Welcome to Mr. Poley’s mock trial page. Here you will find links to web pages with information, and files relevant to your mock trial experience in my class.
We will be using the case U.S. vs Dominique Stephens.
We will need the following for our mock trial.
- Detective Dana Hughes, Metropolitan Police Department
- Tony Williams Former Director, New Columbia Domestic Violence Shelter
- Jordan Bright, Dominique Stephens’ sibling
- Dominique Stephens, Defendant
- Sidney Miller, M.D., Physician, New Columbia Hospital Center
- Dr. Bobby Phoenix, expert on Battered Woman Syndrome
- Judge
- Bailiff
- Jury
Mock Trial Introduction
Work session prepping for the trial.
Everyone has received a copy of this file attached to their assignment in Google classroom. The first thing I want everyone to do is to open up their copy of the project document in KAMI.
On the First Page I want you to type:
- Your Name
- Your Block
- Your Team (Team defense or Team prosecution – You will decide this on day two after trial signups)
Then I want you to save this document to your classroom Google drive folder. You may also save it to your computer. Select download from your KAMI menu. You want to save your work “Complete with all annotations.” The middle button. You can select a destination for your file.
The initial goal depending on what role you want to play, or what side you choose to take is for everyone to start getting more familiar with the facts of the case. And to begin to strategize for team Defense or team Prosecution (we will be using Kami’s highlighting features as we read through the mock trial packet).
For our purposes we will be looking for 3 different things as we read through our trial packet.
We will be looking for (use your highlighting tool to tell the difference):
- facts/areas that reflect well or bring up a question that helps the defense’s cause. Highlight Green
- facts/areas that reflect well or bring up a question that helps the prosecutions cause. Highlight red
- Facts/areas that are important not to forget and don’t necessarily help either side. Highlight Gray
Mock Trial sign ups and Vocabulary
Remember that depending on which side you pick it will be your team’s job to make your side look better than the other. Not only must you study your witnesses and how to make them look or appear better. You must also study the opposing side’s witnesses and think about what questions you might ask to show them in an unfavorable light.
Everyone no matter your role must start out picking one or the other.
To help us get focused for the trial please complete all definitions from our Mock Trial Definitions sheet.
The next task for you is to read and highlight each of the witness affidavits as suggested above. Highlight each category a different color. The six witness affidavits are in your Mock trial packet. You may also use the text tool to type any important questions that come to mind as you are reading.
This next part will be for after we have declared for team defense or team prosecution, This work can be done independently or as part of a group. All students must make their own questions document and submit with
18 Witness Questions – For the Defense or Prosecution **This part is a project grade** (To be linked)
Our questions will be compiled and refined for our use on our “Mock Trial Day”.
Defense and Prosecution teams will prepare their opening and closing statements and after a little further preparation we will attempt our Mock Trial.
If you are interested in the offerings from the Streetlaw Program see below.
https://www.streetlaw.org/additional-pages/for-educators
https://store.streetlaw.org/united-states-v-dominique-stephens/