Over 40 FCHS students got a better idea of how a courtrooms work when history teacher Mitchell Pace brought his AP Government classes to a UVA mock trial on January 13. Students from FCHS, Charlottesville High School, and Blue Ridge were randomly selected and split into 19 groups to play the role of the jurors in a mock trial. Both retired and current federal judges took the role of the judge in each room, while third-year UVA law students acted as the lawyers representing the defendant and the prosecution. The trials covered the case of a fictitious widow who sued her insurance company when it denied paying $1 million in death benefits for her husband’s death. The insurance company claimed that the recently-fired husband had committed suicide by driving his car into a tree.

While each of the 19 rooms dealt with the same mock trial, each jury experience was different. “The defendants got to call their witnesses up first… Then they would get cross-examined by the prosecution,” said senior Chris Robey who served on one of the juries. “The prosecution got to bring their witnesses up, and then they had to make their closing statements,” he said. Variables such as the direction of acceleration marks pointing towards the tree and the husband’s past suicide attempts were used by the insurance company to claim the death was suicide. In contrast, the prosecution claimed that the husband had been drunk the night of the accident, which led to his death, and that suicide wasn’t a likely outcome since the man had a lot to live for, despite being recently fired from his job.

Ultimately, the verdicts varied from room to room. Some voted in favor of the insurance company, while others voted in favor of the widow.

Pace said that he thought the experience was beneficial. “It’s an amazing civil experience. It’s something that potentially every American citizen will have to do, is to sit on a jury. So having a little bit of that before they’re even at the age to do it in real life is a potentially amazing practice. I think it was a really cool hands-on experience,” said Pace. Pace said that he fully intends to volunteer his students to be jurors next year.

Many participants found the trial process eye-opening. “The actual process of the trial was pretty memorable since I have never actually been on jury duty before,” said senior Dalton Shiflett. “It really put into perspective on how these things go and what it would be like to be even part of a jury, because before this, I always thought it was some boring thing you had to do. But now, seeing it, I realize it wouldn’t be too bad if you got called in to do it,” said senior Blade Karaca.