June 14, 2022 • 52 mins
“Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” The first big tournament of the season is a murder case based on the plot of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. The teams are practicing saying “consigliere” and figuring out what the difference is between a “capo” and a “soldier.” In between we get a lesson on South Dakota geography (cowboy hats out west), and take a trip to H.E.B. (el Heb) for triple shot espressos.
Learn more about the schools, programs and special guests:
St. Mary's University Law School
University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law
Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
Up Against the Mob with Elie Honig
Follow us on Twitter @ClassActionPod and Instagram @ClassActionPod
Visit our show page for transcripts and more details about the series at ClassActionPod.com
Follow host Katie Phang on Twitter @KatiePhang and Instagram @KatiePhang.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Class Action is a production of I Heart Radio and
Sound Argument. To give you a little background on South
Dakota geography, you have what you call about two urban areas.
Sioux Falls. You've been the Sioux Falls. That's the big city.
It's a small city or a big town, but it's
the big urban area of South Dakota. That's where about
(00:23):
a quarter of the population is. And then out west
you have Rapid City that's about eighty people. I grew
up in Rep City, South Dakota. It was nice. It
was pretty relaxed. Not a lot went on, so I
don't mean to make it sound like it was boring,
but it was definitely very yeah, just very relaxed. My
(00:45):
dad is the general manager for RDIO Equipment, which is
a John Deer dealership, and my mom drives school buses
for the Rep City School system. But she's done a
ton of stuff throughout her life. I grew up in
a family of five, my mom and my dad, and
I have an older sister who's thirty and a younger
brother who just turned twenty two. I'm the oldest of
(01:08):
nine children, so I have eight younger siblings, and I've
always had this role model slash lookout for them, and
I want to make sure that they're okay in life
and that they're doing the right things. So by being
a lawyer, I can apply that to other people. I
can look out for other people. But the cultural divide
(01:29):
in South Dakota is like East River West River. That's
more ranching out there to seem more like cowboy hats
and that kind of stuff. We're here it's more farming,
so it's a little bit different culture. I mean, where
I'm from, it's considered one of the big towns. You
(01:49):
got about, you know, seven eight towns within that fifteen
to twenty thousand, and then every place else is pretty ruled.
I'm a listener as opposed to being the first to speak.
I think people talk too much sometimes, and I think
we miss a lot of stuff and we're talking, so
I'd kind of rather listen and take everything in and
(02:11):
then then add in an opinion. I'm a first generation lawyer,
so no and my family has gone to law school,
so this has been a fun kind of new adventure
for all of us. I guess I'm also Catholic, and
I am really involved in my faith. I think it's
important to do that work through the criminal justice system.
(02:33):
And also I'm Native American and here in South Dakota
there's a lot of issues, especially on the western side
of the state, with Native Americans and their treatment over
the years and their problems that they struggle with. My
parents had to see a bankruptcy lawyer at one point
(02:53):
and ultimately saved their house. So that's something that really
stuck with me when I was pretty young. So I
started working when I was as soon as I can
apply for a work license in Iowa. I started off
by a detasseling corn. I did that every summer until
I was old enough to get an actual job. Then
(03:16):
you've got Vermillion here. It's about ten thousand people, but
Vermilion it's pretty much just a college town. I think
the population doubles when the college gets here. So I
went to undergrad at the University of South Dakota. So
by the time all of a sudden done, I have
spent seven years in this town and on this campus,
and I can't tell you how much I'm dreading leaving Vermillion.
(03:39):
It has truly become home. I mean South Dakota culture
in general. People are nice, they're reserved. You don't see
a ton of characters are big, colorful personalities like you
do in the city. Yeah, they're very conservative. People don't
have the most open minded world view generally because it's
a small state. You're not a round a lot. But
(04:00):
I think people have good intentions here. They're good people.
I mean, nobody's really going to spin in your face
and slam the door on you. We are the state's
law school. Laura Rose, the feisty University of South Dakota coach,
has already uploaded the fact pattern to her entire team.
(04:23):
There was a quote that my dad used to use
at Stetson when he was running their program. He used
to tell people that when I send you out to
a competition, I am putting the reputation of my school
in your hands. If you drop the reputation in my school,
I will cut your hands off. Now he can get
away with that because he's a twenty two year military veteran.
Law school mock trial season it's like a hurricane and
it's fast approaching. Here's the deal. I'm not going to
(04:46):
cut your hands off, but we're gonna have to talk.
Tryouts are over, the team is hand picked. Classes are
already in full swing. The law school grind. It's on,
but you're in a competition setting. There is no time
to be Midwest night. I love South Dakota, Nicce and
Midwest nights. One of my favorite things about this area
of the country is how polite people are and how
(05:08):
much people care about other people. But you know where
it doesn't have a place in a courtroom. We're here
to argue. We're here to argue about facts. You are
not my friend, you're not my enemy. I don't have
to cut your throat precisely most of them. Dozens of
schools around the country are preparing for the fall invitational tournaments,
were second and third year law students get a chance
(05:28):
to compete before the big national competition start in the spring.
But I do have to make sure that you're following
through with what it is that I need done. And
I do have to make sure that you're complying with
the rules, and I do have to make sure that
I am not in an attempt to be kind and
to be polite, actually giving away points of argumentation. I'm
Katie Fang, and this is Class Action Episode three, Mob
(06:07):
Hits and the H E. B. Tyler. You look confused,
what's up? It's eight am, and everyone is working together
to build an air tight case. Picture an old fashioned
barn raising on the prairie. Only this barn is called
together with arguments and legal strategy. Nicky owed two dollars.
(06:30):
Nick's a bad guy, he's a drug user, a lot
of problems that you can attack his credibility. And then
you also got the bartender who's a good witness. He's
lost doing a very credible kid, and he was saying
Tommy is peaceful. Tommy's a very peaceful guy and he's generous.
Oh three, you all made faces when he said the
word peaceful. Why did we make faces? Justin? Did you
(06:50):
say peaceful in your opening? What have you done? You've
opened the door to character evidence, character evidence, but you
don't know it because you're a baby too, all right.
If you get a criminal fact pack, there is an
instinctive desire to start to humanize your client, which you
can do. But you've got to watch the adjectives because
if I say he's peaceful, and if there's any evidence
that he's not, what am I doing? I am giving
(07:12):
the state attorney the moment. I am giving brain in
the moment to get up and go Hey, you just
said that you love peace and love. It all happens
if you were in the freaking mob. You were you
you were doing this right, you were with these people,
you were doing this. You're giving the opportunity to pounce. Yeah,
that's the business he was in. So he's he's not
(07:34):
gonna go full wive guy. He's not going to be
a made man. He's not going to burn the car
to the saint in his hands. Case file Commonwealth versus
Santa Suso a mock trial case torn out of the
script of a Grizzly mafia murder story. It's a movie
plot and one you may be familiar with. I've always
wanted to do a mob case and there's not really been,
(07:56):
ever been one that's done at any level of mock trial.
My name is Philip Pascua alo Um, the trial competition
director at the Director University Thomas Arkline School of Law
and the tournament director for the Battle of the Experts.
So the Battle of the Experts is a national mock
trial competition where sixteen law schools compete to be the
(08:18):
national champion of the Battle of the Experts. So this
Fear's case is loosely based on the plot of good films,
change the names of the characters and then their stories
is slightly different than what you'd see in the movie.
For lots of reasons. I hope not on one we're
going to clear there. I think Marty's got bigger things
to do and then and then read our case file.
But I hope he reads it. That would be excellent.
(08:39):
There's a classic scene where the character played by Joe
Pesci is insulted in a bar and he and the
character played by Radiota killed that person killed. That character.
Character's name is Billy Batts. It's still my favorite mob
movie for sure. Nothing has come close. My name is Elijnig.
(09:01):
I spent fourteen years as a prosecutor, but yes, I
spent most of my career in the Southern District of
New York indicting, prosecuting, and trying real life New York
City mobsters. That is a great murder scenario for a
mock trial, because it's not your obvious, premeditated murder that
(09:21):
was not supposed to happen. When they're done beating him
to death, I think the de Niro character sort of
says to the Pesci character, would you do I think
that's a great scenario because then you have to argue
things like intent and premeditation and what degree of murder
are we in here? Is it manslaughter? Is it murder?
So that's a good scenario because I think there are
(09:42):
arguments to be made, but you're getting into trickier issues
that would be argued at a real trial. The purpose
of mock trial, I think this to get kids interested
in this, to get students wanting to do this in
their future careers. And if what are you gonna do,
Try some boring fraud case that's based on tax law
and account no, give him an interesting case, Give them
an exciting case, Give him something out of a movie,
(10:04):
and that will spark their interest. Laura Rose has hand
picked four of her top students to argue this case.
Bailey Moore that and Justin Peter Right will defend Tommy
Santa Suso. What happens is this guy, William Cafierre, we
call him Billy. Billy goes to a bar. He gets
(10:26):
out of jail and he kind of needs to re
establish his boss presence, and Tommy Santa Suso and Nickpatrick arrived.
Everyone knows each other, but Tommy's trying to get out
of the mafia. He's still in the mafia, but Tommy
just wants to be respected, because who doesn't want to
be Brandon Hodeck and Bill Murray. Not that Bill Murray
(10:49):
will prosecute Tommy. When I first read this fact pattern,
for example, I thought the state slightly had the edge,
and then I kept reading it, and then I thought
the defense was gonna blow us out of the water.
And then I kept reading it and I realized, maybe
the state actually has the better case. And so when
Billy starts shoving in his face that Houston your chauffeur,
(11:10):
Tommy gets mad. They start a brawl, and after this
bar fight, then it's only Nick and Billy, and that's
all we really know from there. That's what we know
for sure. They walk out of the bar together, and
you know that Billy's dead. It's just kind of always
work in progress. It's important never to get too in
love with a certain theme or theory, because you can
(11:33):
always think of something that completely derails everything that you
just built. The rest of the team is spread out
in the peanut gallery of the law schools practice court,
firing pot shots at the new case as going through it,
Does it make sense? Does it make sense with what
you read and what questions leading as you're hearing for
(11:58):
the first time, Tell me what you're thinking about. So
I texted Bailey this as well, But it probably goes
both ways. The knife is under the assumption that it's
the mother's knife, a knight that she regularly uses, So
where's her prince? On the other flip side, though the
prosecution say the knife is wiped, there's no prince now
because they're trying to cover it up. Yeah, this might
(12:19):
be a stretch, but I was gonna say, who's to
say that when he left the far the first time,
he didn't take Nicky's car If his car is parked
there but further away, he could have taken Nikki's car
or I don't remember what I was thinking he did.
