CCHS Mock Trial Team is Finding its Feet

This year, CCHS’ Mock Trial Team had its best season since the pandemic. While in past years, leadership struggled to find enough students to fill their 18-person team, this year they had over 50 applicants. And according to the team’s president, junior Mia Moroz, they have never felt more prepared.

CCHS has actually had a Mock Trial Team for over 40 years. Rebekah Kinsella, who teaches World History, is currently the advisor, but their coach is a lawyer, Ronald Ziff, who practices family law in Culver City. Mr. Ziff’s daughter started the team when she was a CCHS student in the 80’s, and it is thanks to his continuous support and advice that the team has stayed alive.

Now, Mock Trial might sound simple—maybe you have done one in an English or history class—but competitively, it takes a lot of preparation and practice. A school’s team is made up of 18 students with nine assigned to the prosecution team and nine assigned to the defense. Each of these smaller teams then works to prepare their arguments based on the fictional criminal case and witness statements that the California Mock Trial Competition provides each season. Some team members play lawyers while others portray witnesses (sadly, accents are not allowed at the high school level).

This season, teams argued a murder case involving a reality TV cooking show, and Mia Moroz says she has “never had one as interesting as this.” The accused is a competitor on the show who is on trial for murdering one of the celebrity chef judges by serving them poisonous mushrooms. The motive? A long-standing beef between the two chefs. The witness statements show that the accused also spent time mushroom-foraging in an area where poisonous mushrooms were known to grow. Based on these fictional facts, the CCHS team began to build its cases.

The team met every Sunday for two hours at Mr. Ziff’s house to practice. This year, they began preparing as soon as they got the case—in early September. Then, starting in November for three Mondays in a row in the late afternoon, the team, all dressed up in suits, went to the Stanley Mosk Federal Courthouse in downtown LA where their prosecution and defense team each performed in mock trials against other schools’ teams. Each of the three rounds was run by a real federal judge, but the competition was judged, somewhat subjectively, not by who won the case, but by how well each member of a team performs in their role (giving opening statements or performing as witnesses under cross examination). 

Though the CCHS team was not able to advance to elimination rounds this year, they were proud of their performance and found the experience incredibly rewarding. For Moroz, Mock Trial has been an incredible opportunity for her to explore her passion for law and find a community where she “can be loud about what [she] cares about without feeling uncool.” 

Like many CCHS competitive academic clubs, Mock Trial is still finding its feet after the pandemic, but this season showed the progress they have made. For next season, the club’s president will be Bodie Jenkins, currently a junior, and they hope to continue feeling prepared, being submerged in the world of the new case, and being ready to raise the bar.