2005 Mock Trial Results

NASHVILLE, March 20, 2005 — Nashville’s Hume-Fogg Academic High School repeated its 2004 performance as the best high school mock trial team in the state with a win over Memphis’s St. Mary’s Episcopal School in the 26th annual Tennessee State High School Mock Trial Competition.

The team will represent Tennessee at the National Mock Trial Competition in Charlotte on May 5-8.

Family Christian Academy from Chattanooga, which reigned as state and national champions in 2002 and 2003, took third place, while Bell Buckle’s Webb School took fourth place.

Individual awards were given for best attorney and best witness as follows:
• Best Attorney, 1st Place – Sarah Atkinson, St Mary’s Episcopal School of Memphis
• Best Attorney, 2nd Place – Kali Stewart, Franklin High School
• Best Witness, 1st Place – Shelby Bodiford, Family Christian Academy of Chattanooga
• Best Witness, 2nd Place – Sarah Shadrick, Unicoi County High School of Erwin

Eighteen high school teams from across Tennessee put their legal skills to the test during the competition. They were: Memphis University School, St. Mary’s Episcopal School, Haywood High School from Brownsville, the Webb School from Bell Buckle, Franklin High School, Hume-Fogg Academic, Martin Luther King Magnet in Nashville, Gallatin High School, Rossview High School from Clarksville, Family Christian Academy from Chattanooga, Ooltewah High School, Cookeville High School, Seymour High School, Knoxville West High School, South Greene High School from Greeneville, Tennessee High School from Bristol, Unicoi County High School from Erwin and Clinton High School.

To reach the state competition, teams had to win district competitions by playing the roles of attorneys and witnesses in a fictitious case developed by the Tennessee Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division. Teams presented the case of The State of Tennessee v. Kerry Edward, a criminal suit arising from the murder of a music industry executive. Kerry Edward, a member of the popular country band Six Shooter, was charged with murdering the band’s manager, who was alleged to have been blackmailing Edward. The murder weapon was a music award that each member of the group received. Edward alleged that he was framed and that the deceased had many enemies. The parties and the eyewitnesses offered differing accounts of what transpired the night of the murder.

About 200 students and 200 volunteers – mostly lawyers, law students and judges – volunteered their time and expertise in the state competition.