Students conduct Moot Trial, Judge Roach presides

When many were sleeping in on a lazy Saturday morning, the Honorable Judge Michael Roach was in the Stephens County Courthouse presiding over the Moot Trial for Home School children from three counties.

The courtroom was packed with parents of the home-schooled kids and their siblings and other family members who had come for moral support. The volunteer jury included Daniel Bertrand, Dave Clark, David Everett, Scott Gabriel, Debbie Hill, Elaine Matamoros and Kathryn Piegat.

The prosecuting team from Wichita Falls included Sydney Carian, Isaac Haro, Keaton LaRoque, Abigail Mollenkopf, Ezra Nyberg, Kate Swiger and Gray Walker. When they flipped to the defensive side later, that team included Tatum Zillias, Micah Estratton and Reese Dentner. The Baliff was Emerson Turnkin.

The defense team from Graham included Grace Biebighauser, Gracie Buse, Liam Gilcrease, and Rebekah Moreno and Emmalee Griffith, both from Breckenridge. Their additional team members included Reese Dentner, Micah Estratton, London Packard and Tatum Zillias.

Later, the two teams would flip and present the opposite view from what they had done earlier. As a result, both teams had to prepare a defense and a prosecuting approach.

Regardless of which view the kids were presenting, they had to be on their toes for cross-examination of witnesses and include all the proven or unproven facts to the jury in the closing statement.

Both teams did an outstanding job and should be commended for their long hours of preparation with notebooks of information, documents for inclusion in the trial and the preponderance of the available information for the entire project.