He still didn't go back to the bar, which is
where Tommy's car would have been. So even if you
(12:42):
were to have taken him back to his car and
not home, the cell phone records still don't show that.
I do. I can't say it's comfortable. It's definitely not comfortable.
You put a lot of work into theory in your case,
and then it's easy to kind of get upset when
(13:05):
someone tries to pull holes in it. Though it's a
team sport, it's can quickly feel very personal. So, Laura,
during boot camp, it looks as if you're taking all
of the students that you're working with and you're having
them hive mind this problem that they've been presented with.
(13:27):
Can you kind of walk us through that method and
that procedure and why you think it's effective to be
able to give them a foundation to work from. The
reason for the hive mind with the Battle of the
Expert's fact pattern in particular, came about for a few reasons.
Number One, it's a great way to knock the rust
off from the summer. It's a great way to get
started and get going and get everybody back to thinking
(13:49):
about those things. Number Two, it's a great way for
the students that are so deeply entrenched with the fact
pattern to realize, Hey, the thing that you thought was
very clear isn't clear from your presentation That inference that
you thought was so obvious isn't actually as obvious as
you want to make it. Me, is it a good idea?
Because I'm just thinking about this and like, what Ma's
(14:11):
really saying here is if you can say that he
was here for these parts, say, are there some fuzzy inconsistencies, Yes,
but remember he's he's not a saint. He's a drug
addict and drug dealer. Was he high on heroin when
he was doing this? I don't know, But could you
know he's there enough to say, yeah, there's some inconsistencies.
(14:33):
But do we think he did it? Your reasonable members
of the jury, I'd say yes, and then just kind
of blur. So is it a combination of a confidence builder,
an ice breaker, a substantive dive into the law and
the evidence and the rules of procedure kind of all
in one. Yeah, it's it's everything. It's a kitchen saint
kind of approach. It's trial, and that's why it's wonderful
(14:56):
because you have to deal with the facts, the law,
the But Tommy, on the other hand, he's smart, he's methodical,
he knows what he's doing. But it's kind of ironic
that our star witness has all the things that make
him look like the bad guy in San Antonio. Jasmineal
Gain has finally managed to stream Martin Scorsese's mob classic
(15:20):
Good Fellas one of my favorites. Anyway, her St. Mary's
University teammates Andy Viscarra and Coldla they feel like it's
their legal obligation to break down the plot. Yeah, and
this movie, Tommy didn't. Yeah. But in the movie. Even
in the movie, I was like, I was like, oh,
(15:42):
so Tommy did it. He did it? Yeah, I was like, whoa,
that didn't happen. Not in our story. They're adding a
third person up in this joy all right, I killed Billy. Yeah,
when he wants anybody there, that's a good can you
(16:06):
deserve that. I'm gonna pretend Jimmy saw me to morow
like die for this man. That's not very okay. Dury
remembers the dream. I'm sorry, I'm gonna start, but I'm
trying to really think about this. You're gonna get on
this vibe. I'm gonna kill Let me start that again.
(16:40):
I'm sorry that sounded weird. I'm gonna kill this bastard.
I'm gonna kill you, you fake tough guy. Those were
the last words that the defendant told Billy Cafilero the
night that he was murdered. It's a dark knight in Sienna, Pennsylvania.
And while walking on the street, you see a bar
(17:02):
to the right. It's called the Bamboo Lounge. And from
afar you think it's just a mom and pop little bar,
something quiet. But inside inside that bar is a whole
another story. Inside that bar, it's another world of people.
They have a code violence, drugs, money, and family above all.
(17:26):
Breaking that code means breaking that code can cost you
your life. They make money from prostitution, loan sharky, theft,
and extortion. Now, these families have a hierarchy. It goes
boss underboss, conciliaire, capos, associates and soldiers. And these are
(17:49):
the types of people that you will find the Bamboo
Lounge when you walk inside. The first person, so I
really like the story. That's Jason Goss. He's a St.
Mary's grad and a trial team legend, Jason tried cases
for the Bear County d a's office, but then he
left to join his old boss and take up for
the defense. Now, when you got towards the end, you
(18:11):
just started basically reading it, it was like blah blah blah,
da da da, something's never changed. In whatever spare time,
Jason manages to get he and his wife Maritza who's
expecting their first baby, coached the battle team. Sorry, I
feel like it goes too long, and I was boring
you guys. It is too long. But the only reason
is and the reason why it felt that way is
(18:32):
because you basically you did something that's it's kind of
rare and mock trial. You woa of all what the
witnesses we're going to say into the story, which is cool,
but you know, one of the things I noticed was
is you're talking about grab. You know, you had the knife,
you stabbed once, you stabbed twice, three times. You need
to talk about it like that. Right, he got the knife,
(18:53):
he stabbed him once, he stabbed him twice, He stabbed
him three times, nine inches deep right into his heart.
Something like that. Drama at a little I like it.
Keep going. I'm jasmineal Green and I'm a three. Oh
uh not doing too well today. Uh. We have cold
(19:17):
brew just running through my veins right now. Probably gonna
get like two to three hours of sleep. Already. Told Andy,
you know she sees me tomorrow. She didn't see me
because the first two weeks I was dressing up nice
and tomorrow it's it's gonna be bad. And I'm working
on top of this, and I think that's what's killing
me because I don't have that extra free time. So
(19:38):
I don't know how Jasmine's living right now. I got
a sabbatical from my job because I physically could not
do everything. She's not human, she's not real. But but
my job keeps me saying like, when I'm there, I
love it. I'm not worried about anything. I'm like, I'm here,
it's just wish there was more time in the week. So, Laura,
(20:03):
when you perceive from some of the students, the ones
that maybe you predict are going to have a struggle
after a law school, do you pivot a little bit
and maybe give a little bit more of yourself, maybe
a little bit more mentoring, maybe a little bit more
individualized attention to maybe get them more prepared for what
the real world quote unquote is going to be. Like,
I try to do that with all of my students
(20:23):
in all honesty, and it's one of the things that
I'm really fortunate with being here at South Dakota because
I have the number of students that I interact with.
I am very closely involved with all of my trial
team members, and I get to do that individualized attention
that you're talking about, But you can always pick out
those one or two where it's like, hey, you're gonna
need a little bit of extra coaching or a little
bit of extra support. My office is a safe space
(20:44):
for you. One of the biggest obstacles that I see
in a lot of my friends at school and in
myself is that imposter syndrome that most women have, where
it's like you don't realize that you are smart enough
or think you have the best argument, and there's always
kind of a push to be better without accepting that
you're already goody. And that's been one of the hardest
(21:06):
things to overcome. And advocacy is knowing like, Okay, my
argument is good, my style is good. Now I just
need to trust it, but make it better and and
that's the thing, right And I will empathize with you
on the imposter syndrome point and tell you it's not
something that goes away. I've got it horribly bad. My
friends love to laugh at me because every other week
i'd like, the law school is gonna fire me, I'm
gonna lose my job, And they're like, in what world?
(21:28):
And I'm like, somebody's going to see through that I
have clearly just faked it till I made it. At
this point, one of the things about being a female
advocate that I've found challenging until we'll still find challenging
but less challenging after working with you, is I think
the practice of law has had very maybe kind of
aggressive and straightforward and loud and boisterous and all of
(21:52):
these kind of different qualities that you've seen all the movies,
um that lawyers portrayed. But being you know, a female advocate,
as you said, we have a different skill set. And
in trial tech, I got a lot of comments about
being too gentle or like motherly, or I speak too
soft or something, and it kind of leads you to
(22:14):
a different skill set of how you take those kinds
of things and then make them better in your advocacy
and make them dangerous in the courtroom. And I think
that's one of the coolest things that I see women
advocates do, is you kind of know where they're going,
but you don't know how that final. And here's the thing.
(22:35):
I think that part of the reason that we've had
to become that is because the idea that if you're
aggressive is a woman, You're going to get labeled as
a bit. But number one, that's not necessarily true. The
jury will give you leeway if the witnesses being ridiculous.
You know, the more unreasonable they get, the more reasonable
that you get, unless you have to do the control
and then it shows the jury I've got the range
(22:55):
to go there. I'm choosing not to go there because
I know I'm more effective when I take these different approaches,
and that's not a bad thing. The thing that you
get to figure out now is is what your range
truly is. You you've figured out a couple of octaves
that you're comfortable singing in to make the analogy work,
but you can expand out of that. We bring to
(23:16):
the room our own biases and beliefs, and if you
don't understand that, when you're an attorney standing up and
presenting to a jury that is going to decide the
facts of your case, you will always lose. For Trial
team director A. J. Belito de Luna, running a trial
(23:38):
program means keeping track of several competition teams. The thing
that has to be at the forefront of your mind
from beginning to add Trust me, they are watching every
little thing that you are doing, Every little thing that
(23:59):
you are doing. He means coaching up the younger lawyers
and trial advocacy classes, but also looking out for promising rookies,
your honor, opposing counsel ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
She couldn't escape. She wanted to leave, but she couldn't.
(24:23):
He would not have it, so instead he killed her.
Rookies like Mariella and Sina's the second year law student
from Tucson who knocked it out of the park in
boot camp. This is her first opening statement in what
may prove to be a very promising legal career. October
(24:46):
starts as a typical day for a detective about He
goes into the office, probably grabs some coffee, sits at
his desk when the phone rings. Someone tells him that
a body was found at the marsh. Unfortunately, in Detective
(25:07):
Label's line of work, this isn't uncommon, so he treats
it just like any other homicide. He goes to the scene,
he examines the scene, he examines the body, suspects foul play,
and that's when it hits him. That's when he makes
(25:28):
the connection. He realizes Molly didn't go missing just randomly
three years ago. She didn't just run away from the defendant.
