BU trial team ‘mocks’ the law

Drew Walton, a former gubernatorial candidate, is prepping for his upcoming defamation trial.

His lawyers are trying to convince him to spin his tale in a way that is favorable to the prosecution.

How he decided to run for governor, how he debated Professor Lane Hamilton before the election, how, after a devastating debate victory for Walton, a distraught Hamilton shot himself in the parking lot outside the debate hall with Walton’s own gun.

How, then, BNN reporter Reagan Thomas claimed Hamilton was murdered by Walton, and how this report ended up losing Walton the election.

‘Why were you carrying a gun?’ one of Walton’s lawyers asked him.

‘I remember when my father was campaigning for governor, there were attempts made on his life,’ Walton said, further explaining that, for his own safety and for that of his family, he began carrying a gun for protection.

Walton’s lawyers are not satisfied. ‘It sounds too rehearsed,’ one said. Another points out that his family was not with him at the debate that night, and he is better off just saying that he was carrying the gun for self-protection.

It may sound like an episode of ‘Law and Order’ or a long-forgotten Massachusetts political scandal, but it is neither. For starters, every person gathered in the practice courtroom, from the lawyers to Drew Walton himself, was an undergraduate student at Boston University.

This is the Mock Trial team, a group of students who practice prosecuting and defending faux trial cases for up to 12 hours a week. As the only team from Massachusetts going to the upcoming national championships this year, the team went 8-0 in the opening championship rounds.

‘We’ll put it this way,’ Mock Trial Co-President Amanda Fretto, a College of Arts and Sciences senior, said. ‘It’s been a long time since BU was ranked that high. And there are a lot of good teams in our division.’

Confidence does not stop them from engaging in superstitions, however. members said.

‘We knock on wood before every trial,’ CAS freshman Michael Ferruggia said.

Ferruggia is not exaggerating, College of Fine Arts freshman Matt Lytle, a member of the team, said.

‘We seriously go up to trees, knocking,’ Lytle added.

In mock trial competitions, the players can be either a witness or an attorney, but some, like CAS junior Natalie Robinson, are both. While acting as lawyers, the players simply are themselves, but as witnesses they play characters ranging from the subtle to the outrageous. Mock Trial Co-President Karen Alunkal, a CAS senior, plays the latter as flighty Drew Walton fan Jan Patel.

‘I basically am this materialistic crazy girl who just wants to be on camera,’ Alunkal said. ‘She’s kind of like the movie ‘Clueless’ or ‘Legally Blonde.”

Alunkal, like many students on the team, has been involved with mock trial for years, she said. After three years of being on her high school’s team, ‘I came to college thinking that that was the end of mock trial for me,’ she said.

But she joined the BU team anyway, she said.

‘It’s kind of an addicting thing,’ Alunkal said.

Others on the team joined without any mock trial experience. CAS junior Tom Leonard, who plays Drew Walton in the team’s current scenario, said he tried out for the team his sophomore year after a friend told him about it.

‘I did some theater in high school, but nothing like mock trial,’ Leonard said. ‘You need to be more credible when you’re portraying someone in mock trial. Theater’s more about entertainment.’

The team is currently preparing for the national college championship, which will be held on April 17, 18 and 19. BU will compete against the 48 best mock trial teams in the country, including New York University, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Virginia.

So, who will win?

The question is answered by the sound of a team’s worth of knuckles ferociously rapping on the wooden courtroom desks. After all, they take this seriously, but a little superstition could not hurt.