Trial team log day three

So today was the first full day of trials. We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant and then headed over to the courthouse as a team. We made it through security and proceeded to set up the courtroom to our liking as it wasn't set up for trials as much as appellate hearings. Melilli is also a little OCD about how the courtrooms are set up, but it's always helpful. We went against Northern Kentucky - we were on defense - and had a pretrial conference with opposing counsel. The one female attorney was surprisingly hostile about the stupid Res letter. And then the judge made some bizarre rulings (we later found out he was a civil attorney and had no experience in criminal work and so that explained some of his bizarre rulings). Vanessa rocked her opening, and I think it was one of my better crosses. The witness I crossed - she dropped an entire section of her direct and so that took some mileage out of my cross. And I got to make a successful objection on close. The most annoying motion in limine ever was the prosecution trying to preclude my witness from testifying altogether. Once I told the judge we would be calling that witness he realized that for the purposes of competition I sort of had to direct that witness. I won my motion in limine, and then the prosecution tried to make an end-run on the judge's ruling by opening the door for themselves. They don't get to do that. I was pretty mad about that, but I won again when I objected on cross. I also think I pretty much rocked my closing. When we rearranged the tables we ended up trailing some wires across the floor, and we were all terrified of tripping over the wire. Ironically, the only one who did trip over it was a judge. Dan was amazing as my witness. He made me smile.

Because the one judge was long-winded, we only had about half an hour for lunch, and then we were back in trial, and this time I was a witness. It was my best performance as a witness ever. The girl crossing me wasn't tracking the language and she also couldn't control me when I rambled. One of the best moments ever was when opposing counsel objected during Dan's direct of me, because their objection wasn't even a real one, and even then they had misread the evidence and so they were the ones mischaracterizing the evidence, not me. Dan and Chelsea rocked, and I think we did well.

Actually, I know we did well, because we advanced to the break rounds. We went to a cool restaurant overlooking the baseball field and talked, had tasty food. The judge who runs the competition sang the song Melilli wrote, which was a definite hit with the law students, and he sang a few more parody songs, and then they handed out awards and then announced the teams who advanced. We are up tomorrow, me and Vanessa as attorneys, Chelsea and Dan as witnesses. I am much more terrified than I was before.

On an up note, we finally got all of our luggage, so we looked presentable today.

Anyway, I am tired. I could say more about our rounds, but most of the humor would really only make sense to law students and lawyers in the competition.

Go Team J.

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