The defendant killed her. Thank you. This is assistant coach
(25:56):
Stephen Lopez, your brothers and your poise up there. You're
not moving around. You're very strong, you're very powerful. Your
voice feels this entire room, which is awesome. Your theme
that she couldn't escape, right, it's okay, right, it's not plunchy,
(26:16):
it's not really catchy. But I think the bigger problem
with it is he didn't really use it. If that's
your theory and that's your theme, then you've got to
play that through your whole opening. Great job, right, Sure,
I have seen your days. I could see it because
(26:38):
you just got criticized pretty heavil and you don't like it.
I mean, I I take criticism. Well, it's just like, yeah,
it's you know, you want to be perfect all the time,
but it's just not think so. So I want you
to hear something. I sent him a text. What did
that text say? I didn't My phone is off, sir,
(27:02):
beat ault. She is a champion in waiting. I see
in your face where you're feeling failure. I see in
your face where you're like Damn, I didn't do it right.
I didn't meet the expectation. It's not good enough yet,
(27:23):
but there's great stuff there. So don't get discouraged when
you get these com heads. We're never going to tell
you that you're good enough until you're good enough. And
you know when you're good enough when you bring home
a national championship like he did. When we put your
trophy in a trophy case. That's when we stopped saying
(27:45):
things to you. It's like you, you tell me what
we're gonna do now, all right, that's when you're good enough. Yeah,
so great job, now you can give her. Last week
was probably my most stressful week so far. More and
more things to do, and as we get deeper into classes,
(28:08):
it gets a little more time consuming. Also, I was
asked to practice with coach Douer and coach Goss as
a witness for their Battle of the Experts competition. So
I was really excited when I got the email. It
was Aj who emailed me. I was really excited. You know.
He let me know that this means you know what
I'm doing well. He also told me, don't let this
(28:31):
get to your head. You know, this isn't a golden ticketed.
You know, we're offering you this opportunity contingent on you
doing well and trial at um and keeping up the work.
It's definitely been a whirlwind of craziness. I haven't even
finished my evidence class. Like this is going to be
very scary. I'm a thrill. I definitely feel a ton
(28:54):
of pressure because I have experience. I should be better
in theory, I should be really good, should be able
to not necessarily carry the team, but at least do
a really good part. But because of that competitive nature,
you always feel like you're not there. We had practiced
yesterday that was a full sort of round, and I
didn't think I did as well as I should have.
(29:15):
I messed up some really basic stuff that I know
better than to do. I missed certain cues for things,
I missed objections stuff that I shouldn't have screwed up.
And we have, you know, a couple of weeks to
three weeks to prepare and hone that in. So it
it definitely that pressure gets to you, and there's a
lot more pressure on it because all the leaders of
the program are on this specific team. So it makes
(29:40):
you want to be better, but it also it makes
you really hard on yourself and does take a mental toll,
which is probably a good thing that law schools competitions
don't go all year. I have a meeting with my
counselor later on today. I haven't spoken to her in
a long time, but and I've had to keep putting
it off due to how busy I've been. But in general,
(30:01):
it seems like everybody's noticed everyone's mental health is sort
of collapsing, far more than it was our one oh year.
So I think people seem to be just generally worse off.
And I think it's a mix of the continuing pandemic
returning to classes knowing that the bar is coming up.
(30:22):
It's started one o year. Um. I mean, I saw
counselors periodically and in undergrad dealing with stresses and some
medical issues that threw me off. So I saw or
I saw regularly, but since things have gotten worse, decided
to pick it up a little bit again, just to
at least have a third party to be able to
(30:43):
vent to. You know, talking to your friends is great,
but if your friends are going through the same things
you are, it does feel kind of weird to complain
to them because they're not complaining to you. They get it.
They know where everybody's at their dealing with the same stuff.
But here you are complaining to them. It's just it
feels weird, even though they don't mind, it's just doesn't
feel quite as effective and it's just off. So, Ellie,
(31:07):
what advice do you have to guard against the burnout
that does happen in the business. Don't do mock trial.
I'm only half kidding. Look, when you're on trial, it's
all consuming, real trial. There's just no way around that.
It devours your life. I will speak from my experience.
You ignore your kids. You know, you don't take care
of yourself in terms of what you eat and you sleep.
(31:29):
And I think that mock trial, from what I've seen,
can be similar on these kids and on these students.
And I don't have an easy solution to that. I
don't know how they do it. I don't know how
they do mock trial and also keep up with their
classes and their social activities and their other activities that
they're trying to do at school. So God bless them.
(31:49):
It wasn't for me. You know. If I had to
give advice, I guess I would just try to say,
don't let it invade your dreams. Try to put it
in a box, put it to the side, and keep
in mind, as as much as it can feel all
consuming and competitive, it is a mock trial and you
don't have actual you know, someone's actual liberty at steak
or the family of a murder victim at stake. So
(32:11):
take a breath, keep it in perspective. But God bless
you for doing it. Everything has its season, everything has
its time. Somewhere there must be footage of a young
Lord Rose on stage. I can't do anymore in that
(32:33):
because my voice is gonna bother me too much. From
the time that I was very small, I loved musical
theater in particular, and I blame my parents for this,
because they took me to see Little Shop of Horrors
when I was two. I fell in love with the
storytelling element of that particular world. And like when Dad
was first in the military and when I was younger
and we would drive everywhere, he would play musical soundtracks,
(32:56):
and the storytelling aspect of that for me was everything.
Part of my plan was I wanted to work for
children's Television Workshop, and so that's where I wanted to be,
but I knew that if I couldn't make it work
and I was going to become a financial burden to
my parents. At that point, I couldn't justify it in
my own head. I graduated from college in May of
two thousand nine. I was two years behind when I
(33:16):
should have been because my mom got sick before I
went to school. She has MS, and I stayed home
to help out with the family. With that, I said,
I can't. I can't do it, as much as I
want to, as much as I would have loved to
go there, and so it was better to go with
the practical thing, to have the thing that I knew
could feed me, and then find a way from my
creative love to become a part of that. And I
got really lucky. I got really, really lucky and found
(33:38):
a way to do it. The reason I was comfortable
going to law school is I knew that the law
school that I had chosen was the one that was
going to make me an advocate, which was me, which
meant that I was going to get to take my
talents and all these things that I'd spent time developing
and use them for the betterment of other people. It's
just not the way that I thought it would happen.
I thought I would be in the courtroom trying cases
all the time, and in reality, I'm much better suited
(33:59):
to what I'm doing now, which is taking the next
generation and saying you go to it. If I am
successful and get tenure here, I could stay here for
the rest of my academic career. If I do that,
I will know at the end of my career that
for thirty plus years, I will have put out every
single advocate that's come out of University of South Dakota
Cannuts in school law. So I will know that the
(34:21):
evidentiary issues in courtrooms across the state are being handled
in a way that's appropriate. I will know that the
people who are advocating in courtrooms have been trained this way,
and it's going to change the legal landscape here because
it's desperately needed. The clock is ticking in Coach Rose
needs to whip her team into shape for the battle
of the experts. Good morning, good morning, Good morning, gang,
(34:44):
and for all of the competitions that are coming in
the fall. Get your coffee, get your caffeine and drink.
Make sure that you're awake. We will get through today
as quickly as we possibly can. You all know that
I'm all about efficiency and making sure that we don't
waste our time, and I know that you have other
things that you've got to do. But today what we're
gonna be covering, we're gonna talk about cross examination, which
is everybody in this room knows my absolute favorite thing
(35:06):
that we end up doing in a courtroom, because it's
when you have the most controled. So are we all
clear about what we're doing this morning? We awake vaguely
three else, Let's go around the room. What's your favorite
part about cross examination? Justin The thing I like about
the most is I feel like I'm in control, and
no matter how hard they're trying to squirm out of things,
(35:26):
or if they're trying to be cute with me, it's
an easy situation to flip that back on them. Matt,
you've had trial tech. What's your favorite thing about cross
The power? I like the power behind it. This is
Matt Skinner, a future defense attorney and the team's best sniper.
Be honest, man, let's go work. Come on, talk about it.
Why do you like the power? What about that is good?
(35:47):
I like the power and forever. I've called it the
oce Ship moment. Like I instead, you just lay these
bread crumbs and eventually it leads to this trap where
the witnesses like, oh Ship, I'm stuck. Hi, I don't
know what to do here. Yeah. I like the power
of having control. Basically you know what's going to happen,
(36:08):
they don't, and eventually you're going to lead that witness
to do exactly what you want. I think one of
the most intimidating things that you can't really do on Zoom.
But they call it working the wells. So like you're
well as kind of right in from the judge and
the witness table. Here Coach Rose teaches us how to
walk your dog in the well and when you have
(36:29):
an unfriendly witness, when you start kind of cornering them
on a point, you start walking towards them and you
keep the eye contact, and as you keep asking questions,
you keep taking more and more steps, and once you've
kind of cracked them a major point, you just turn
your back to them and walk away. But it's one
of the most kind of powerful moments that you can
have in a courtroom. You know, when you go to
(36:50):
the zoo and you turn your back to like all
the monkeys, and they get mad like that's kind of
what walking the dog is like. And hour after hour,
coach it was puts her team through a crash course
on trial techniques. So if you get somebody on the
stand who says, well, Sally told me that Billy Bob
told her objection your honor, hearsay within hearsay, may we
approach all in the service of building a stronger case
(37:13):
for the Battle of the experts competition. You're on her
under federals of evidence in the process knocking the South
Dakota nice out of her young lawyers on the team.
Why is it unfairly prejudicial? Why is that the case?
Explain it? Draw it for me in crayons if you
freaking have to, But explain it. If it's egregious, if
(37:36):
it touches upon a fundamental right, in particular, if we're
in Battle of the experts and justin hears them say that,
the defendant for sure is going to say something. He's
gonna be up off of his chair having a heart attack,
but he's going to make the objection to make sure
that it's on the record. Because fundamental rights, constitutional issues,
things that could get people into prison if we were
(37:57):
in real life. You gotta be mad about that, and
you got to be big man. You've got to say
that it's wrong, and you've got to call it out
for being wrong. When I was getting ready to do
my first ever jury address as a prosecutor, I asked
my supervisor, who had been doing it for a decade plus,
I said, this is a stupid question, but what am
(38:17):
I supposed to be tomorrow when I give this opening?
