By Sara Crawford/The Gazette
MEDINA — Medina County Courthouse’s courtrooms were filled with high school students, advisers and family members on Friday morning as several mock trial teams competed to move on to the next round.
The four participating teams comprised two teams from Buckeye High School, a team from Cloverleaf High School and a team from Keystone High School.
The teams were part of more than 2,000 high school students from 23 counties taking part in the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education’s 42nd annual Ohio Mock Trial Competition for a chance to move on to the regional competition on Feb. 7.
According to the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education, the mock trial case focuses on the intersection of the First Amendment, defamation and the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
“It’s always a civil case, and it’s almost always dealing with some sort of First Amendment issue,” said district coordinator and Medina County Probate and Juvenile Court Magistrate Andrew Parker.
In Medina County, the event is sponsored by the Medina County Bar Association, which also provides students lunch after their trials. Parker is the chair of the association’s mock trial committee and organizes the event each year.
For more than 15 years, the Medina County judges have provided their courtrooms for the mock trial teams to have a more authentic courtroom experience.
This year, the teams were in Common Pleas Judge Joyce Kimbler’s courtroom, along with Common Pleas Judge William Hutson’s courtroom. Magistrate Matthew Razavi presided in Hutson’s courtroom, while Magistrate Keith Brenstuhl presided in Kimbler’s.
Parker said the students fill all the roles within the courtroom, except for the magistrate up on the bench and the two attorneys sitting beside them.
“The witness roles are filled by students, the attorneys are students,” Parker said. “Then they have to run everything.”
At the district and regional levels of competition, the Ohio Center for Law-Related Education said that each team competes in two trials against opposing teams. Teams must win both trials or the majority of their judges’ ballots to advance to the next level of the competition. The state competition will then be held March 6-8.
Parker said that having the students take part in the mock trial within a courtroom is a unique experience, one that not all mock trial teams get to have.
“(I hope) that they learn to appreciate what it’s like to be in a courtroom for attorneys and what it’s like to prepare a case,” Parker said. “They get these problems months in advance and get to work on them and develop them and develop how they’re going to argue them, which is what attorneys do.”
Contact reporter Sara Crawford at (330) 721-4063 or scrawford@medina-gazette.com.