Hampden students win mock trial title

If Hampden Academy’s mock trial team were a sports team, it would be considered a dynasty after winning the state championship Thursday for the fifth year in a row.

The 22-member team beat its longtime rival Cape Elizabeth to win the title in Portland. Every time the Hampden Academy team has advanced to the final match, it has won. It will represent the state at the national competition in Wilmington, Del., in May.

“It was the best state final match I’ve ever witnessed,” Hampden coach James McCarthy, a federal prosecutor, said Friday. “The Cape Elizabeth team presented several factual theories we had not seen before and had not considered. They were very well-prepared and their witnesses were excellent.”

The mock trial competition consisted of two trials – one team acted as the prosecutors and the other as the defense in the first trial, and then they switched sides for the second trial. Team members also filled the roles of witnesses and investigators. The trials are timed but unscripted.

This year’s case, Maine vs. Pat Quinn, centered on a spiked-drink prank that went fatally awry at a Dirigo University Halloween party. Quinn, one of the pranksters, was charged with manslaughter.

It was an intense, demanding competition, according to John Lovell, communications director for the Maine State Bar Association, but not the kind that draws bleachers full of fans, or half-time pageantry or cheerleaders. The words uttered in the fast exchanges echoed off stone walls and the ceiling some 25 feet above the marble floor in the ornate first-floor courtroom of the Cumberland County Courthouse where the Maine Supreme Judicial Court convenes.

“But the student lawyers had more than well-honed argument skills,” Lovell said in a press release. “They had also learned enough about the arcane world of autopsies and toxicology reports and the effects of various drugs and chemicals, and body functions and things like ‘aorta plaque’ to ask and answer sharp, to-the-point questions in their roles as attorneys and as police detective and physician witnesses.”

Julie Finn, a Portland attorney who coordinates the competition called this year’s case “very difficult.”

“There were many legal and factual issues, as well as a few red herrings,” she said in a press release issued by the Maine Bar Foundation. “The teams did a phenomenal job this year with a very difficult case.”

The mock trial competition, according to the MBF, educates students about the legal system, the judicial process, the attorneys’ roles and the rules of evidence. It teaches effective communication, critical thinking, principles of advocacy and teamwork.

Those are the skills members of Hampden’s team practice and work very hard to master, coach William Devoe, a Bangor attorney, said Friday.

It may be why they have won the competition every time they’ve advanced to the state finals.

The Hampden team beat Cape Elizabeth in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007.

Hampden beat Catherine McCauley High School in 2004 and Lewiston in 2006 to win the title. Cape Elizabeth won in 2002 after Hampden was knocked out of the competition in an early round and did not compete on the state level.

“We admire and respect Cape as a worthy opponent,” Devoe said of Hampden’s perpetual rival.

Kathryn King, a Hampden teacher, also coaches the team.

The mock trial contest is sponsored by the Maine State Bar Association and the Maine Bar Foundation.

This year’s final match was judged by Leigh I. Saufley, chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Peter Petigoff, dean of the University of Maine School of Law, and attorney Thomas Marjerison of Portland.

Members of Hampden’s mock trial team are: Kristina King, Jacob Cravens, Rachel Lawler, Jessikah Hackett, Jennifer Wilson, Katie Foster, Rylee Rawcliffe, Katherine Plowman, Emily Tarbell-Reynolds, Tao Mason, Savannah Sargent, Heidi Harrison, Jason Hamilton, Ryan Asalone, Jack Swalec, Tessa Wood, Victoria Gower, Michaela Stephenson, Jennifer Dixon, Thomas Hoffman, Jake Marsh, Sarah Coston, Elena Cravens and Monique Kelmenson.

Judy Harrison may be reached at jharrison@bangordailynews.net or 990-8207.