And he said, what do you mean? I said, I
don't know, Like, what's the vibe? What am I trying
to do? My trying to be tough guy or cool
or what? And he said, Look, as the prosecutor, your
job is two things. To be clear and credible, and
that's it. Leave the dramatics to the defense lawyer. Leave
the pounding of the podium and the clever stories to
(38:38):
the defense lawyer. That's not for you. Your job is
a stand up in front of that jury to be
clear they understand what your case is about. And to
be credible. They believe you, they believe our evidence. That's it.
I was once told a friend of mine said, I
figured out your style. I said, okay, what is it?
He said, your Jersey conversational. I'm from New Jersey. And
(38:59):
I said, oh, I don't know that he meant it
as a compliment. I think he meant it like I'm
not super intellectual. But I said, perfect, that's great. That's
what I want to be. Part of the beauty of
our jury system is. I think people tend to think
our jury system is mechanical or mathematical, but in fact,
every judge instructs every jury use your common sense, use
your good everyday common sense that you use every day
(39:21):
out there, and and it can really resonate with the
jury and you say, why would this defendant take this action? Look,
you all know, you're all human beings. You've all been
in scenarios where someone has insulted you. You know how
that maybe made you feel that you didn't act on it,
but he did. You know, you can use common sense
type arguments like that, and it's part of the beauty
of our jury system, and it can be quite effective
(39:42):
in advocacy. Back in San Antonio, the team piles into
Andy's car. They're not searching for facts, They're hunting down
snacks brain food for a tournament that will stretch over
three marathon days. Yeah, my grandmother calls it cheap, cheap,
(40:03):
it's better than and calls it him. Okay, it's so focused.
We need energy drinks. I probably want to try about Okay,
we need them for tomorrow because we're not gonna have
time to kind of energy drink. I gotta probably get
like the double shot espressos from Starbucks, like like like
like a pack of them. We also need like snatter
(40:25):
because we need Yeah, we need water bottles. We need
to haul all the water when I go home. This
is what I missed the most, ya for sure. Okay,
so Jasmine wants I want the little I do the
double shot ones or I mean their triple shot but
(40:46):
I'll be bouncing off the freaking walls and that you
just get me alive by one out year. Yeah, the
triple shot ones. There you go, all right, I think
I got snacks, We got drinks ready to go. Yeah,
you want to get your opening right now? What here
in everybody do it? You can do anywhere, You can
(41:10):
do it anywhere else on our way to get over
your fears. Then just stay in the day. You can
get it for something to get to be true or not. Yeah,
I don't need a compa no, like like you want
me to do an hour or not? I want used
to do it at the hotel top and get animated.
I'm I'm a rant on all the things and be like,
(41:31):
get Mike, I didn't even that it was my car.
(41:58):
Come on, coach, Jason Goss is waiting at the hotel.
So the way, the way that it was described in
the coaches meeting is not if you plan to use
any character evidence of Tommy, if you plan to use
any character evidence at all for any witness my entire
(42:18):
nae Patrick Across right. Well, so you know the idea
is and what they were talking. So Jason, how do
you help these students just get over their nerves? You
know what I always tell them is you're gonna You're
gonna have it like it just it's there, Like I
used to throw up for these things, always did, and
I don't now. But I'll tell you what I mean.
(42:40):
I tried a hundred fifty cases and I will still
feel so nervous every time I do an opening or
every time I do across examination. So you know, I
don't really know how to tell them because it's kind
of how they do it. I'll tell you that. Tomorrow
the first round, we are going against University of Chicago, Kent.
(43:04):
So those are your advocates, those are your witnesses. You
can't get noticed any My coach before me, that was
coaching this team before me, and I remember telling there like,
these kids are, they're not ready. They don't know what
they're doing, you know, like she said, it's it's weird.
But right when the competition starts, like whatever, it is,
all that stuff you told them, it just kicks in
(43:24):
and then they just go and they do it. Tomorrow,
they're gonna amaze and astonished. They're gonna be great because
they're gonna take those nerves or whatever, and they're gonna
be on stage and they're gonna be ready to go
and they're going to deliver her. Like any collegiate athlete,
these law students have something to prove on the field
of play. The battle starts in one day, and on
top of all of the legal strategy, there's another major
(43:47):
stress factor. These trials are held on zoom and this year,
the second year of the pandemic, stakes are higher for
mastering the technology. Yeah, last year it was old webcams,
bad internet bedrooms, and here we've got like really nice cameras.
(44:09):
This is Bill Murray from South Dakota. You're on in
a moment to situate myself in the well of the courtroom.
So this is us right now present, and we go
to screen share. Already got anything that publish mission published,
and we I think they need to click through it
(44:31):
instead of waiting. We've got some whiting. We're going to
be in the courtroom. It's almost set up for the competition,
so I think the school has had some more time
to prepare for it. You know, there's been a whole
year of zoom trials, so they've had time to think
about it and the best way to go forward? Can
(44:52):
we run through the motions once of like where we
would be motion and lemon a and then I just
don't like how switch it out? Well, let's let's run
it quick. Grady, do you want to go in there
with this laptop? And then Rose you're presiding. So now
all of our teams will be using this set up
for all the competitions and hopefully we're back in person
(45:15):
next spring, but if not, we've got a very nice
setup going forward. Okay, so I'll be given the motion
and lemonade. So I'm gonna be giving it from the
Williams in the room, granted obviously, so state ready to proceed,
permission to prepare the well, your honor, thank you, your honor,
(45:38):
nothing further, and then turn off my camera. Maybe I
would unplug this and I'll do my direct they'll do
their cross. I'll be seated here. This video quality right
this video quality right here not the same as the
video quality that we haven't here. That's gonna be too
much of a difference. But if we have a setup
in Yere so that we have that quality camera and
(45:59):
here I'm mine and I will stop my bidge, it's
equally as tense inside that hotel room in San Antonio. Okay,
So right now we're setting up the witness rooms. So
we have to set up the backdrops and the cameras
and the microphones in the rooms of the team members
(46:23):
who will be witnessing in this competition. Every little detail matters,
the lights, the cameras, the backdrops, even the makeup and
hand movements. If you can see it on zoom, chances
are you're going to be judged on it. So John
has built this like contraption that's gonna hold up the
(46:46):
back drops that another one of our classmates made. It's
supposed to look like wood. It's like a wooden back drop.
It has the skills of justice in the middle of
a little circle. Um, how would you describe it, John,
So it's a piece of vinyl that's wrapped around a
(47:08):
frame built of pbc uh imprinted on. There is wood
paneling with the scales of justice kind of like superimposed
on it, kind of like you would see in the
wood paneling in the back of like a courtroom or
like an office space. I just gonna get all these
sprinkles out, so it's gonna be behind the advocate and
(47:28):
so the advocate if the advocates right here, I'm gonna
hang or put the ring light up, which I can
do actually behind you see what I'm saying, because that
ring light also has a spot on it before the
camber to screw. And we went through our defense case
opening of defense, our crosses than we did our direct examinations,
(47:53):
and Andy closed on defense and kind of got some
more stylistic feedback Like for my any Coach Stewart told
me that I can bring it up a notch and
my energy maybe like sound a little more powerful, and
also she wants me to move around more. I have
to do less because it's like stop doing this with
(48:15):
your hands. I was like, I just want to emphasize
it's like teetering on jazz hands because I'm like, there's this,
there's that, like there's like explosions coming out of your hands,
and then this is just like you're thinking, we have
a thought. You're think it's like you're pulling like a
like a little band between your hands, like you're exercising
your forearms or something. We've got a feedback, Like one
of the judges commented on a girl's eyelashes and her hair.
(48:38):
You have to be like very very natural, natural makeup.
That's what they want for sure. Hair tucked back because
last year my coach she was like you have gray hair,
which is true, thank you um, but he was like,
you need to like move it from your face. You
don't need to have it blocking your your face because
(48:59):
it's just tracting and natural makeup. No heavy eyes, shadows, nails,
need to be professional, nude, nothing crazy with the clothes,
just like blue or black suits and then like a
white top. They had to prove like our outfit. They
even approved our other advocates tie. He's had to send
(49:20):
his thie colors because you can't have something too distracting
because they know, like the judges will be like, I
hate that Tie, I hate you, Like it's over for us.
So we got we're not going to sleep tonight. Um
texting my nail guy because he's like, next, we're all
right here. I love this man. I do the only
(49:45):
thing left to do in South Dakota. I am a
bundle of nerves. Besides the usual panicking is to fuel
up for the brutal days that law ahead. I'm feeling
pretty good. I think we're ready to go. I'm ready
for some pasta tonight and then then we're ready to roll.
(50:06):
It's LaCOSA noodles like La Cosa Nostra. Rose makes this
like infamous pasta sauce and you can like smell it
through the school whenever she she brings it. So she
made that sauce for a team dinner tonight before competition,
and Bill calls them look coastra and noodles. I make
(50:28):
comematee spaghetti sauce. It's one of my ways of decompressing
and de stressing and I was also couring and blanching
a hundred and seventy nine pounds worth it tomatoes, and
so I have fast tracked some of that to make
homemade spaghetti sauce. We're gonna have a spaghetti dinner because
it just felt appropriate. With the fact matter. It's kind
of an insane time. Everything gets a little discombobulated. Everything
(50:48):
is a little stressful, everything is a little bit heightened.
But it's also a lot of fun. But what I'm
most looking forward to is regardless of if it's Bill
or Bailey, whichever one of them first gets to say
you're on, or a moment to prepare the well and
get up and stand and be in a poort room
and make an argument in front of people. That's what
I'm looking forward to. I think it's a ton of
fun just doing all of our run throughs with the team.
(51:10):
I've never competed, but it's fun watching a case come together,
and then it's fun listening to what someone else has
done and then flipping it on them. I mean, it
sounds a little like mean, but it's fun to just
tear something apart. I'm aunt, and here's why I'm aunt. Guys,
(51:35):
you're ready. You're absolutely ready for this. There is nobody
who's going to be able to know this fact pattern
as thoroughly as you know this fat pattern. There is
nobody who has come back and to put in the
amount of hours outside of typical practice time that you
guys have. Rely on that and rely on your knowledge.
You guys are ready to go. They'll let the bells
and whistles worry. We're about to screw some people over
big time, and I cannot wait to watch what happens.
