trial.” A witness for the prosecution, senior Lauren Haiduc, chose to be a witness so that she could be “really involved with the process.” In preparation, she said that she must have “read through my affidavit a million times and discussed the presentation of it with the attorneys. It was a lot, but like everyone else, I think, it was really fun when we got to trail, especially the cross examinations.”
While the outcome of the mock trial is far less important than the process, the defense team, comprised of Cassidy Gillespie, Adrian Renner-Singer, Natalie Sanchez and Isabel Menna successfully defended their clients to win the case.
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