(51:58):
That's next time. Class Action. Class Action is a production
of I Heart Radio and Sound Argument, Created, produced, written,
and edited by Kevin Huffman and Lisa Gray. Executive producers
(52:21):
are Taylor Chacogne and Katrina Norvell. Additional story production by
Jennifer Swan, Kristin Cabrera, Jason Foster, and Wendy Nardi. Sound design,
editing and mixing by Evan Tyre and Taylor chakogn This
episode had additional field production by Kristen Cabrera, Paul Ebson,
(52:41):
Alfredo de la Garza, and Malia Lukomski. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows
Class Action is a production of I Heart Radio and
Sound Argument. To give you a little background on South
Dakota geography, you have what you call about two urban areas.
Sioux Falls. You've been the Sioux Falls. That's the big city.
It's a small city or a big town, but it's
the big urban area of South Dakota. That's where about
(00:23):
a quarter of the population is. And then out west
you have Rapid City that's about eighty people. I grew
up in Rep City, South Dakota. It was nice. It
was pretty relaxed. Not a lot went on, so I
don't mean to make it sound like it was boring,
but it was definitely very yeah, just very relaxed. My
(00:45):
dad is the general manager for RDIO Equipment, which is
a John Deer dealership, and my mom drives school buses
for the Rep City School system. But she's done a
ton of stuff throughout her life. I grew up in
a family of five, my mom and my dad, and
I have an older sister who's thirty and a younger
brother who just turned twenty two. I'm the oldest of
(01:08):
nine children, so I have eight younger siblings, and I've
always had this role model slash lookout for them, and
I want to make sure that they're okay in life
and that they're doing the right things. So by being
a lawyer, I can apply that to other people. I
can look out for other people. But the cultural divide
(01:29):
in South Dakota is like East River West River. That's
more ranching out there to seem more like cowboy hats
and that kind of stuff. We're here it's more farming,
so it's a little bit different culture. I mean, where
I'm from, it's considered one of the big towns. You
(01:49):
got about, you know, seven eight towns within that fifteen
to twenty thousand, and then every place else is pretty ruled.
I'm a listener as opposed to being the first to speak.
I think people talk too much sometimes, and I think
we miss a lot of stuff and we're talking, so
I'd kind of rather listen and take everything in and
(02:11):
then then add in an opinion. I'm a first generation lawyer,
so no and my family has gone to law school,
so this has been a fun kind of new adventure
for all of us. I guess I'm also Catholic, and
I am really involved in my faith. I think it's
important to do that work through the criminal justice system.
(02:33):
And also I'm Native American and here in South Dakota
there's a lot of issues, especially on the western side
of the state, with Native Americans and their treatment over
the years and their problems that they struggle with. My
parents had to see a bankruptcy lawyer at one point
(02:53):
and ultimately saved their house. So that's something that really
stuck with me when I was pretty young. So I
started working when I was as soon as I can
apply for a work license in Iowa. I started off
by a detasseling corn. I did that every summer until
I was old enough to get an actual job. Then
(03:16):
you've got Vermillion here. It's about ten thousand people, but
Vermilion it's pretty much just a college town. I think
the population doubles when the college gets here. So I
went to undergrad at the University of South Dakota. So
by the time all of a sudden done, I have
spent seven years in this town and on this campus,
and I can't tell you how much I'm dreading leaving Vermillion.
(03:39):
It has truly become home. I mean South Dakota culture
in general. People are nice, they're reserved. You don't see
a ton of characters are big, colorful personalities like you
do in the city. Yeah, they're very conservative. People don't
have the most open minded world view generally because it's
a small state. You're not a round a lot. But
(04:00):
I think people have good intentions here. They're good people.
I mean, nobody's really going to spin in your face
and slam the door on you. We are the state's
law school. Laura Rose, the feisty University of South Dakota coach,
has already uploaded the fact pattern to her entire team.
(04:23):
There was a quote that my dad used to use
at Stetson when he was running their program. He used
to tell people that when I send you out to
a competition, I am putting the reputation of my school
in your hands. If you drop the reputation in my school,
I will cut your hands off. Now he can get
away with that because he's a twenty two year military veteran.
Law school mock trial season it's like a hurricane and
it's fast approaching. Here's the deal. I'm not going to
(04:46):
cut your hands off, but we're gonna have to talk.
Tryouts are over, the team is hand picked. Classes are
already in full swing. The law school grind. It's on,
but you're in a competition setting. There is no time
to be Midwest night. I love South Dakota, Nicce and
Midwest nights. One of my favorite things about this area
of the country is how polite people are and how
(05:08):
much people care about other people. But you know where
it doesn't have a place in a courtroom. We're here
to argue. We're here to argue about facts. You are
not my friend, you're not my enemy. I don't have
to cut your throat precisely most of them. Dozens of
schools around the country are preparing for the fall invitational tournaments,
were second and third year law students get a chance
(05:28):
to compete before the big national competition start in the spring.
But I do have to make sure that you're following
through with what it is that I need done. And
I do have to make sure that you're complying with
the rules, and I do have to make sure that
I am not in an attempt to be kind and
to be polite, actually giving away points of argumentation. I'm
Katie Fang, and this is Class Action Episode three, Mob
(06:07):
Hits and the H E. B. Tyler. You look confused,
what's up? It's eight am, and everyone is working together
to build an air tight case. Picture an old fashioned
barn raising on the prairie. Only this barn is called
together with arguments and legal strategy. Nicky owed two dollars.
(06:30):
Nick's a bad guy, he's a drug user, a lot
of problems that you can attack his credibility. And then
you also got the bartender who's a good witness. He's
lost doing a very credible kid, and he was saying
Tommy is peaceful. Tommy's a very peaceful guy and he's generous.
Oh three, you all made faces when he said the
word peaceful. Why did we make faces? Justin? Did you
(06:50):
say peaceful in your opening? What have you done? You've
opened the door to character evidence, character evidence, but you
don't know it because you're a baby too, all right.
If you get a criminal fact pack, there is an
instinctive desire to start to humanize your client, which you
can do. But you've got to watch the adjectives because
if I say he's peaceful, and if there's any evidence
that he's not, what am I doing? I am giving
(07:12):
the state attorney the moment. I am giving brain in
the moment to get up and go Hey, you just
said that you love peace and love. It all happens
if you were in the freaking mob. You were you
you were doing this right, you were with these people,
you were doing this. You're giving the opportunity to pounce. Yeah,
that's the business he was in. So he's he's not
(07:34):
gonna go full wive guy. He's not going to be
a made man. He's not going to burn the car
to the saint in his hands. Case file Commonwealth versus
Santa Suso a mock trial case torn out of the
script of a Grizzly mafia murder story. It's a movie
plot and one you may be familiar with. I've always
wanted to do a mob case and there's not really been,
(07:56):
ever been one that's done at any level of mock trial.
My name is Philip Pascua alo Um, the trial competition
director at the Director University Thomas Arkline School of Law
and the tournament director for the Battle of the Experts.
So the Battle of the Experts is a national mock
trial competition where sixteen law schools compete to be the
(08:18):
national champion of the Battle of the Experts. So this
Fear's case is loosely based on the plot of good films,
change the names of the characters and then their stories
is slightly different than what you'd see in the movie.
For lots of reasons. I hope not on one we're
going to clear there. I think Marty's got bigger things
to do and then and then read our case file.
But I hope he reads it. That would be excellent.
(08:39):
There's a classic scene where the character played by Joe
Pesci is insulted in a bar and he and the
character played by Radiota killed that person killed. That character.
Character's name is Billy Batts. It's still my favorite mob
movie for sure. Nothing has come close. My name is Elijnig.
(09:01):
I spent fourteen years as a prosecutor, but yes, I
spent most of my career in the Southern District of
New York indicting, prosecuting, and trying real life New York
City mobsters. That is a great murder scenario for a
mock trial, because it's not your obvious, premeditated murder that
(09:21):
was not supposed to happen. When they're done beating him
to death, I think the de Niro character sort of
says to the Pesci character, would you do I think
that's a great scenario because then you have to argue
things like intent and premeditation and what degree of murder
are we in here? Is it manslaughter? Is it murder?
So that's a good scenario because I think there are
(09:42):
arguments to be made, but you're getting into trickier issues
that would be argued at a real trial. The purpose
of mock trial, I think this to get kids interested
in this, to get students wanting to do this in
their future careers. And if what are you gonna do,
Try some boring fraud case that's based on tax law
and account no, give him an interesting case, Give them
an exciting case, Give him something out of a movie,
(10:04):
and that will spark their interest. Laura Rose has hand
picked four of her top students to argue this case.
Bailey Moore that and Justin Peter Right will defend Tommy
Santa Suso. What happens is this guy, William Cafierre, we
call him Billy. Billy goes to a bar. He gets
(10:26):
out of jail and he kind of needs to re
establish his boss presence, and Tommy Santa Suso and Nickpatrick arrived.
Everyone knows each other, but Tommy's trying to get out
of the mafia. He's still in the mafia, but Tommy
just wants to be respected, because who doesn't want to
be Brandon Hodeck and Bill Murray. Not that Bill Murray
(10:49):
will prosecute Tommy. When I first read this fact pattern,
for example, I thought the state slightly had the edge,
and then I kept reading it, and then I thought
the defense was gonna blow us out of the water.
And then I kept reading it and I realized, maybe
the state actually has the better case. And so when
Billy starts shoving in his face that Houston your chauffeur,
(11:10):
Tommy gets mad. They start a brawl, and after this
bar fight, then it's only Nick and Billy, and that's
all we really know from there. That's what we know
for sure. They walk out of the bar together, and
you know that Billy's dead. It's just kind of always
work in progress. It's important never to get too in
love with a certain theme or theory, because you can
(11:33):
always think of something that completely derails everything that you
just built. The rest of the team is spread out
in the peanut gallery of the law schools practice court,
firing pot shots at the new case as going through it,
Does it make sense? Does it make sense with what
you read and what questions leading as you're hearing for
(11:58):
the first time, Tell me what you're thinking about. So
I texted Bailey this as well, But it probably goes
both ways. The knife is under the assumption that it's
the mother's knife, a knight that she regularly uses, So
where's her prince? On the other flip side, though the
prosecution say the knife is wiped, there's no prince now
because they're trying to cover it up. Yeah, this might
(12:19):
be a stretch, but I was gonna say, who's to
say that when he left the far the first time,
he didn't take Nicky's car If his car is parked
there but further away, he could have taken Nikki's car
or I don't remember what I was thinking he did.
He still didn't go back to the bar, which is
where Tommy's car would have been. So even if you
(12:42):
were to have taken him back to his car and
not home, the cell phone records still don't show that.
I do. I can't say it's comfortable. It's definitely not comfortable.
You put a lot of work into theory in your case,
and then it's easy to kind of get upset when
(13:05):
someone tries to pull holes in it. Though it's a
team sport, it's can quickly feel very personal. So, Laura,
during boot camp, it looks as if you're taking all
of the students that you're working with and you're having
them hive mind this problem that they've been presented with.
(13:27):
Can you kind of walk us through that method and
that procedure and why you think it's effective to be
able to give them a foundation to work from. The
reason for the hive mind with the Battle of the
Expert's fact pattern in particular, came about for a few reasons.
Number One, it's a great way to knock the rust
off from the summer. It's a great way to get
started and get going and get everybody back to thinking
(13:49):
about those things. Number Two, it's a great way for
the students that are so deeply entrenched with the fact
pattern to realize, Hey, the thing that you thought was
very clear isn't clear from your presentation That inference that
you thought was so obvious isn't actually as obvious as
you want to make it. Me, is it a good idea?
Because I'm just thinking about this and like, what Ma's
(14:11):
really saying here is if you can say that he
was here for these parts, say, are there some fuzzy inconsistencies, Yes,
but remember he's he's not a saint. He's a drug
addict and drug dealer. Was he high on heroin when
he was doing this? I don't know, But could you
know he's there enough to say, yeah, there's some inconsistencies.
(14:33):
But do we think he did it? Your reasonable members
of the jury, I'd say yes, and then just kind
of blur. So is it a combination of a confidence builder,
an ice breaker, a substantive dive into the law and
the evidence and the rules of procedure kind of all
in one. Yeah, it's it's everything. It's a kitchen saint
kind of approach. It's trial, and that's why it's wonderful
(14:56):
because you have to deal with the facts, the law,
the But Tommy, on the other hand, he's smart, he's methodical,
he knows what he's doing. But it's kind of ironic
that our star witness has all the things that make
him look like the bad guy in San Antonio. Jasmineal
Gain has finally managed to stream Martin Scorsese's mob classic
(15:20):
Good Fellas one of my favorites. Anyway, her St. Mary's
University teammates Andy Viscarra and Coldla they feel like it's
their legal obligation to break down the plot. Yeah, and
this movie, Tommy didn't. Yeah. But in the movie. Even
in the movie, I was like, I was like, oh,
(15:42):
so Tommy did it. He did it? Yeah, I was like, whoa,
that didn't happen. Not in our story. They're adding a
third person up in this joy all right, I killed Billy. Yeah,
when he wants anybody there, that's a good can you
(16:06):
deserve that. I'm gonna pretend Jimmy saw me to morow
like die for this man. That's not very okay. Dury
remembers the dream. I'm sorry, I'm gonna start, but I'm
trying to really think about this. You're gonna get on
this vibe. I'm gonna kill Let me start that again.
(16:40):
I'm sorry that sounded weird. I'm gonna kill this bastard.
I'm gonna kill you, you fake tough guy. Those were
the last words that the defendant told Billy Cafilero the
night that he was murdered. It's a dark knight in Sienna, Pennsylvania.
And while walking on the street, you see a bar
(17:02):
to the right. It's called the Bamboo Lounge. And from
afar you think it's just a mom and pop little bar,
something quiet. But inside inside that bar is a whole
another story. Inside that bar, it's another world of people.
They have a code violence, drugs, money, and family above all.
(17:26):
Breaking that code means breaking that code can cost you
your life. They make money from prostitution, loan sharky, theft,
and extortion. Now, these families have a hierarchy. It goes
boss underboss, conciliaire, capos, associates and soldiers. And these are
(17:49):
the types of people that you will find the Bamboo
Lounge when you walk inside. The first person, so I
really like the story. That's Jason Goss. He's a St.
Mary's grad and a trial team legend, Jason tried cases
for the Bear County d a's office, but then he
left to join his old boss and take up for
the defense. Now, when you got towards the end, you
(18:11):
just started basically reading it, it was like blah blah blah,
da da da, something's never changed. In whatever spare time,
Jason manages to get he and his wife Maritza who's
expecting their first baby, coached the battle team. Sorry, I
feel like it goes too long, and I was boring
you guys. It is too long. But the only reason
is and the reason why it felt that way is
(18:32):
because you basically you did something that's it's kind of
rare and mock trial. You woa of all what the
witnesses we're going to say into the story, which is cool,
but you know, one of the things I noticed was
is you're talking about grab. You know, you had the knife,
you stabbed once, you stabbed twice, three times. You need
to talk about it like that. Right, he got the knife,
(18:53):
he stabbed him once, he stabbed him twice, He stabbed
him three times, nine inches deep right into his heart.
Something like that. Drama at a little I like it.
Keep going. I'm jasmineal Green and I'm a three. Oh
uh not doing too well today. Uh. We have cold
(19:17):
brew just running through my veins right now. Probably gonna
get like two to three hours of sleep. Already. Told Andy,
you know she sees me tomorrow. She didn't see me
because the first two weeks I was dressing up nice
and tomorrow it's it's gonna be bad. And I'm working
on top of this, and I think that's what's killing
me because I don't have that extra free time. So
(19:38):
I don't know how Jasmine's living right now. I got
a sabbatical from my job because I physically could not
do everything. She's not human, she's not real. But but
my job keeps me saying like, when I'm there, I
love it. I'm not worried about anything. I'm like, I'm here,
it's just wish there was more time in the week. So, Laura,
(20:03):
when you perceive from some of the students, the ones
that maybe you predict are going to have a struggle
after a law school, do you pivot a little bit
and maybe give a little bit more of yourself, maybe
a little bit more mentoring, maybe a little bit more
individualized attention to maybe get them more prepared for what
the real world quote unquote is going to be. Like,
I try to do that with all of my students
(20:23):
in all honesty, and it's one of the things that
I'm really fortunate with being here at South Dakota because
I have the number of students that I interact with.
I am very closely involved with all of my trial
team members, and I get to do that individualized attention
that you're talking about, But you can always pick out
those one or two where it's like, hey, you're gonna
need a little bit of extra coaching or a little
bit of extra support. My office is a safe space
(20:44):
for you. One of the biggest obstacles that I see
in a lot of my friends at school and in
myself is that imposter syndrome that most women have, where
it's like you don't realize that you are smart enough
or think you have the best argument, and there's always
kind of a push to be better without accepting that
you're already goody. And that's been one of the hardest
(21:06):
things to overcome. And advocacy is knowing like, Okay, my
argument is good, my style is good. Now I just
need to trust it, but make it better and and
that's the thing, right And I will empathize with you
on the imposter syndrome point and tell you it's not
something that goes away. I've got it horribly bad. My
friends love to laugh at me because every other week
i'd like, the law school is gonna fire me, I'm
gonna lose my job, And they're like, in what world?
(21:28):
And I'm like, somebody's going to see through that I
have clearly just faked it till I made it. At
this point, one of the things about being a female
advocate that I've found challenging until we'll still find challenging
but less challenging after working with you, is I think
the practice of law has had very maybe kind of
aggressive and straightforward and loud and boisterous and all of
(21:52):
these kind of different qualities that you've seen all the movies,
um that lawyers portrayed. But being you know, a female advocate,
as you said, we have a different skill set. And
in trial tech, I got a lot of comments about
being too gentle or like motherly, or I speak too
soft or something, and it kind of leads you to
(22:14):
a different skill set of how you take those kinds
of things and then make them better in your advocacy
and make them dangerous in the courtroom. And I think
that's one of the coolest things that I see women
advocates do, is you kind of know where they're going,
but you don't know how that final. And here's the thing.
(22:35):
I think that part of the reason that we've had
to become that is because the idea that if you're
aggressive is a woman, You're going to get labeled as
a bit. But number one, that's not necessarily true. The
jury will give you leeway if the witnesses being ridiculous.
You know, the more unreasonable they get, the more reasonable
that you get, unless you have to do the control
and then it shows the jury I've got the range
(22:55):
to go there. I'm choosing not to go there because
I know I'm more effective when I take these different approaches,
and that's not a bad thing. The thing that you
get to figure out now is is what your range
truly is. You you've figured out a couple of octaves
that you're comfortable singing in to make the analogy work,
but you can expand out of that. We bring to
(23:16):
the room our own biases and beliefs, and if you
don't understand that, when you're an attorney standing up and
presenting to a jury that is going to decide the
facts of your case, you will always lose. For Trial
team director A. J. Belito de Luna, running a trial
(23:38):
program means keeping track of several competition teams. The thing
that has to be at the forefront of your mind
from beginning to add Trust me, they are watching every
little thing that you are doing, Every little thing that
(23:59):
you are doing. He means coaching up the younger lawyers
and trial advocacy classes, but also looking out for promising rookies,
your honor, opposing counsel ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
She couldn't escape. She wanted to leave, but she couldn't.
(24:23):
He would not have it, so instead he killed her.
Rookies like Mariella and Sina's the second year law student
from Tucson who knocked it out of the park in
boot camp. This is her first opening statement in what
may prove to be a very promising legal career. October
(24:46):
starts as a typical day for a detective about He
goes into the office, probably grabs some coffee, sits at
his desk when the phone rings. Someone tells him that
a body was found at the marsh. Unfortunately, in Detective
(25:07):
Label's line of work, this isn't uncommon, so he treats
it just like any other homicide. He goes to the scene,
he examines the scene, he examines the body, suspects foul play,
and that's when it hits him. That's when he makes
(25:28):
the connection. He realizes Molly didn't go missing just randomly
three years ago. She didn't just run away from the defendant.
The defendant killed her. Thank you. This is assistant coach
(25:56):
Stephen Lopez, your brothers and your poise up there. You're
not moving around. You're very strong, you're very powerful. Your
voice feels this entire room, which is awesome. Your theme
that she couldn't escape, right, it's okay, right, it's not plunchy,
(26:16):
it's not really catchy. But I think the bigger problem
with it is he didn't really use it. If that's
your theory and that's your theme, then you've got to
play that through your whole opening. Great job, right, Sure,
I have seen your days. I could see it because
(26:38):
you just got criticized pretty heavil and you don't like it.
I mean, I I take criticism. Well, it's just like, yeah,
it's you know, you want to be perfect all the time,
but it's just not think so. So I want you
to hear something. I sent him a text. What did
that text say? I didn't My phone is off, sir,
(27:02):
beat ault. She is a champion in waiting. I see
in your face where you're feeling failure. I see in
your face where you're like Damn, I didn't do it right.
I didn't meet the expectation. It's not good enough yet,
(27:23):
but there's great stuff there. So don't get discouraged when
you get these com heads. We're never going to tell
you that you're good enough until you're good enough. And
you know when you're good enough when you bring home
a national championship like he did. When we put your
trophy in a trophy case. That's when we stopped saying
(27:45):
things to you. It's like you, you tell me what
we're gonna do now, all right, that's when you're good enough. Yeah,
so great job, now you can give her. Last week
was probably my most stressful week so far. More and
more things to do, and as we get deeper into classes,
(28:08):
it gets a little more time consuming. Also, I was
asked to practice with coach Douer and coach Goss as
a witness for their Battle of the Experts competition. So
I was really excited when I got the email. It
was Aj who emailed me. I was really excited. You know.
He let me know that this means you know what
I'm doing well. He also told me, don't let this
(28:31):
get to your head. You know, this isn't a golden ticketed.
You know, we're offering you this opportunity contingent on you
doing well and trial at um and keeping up the work.
It's definitely been a whirlwind of craziness. I haven't even
finished my evidence class. Like this is going to be
very scary. I'm a thrill. I definitely feel a ton
(28:54):
of pressure because I have experience. I should be better
in theory, I should be really good, should be able
to not necessarily carry the team, but at least do
a really good part. But because of that competitive nature,
you always feel like you're not there. We had practiced
yesterday that was a full sort of round, and I
didn't think I did as well as I should have.
(29:15):
I messed up some really basic stuff that I know
better than to do. I missed certain cues for things,
I missed objections stuff that I shouldn't have screwed up.
And we have, you know, a couple of weeks to
three weeks to prepare and hone that in. So it
it definitely that pressure gets to you, and there's a
lot more pressure on it because all the leaders of
the program are on this specific team. So it makes
(29:40):
you want to be better, but it also it makes
you really hard on yourself and does take a mental toll,
which is probably a good thing that law schools competitions
don't go all year. I have a meeting with my
counselor later on today. I haven't spoken to her in
a long time, but and I've had to keep putting
it off due to how busy I've been. But in general,
(30:01):
it seems like everybody's noticed everyone's mental health is sort
of collapsing, far more than it was our one oh year.
So I think people seem to be just generally worse off.
And I think it's a mix of the continuing pandemic
returning to classes knowing that the bar is coming up.
(30:22):
It's started one o year. Um. I mean, I saw
counselors periodically and in undergrad dealing with stresses and some
medical issues that threw me off. So I saw or
I saw regularly, but since things have gotten worse, decided
to pick it up a little bit again, just to
at least have a third party to be able to
(30:43):
vent to. You know, talking to your friends is great,
but if your friends are going through the same things
you are, it does feel kind of weird to complain
to them because they're not complaining to you. They get it.
They know where everybody's at their dealing with the same stuff.
But here you are complaining to them. It's just it
feels weird, even though they don't mind, it's just doesn't
feel quite as effective and it's just off. So, Ellie,
(31:07):
what advice do you have to guard against the burnout
that does happen in the business. Don't do mock trial.
I'm only half kidding. Look, when you're on trial, it's
all consuming, real trial. There's just no way around that.
It devours your life. I will speak from my experience.
You ignore your kids. You know, you don't take care
of yourself in terms of what you eat and you sleep.
(31:29):
And I think that mock trial, from what I've seen,
can be similar on these kids and on these students.
And I don't have an easy solution to that. I
don't know how they do it. I don't know how
they do mock trial and also keep up with their
classes and their social activities and their other activities that
they're trying to do at school. So God bless them.
(31:49):
It wasn't for me. You know. If I had to
give advice, I guess I would just try to say,
don't let it invade your dreams. Try to put it
in a box, put it to the side, and keep
in mind, as as much as it can feel all
consuming and competitive, it is a mock trial and you
don't have actual you know, someone's actual liberty at steak
or the family of a murder victim at stake. So
(32:11):
take a breath, keep it in perspective. But God bless
you for doing it. Everything has its season, everything has
its time. Somewhere there must be footage of a young
Lord Rose on stage. I can't do anymore in that
(32:33):
because my voice is gonna bother me too much. From
the time that I was very small, I loved musical
theater in particular, and I blame my parents for this,
because they took me to see Little Shop of Horrors
when I was two. I fell in love with the
storytelling element of that particular world. And like when Dad
was first in the military and when I was younger
and we would drive everywhere, he would play musical soundtracks,
(32:56):
and the storytelling aspect of that for me was everything.
Part of my plan was I wanted to work for
children's Television Workshop, and so that's where I wanted to be,
but I knew that if I couldn't make it work
and I was going to become a financial burden to
my parents. At that point, I couldn't justify it in
my own head. I graduated from college in May of
two thousand nine. I was two years behind when I
(33:16):
should have been because my mom got sick before I
went to school. She has MS, and I stayed home
to help out with the family. With that, I said,
I can't. I can't do it, as much as I
want to, as much as I would have loved to
go there, and so it was better to go with
the practical thing, to have the thing that I knew
could feed me, and then find a way from my
creative love to become a part of that. And I
got really lucky. I got really, really lucky and found
(33:38):
a way to do it. The reason I was comfortable
going to law school is I knew that the law
school that I had chosen was the one that was
going to make me an advocate, which was me, which
meant that I was going to get to take my
talents and all these things that I'd spent time developing
and use them for the betterment of other people. It's
just not the way that I thought it would happen.
I thought I would be in the courtroom trying cases
all the time, and in reality, I'm much better suited
(33:59):
to what I'm doing now, which is taking the next
generation and saying you go to it. If I am
successful and get tenure here, I could stay here for
the rest of my academic career. If I do that,
I will know at the end of my career that
for thirty plus years, I will have put out every
single advocate that's come out of University of South Dakota
Cannuts in school law. So I will know that the
(34:21):
evidentiary issues in courtrooms across the state are being handled
in a way that's appropriate. I will know that the
people who are advocating in courtrooms have been trained this way,
and it's going to change the legal landscape here because
it's desperately needed. The clock is ticking in Coach Rose
needs to whip her team into shape for the battle
of the experts. Good morning, good morning, Good morning, gang,
(34:44):
and for all of the competitions that are coming in
the fall. Get your coffee, get your caffeine and drink.
Make sure that you're awake. We will get through today
as quickly as we possibly can. You all know that
I'm all about efficiency and making sure that we don't
waste our time, and I know that you have other
things that you've got to do. But today what we're
gonna be covering, we're gonna talk about cross examination, which
is everybody in this room knows my absolute favorite thing
(35:06):
that we end up doing in a courtroom, because it's
when you have the most controled. So are we all
clear about what we're doing this morning? We awake vaguely
three else, Let's go around the room. What's your favorite
part about cross examination? Justin The thing I like about
the most is I feel like I'm in control, and
no matter how hard they're trying to squirm out of things,
(35:26):
or if they're trying to be cute with me, it's
an easy situation to flip that back on them. Matt,
you've had trial tech. What's your favorite thing about cross
The power? I like the power behind it. This is
Matt Skinner, a future defense attorney and the team's best sniper.
Be honest, man, let's go work. Come on, talk about it.
Why do you like the power? What about that is good?
(35:47):
I like the power and forever. I've called it the
oce Ship moment. Like I instead, you just lay these
bread crumbs and eventually it leads to this trap where
the witnesses like, oh Ship, I'm stuck. Hi, I don't
know what to do here. Yeah. I like the power
of having control. Basically you know what's going to happen,
(36:08):
they don't, and eventually you're going to lead that witness
to do exactly what you want. I think one of
the most intimidating things that you can't really do on Zoom.
But they call it working the wells. So like you're
well as kind of right in from the judge and
the witness table. Here Coach Rose teaches us how to
walk your dog in the well and when you have
(36:29):
an unfriendly witness, when you start kind of cornering them
on a point, you start walking towards them and you
keep the eye contact, and as you keep asking questions,
you keep taking more and more steps, and once you've
kind of cracked them a major point, you just turn
your back to them and walk away. But it's one
of the most kind of powerful moments that you can
have in a courtroom. You know, when you go to
(36:50):
the zoo and you turn your back to like all
the monkeys, and they get mad like that's kind of
what walking the dog is like. And hour after hour,
coach it was puts her team through a crash course
on trial techniques. So if you get somebody on the
stand who says, well, Sally told me that Billy Bob
told her objection your honor, hearsay within hearsay, may we
approach all in the service of building a stronger case
(37:13):
for the Battle of the experts competition. You're on her
under federals of evidence in the process knocking the South
Dakota nice out of her young lawyers on the team.
Why is it unfairly prejudicial? Why is that the case?
Explain it? Draw it for me in crayons if you
freaking have to, But explain it. If it's egregious, if
(37:36):
it touches upon a fundamental right, in particular, if we're
in Battle of the experts and justin hears them say that,
the defendant for sure is going to say something. He's
gonna be up off of his chair having a heart attack,
but he's going to make the objection to make sure
that it's on the record. Because fundamental rights, constitutional issues,
things that could get people into prison if we were
(37:57):
in real life. You gotta be mad about that, and
you got to be big man. You've got to say
that it's wrong, and you've got to call it out
for being wrong. When I was getting ready to do
my first ever jury address as a prosecutor, I asked
my supervisor, who had been doing it for a decade plus,
I said, this is a stupid question, but what am
(38:17):
I supposed to be tomorrow when I give this opening?
And he said, what do you mean? I said, I
don't know, Like, what's the vibe? What am I trying
to do? My trying to be tough guy or cool
or what? And he said, Look, as the prosecutor, your
job is two things. To be clear and credible, and
that's it. Leave the dramatics to the defense lawyer. Leave
the pounding of the podium and the clever stories to
(38:38):
the defense lawyer. That's not for you. Your job is
a stand up in front of that jury to be
clear they understand what your case is about. And to
be credible. They believe you, they believe our evidence. That's it.
I was once told a friend of mine said, I
figured out your style. I said, okay, what is it?
He said, your Jersey conversational. I'm from New Jersey. And
(38:59):
I said, oh, I don't know that he meant it
as a compliment. I think he meant it like I'm
not super intellectual. But I said, perfect, that's great. That's
what I want to be. Part of the beauty of
our jury system is. I think people tend to think
our jury system is mechanical or mathematical, but in fact,
every judge instructs every jury use your common sense, use
your good everyday common sense that you use every day
(39:21):
out there, and and it can really resonate with the
jury and you say, why would this defendant take this action? Look,
you all know, you're all human beings. You've all been
in scenarios where someone has insulted you. You know how
that maybe made you feel that you didn't act on it,
but he did. You know, you can use common sense
type arguments like that, and it's part of the beauty
of our jury system, and it can be quite effective
(39:42):
in advocacy. Back in San Antonio, the team piles into
Andy's car. They're not searching for facts, They're hunting down
snacks brain food for a tournament that will stretch over
three marathon days. Yeah, my grandmother calls it cheap, cheap,
(40:03):
it's better than and calls it him. Okay, it's so focused.
We need energy drinks. I probably want to try about Okay,
we need them for tomorrow because we're not gonna have
time to kind of energy drink. I gotta probably get
like the double shot espressos from Starbucks, like like like
like a pack of them. We also need like snatter
(40:25):
because we need Yeah, we need water bottles. We need
to haul all the water when I go home. This
is what I missed the most, ya for sure. Okay,
so Jasmine wants I want the little I do the
double shot ones or I mean their triple shot but
(40:46):
I'll be bouncing off the freaking walls and that you
just get me alive by one out year. Yeah, the
triple shot ones. There you go, all right, I think
I got snacks, We got drinks ready to go. Yeah,
you want to get your opening right now? What here
in everybody do it? You can do anywhere, You can
(41:10):
do it anywhere else on our way to get over
your fears. Then just stay in the day. You can
get it for something to get to be true or not. Yeah,
I don't need a compa no, like like you want
me to do an hour or not? I want used
to do it at the hotel top and get animated.
I'm I'm a rant on all the things and be like,
(41:31):
get Mike, I didn't even that it was my car.
(41:58):
Come on, coach, Jason Goss is waiting at the hotel.
So the way, the way that it was described in
the coaches meeting is not if you plan to use
any character evidence of Tommy, if you plan to use
any character evidence at all for any witness my entire
(42:18):
nae Patrick Across right. Well, so you know the idea
is and what they were talking. So Jason, how do
you help these students just get over their nerves? You
know what I always tell them is you're gonna You're
gonna have it like it just it's there, Like I
used to throw up for these things, always did, and
I don't now. But I'll tell you what I mean.
(42:40):
I tried a hundred fifty cases and I will still
feel so nervous every time I do an opening or
every time I do across examination. So you know, I
don't really know how to tell them because it's kind
of how they do it. I'll tell you that. Tomorrow
the first round, we are going against University of Chicago, Kent.
(43:04):
So those are your advocates, those are your witnesses. You
can't get noticed any My coach before me, that was
coaching this team before me, and I remember telling there like,
these kids are, they're not ready. They don't know what
they're doing, you know, like she said, it's it's weird.
But right when the competition starts, like whatever, it is,
all that stuff you told them, it just kicks in
(43:24):
and then they just go and they do it. Tomorrow,
they're gonna amaze and astonished. They're gonna be great because
they're gonna take those nerves or whatever, and they're gonna
be on stage and they're gonna be ready to go
and they're going to deliver her. Like any collegiate athlete,
these law students have something to prove on the field
of play. The battle starts in one day, and on
top of all of the legal strategy, there's another major
(43:47):
stress factor. These trials are held on zoom and this year,
the second year of the pandemic, stakes are higher for
mastering the technology. Yeah, last year it was old webcams,
bad internet bedrooms, and here we've got like really nice cameras.
(44:09):
This is Bill Murray from South Dakota. You're on in
a moment to situate myself in the well of the courtroom.
So this is us right now present, and we go
to screen share. Already got anything that publish mission published,
and we I think they need to click through it
(44:31):
instead of waiting. We've got some whiting. We're going to
be in the courtroom. It's almost set up for the competition,
so I think the school has had some more time
to prepare for it. You know, there's been a whole
year of zoom trials, so they've had time to think
about it and the best way to go forward? Can
(44:52):
we run through the motions once of like where we
would be motion and lemon a and then I just
don't like how switch it out? Well, let's let's run
it quick. Grady, do you want to go in there
with this laptop? And then Rose you're presiding. So now
all of our teams will be using this set up
for all the competitions and hopefully we're back in person
(45:15):
next spring, but if not, we've got a very nice
setup going forward. Okay, so I'll be given the motion
and lemonade. So I'm gonna be giving it from the
Williams in the room, granted obviously, so state ready to proceed,
permission to prepare the well, your honor, thank you, your honor,
(45:38):
nothing further, and then turn off my camera. Maybe I
would unplug this and I'll do my direct they'll do
their cross. I'll be seated here. This video quality right
this video quality right here not the same as the
video quality that we haven't here. That's gonna be too
much of a difference. But if we have a setup
in Yere so that we have that quality camera and
(45:59):
here I'm mine and I will stop my bidge, it's
equally as tense inside that hotel room in San Antonio. Okay,
So right now we're setting up the witness rooms. So
we have to set up the backdrops and the cameras
and the microphones in the rooms of the team members
(46:23):
who will be witnessing in this competition. Every little detail matters,
the lights, the cameras, the backdrops, even the makeup and
hand movements. If you can see it on zoom, chances
are you're going to be judged on it. So John
has built this like contraption that's gonna hold up the
(46:46):
back drops that another one of our classmates made. It's
supposed to look like wood. It's like a wooden back drop.
It has the skills of justice in the middle of
a little circle. Um, how would you describe it, John,
So it's a piece of vinyl that's wrapped around a
(47:08):
frame built of pbc uh imprinted on. There is wood
paneling with the scales of justice kind of like superimposed
on it, kind of like you would see in the
wood paneling in the back of like a courtroom or
like an office space. I just gonna get all these
sprinkles out, so it's gonna be behind the advocate and
(47:28):
so the advocate if the advocates right here, I'm gonna
hang or put the ring light up, which I can
do actually behind you see what I'm saying, because that
ring light also has a spot on it before the
camber to screw. And we went through our defense case
opening of defense, our crosses than we did our direct examinations,
(47:53):
and Andy closed on defense and kind of got some
more stylistic feedback Like for my any Coach Stewart told
me that I can bring it up a notch and
my energy maybe like sound a little more powerful, and
also she wants me to move around more. I have
to do less because it's like stop doing this with
(48:15):
your hands. I was like, I just want to emphasize
it's like teetering on jazz hands because I'm like, there's this,
there's that, like there's like explosions coming out of your hands,
and then this is just like you're thinking, we have
a thought. You're think it's like you're pulling like a
like a little band between your hands, like you're exercising
your forearms or something. We've got a feedback, Like one
of the judges commented on a girl's eyelashes and her hair.
(48:38):
You have to be like very very natural, natural makeup.
That's what they want for sure. Hair tucked back because
last year my coach she was like you have gray hair,
which is true, thank you um, but he was like,
you need to like move it from your face. You
don't need to have it blocking your your face because
(48:59):
it's just tracting and natural makeup. No heavy eyes, shadows, nails,
need to be professional, nude, nothing crazy with the clothes,
just like blue or black suits and then like a
white top. They had to prove like our outfit. They
even approved our other advocates tie. He's had to send
(49:20):
his thie colors because you can't have something too distracting
because they know, like the judges will be like, I
hate that Tie, I hate you, Like it's over for us.
So we got we're not going to sleep tonight. Um
texting my nail guy because he's like, next, we're all
right here. I love this man. I do the only
(49:45):
thing left to do in South Dakota. I am a
bundle of nerves. Besides the usual panicking is to fuel
up for the brutal days that law ahead. I'm feeling
pretty good. I think we're ready to go. I'm ready
for some pasta tonight and then then we're ready to roll.
(50:06):
It's LaCOSA noodles like La Cosa Nostra. Rose makes this
like infamous pasta sauce and you can like smell it
through the school whenever she she brings it. So she
made that sauce for a team dinner tonight before competition,
and Bill calls them look coastra and noodles. I make
(50:28):
comematee spaghetti sauce. It's one of my ways of decompressing
and de stressing and I was also couring and blanching
a hundred and seventy nine pounds worth it tomatoes, and
so I have fast tracked some of that to make
homemade spaghetti sauce. We're gonna have a spaghetti dinner because
it just felt appropriate. With the fact matter. It's kind
of an insane time. Everything gets a little discombobulated. Everything
(50:48):
is a little stressful, everything is a little bit heightened.
But it's also a lot of fun. But what I'm
most looking forward to is regardless of if it's Bill
or Bailey, whichever one of them first gets to say
you're on, or a moment to prepare the well and
get up and stand and be in a poort room
and make an argument in front of people. That's what
I'm looking forward to. I think it's a ton of
fun just doing all of our run throughs with the team.
(51:10):
I've never competed, but it's fun watching a case come together,
and then it's fun listening to what someone else has
done and then flipping it on them. I mean, it
sounds a little like mean, but it's fun to just
tear something apart. I'm aunt, and here's why I'm aunt. Guys,
(51:35):
you're ready. You're absolutely ready for this. There is nobody
who's going to be able to know this fact pattern
as thoroughly as you know this fat pattern. There is
nobody who has come back and to put in the
amount of hours outside of typical practice time that you
guys have. Rely on that and rely on your knowledge.
You guys are ready to go. They'll let the bells
and whistles worry. We're about to screw some people over
big time, and I cannot wait to watch what happens.
(51:58):
That's next time. Class Action. Class Action is a production
of I Heart Radio and Sound Argument, Created, produced, written,
and edited by Kevin Huffman and Lisa Gray. Executive producers
(52:21):
are Taylor Chacogne and Katrina Norvell. Additional story production by
Jennifer Swan, Kristin Cabrera, Jason Foster, and Wendy Nardi. Sound design,
editing and mixing by Evan Tyre and Taylor chakogn This
episode had additional field production by Kristen Cabrera, Paul Ebson,
(52:41):
Alfredo de la Garza, and Malia Lukomski. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows
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