Southampton Town

Southampton Town

Youth Court

Training Manual

for Advanced Members

Contact Information

Karen Matz, Youth Court Coordinator

*Work: (631)702-2424

*

Kevin Gilvary, ESQ Youth Court Trainer

**If you will be absent from youth court training or trials, it is YOUR responsibility to let the youth court coordinator know, not your parent, friends or other members.

Section 1 page 3

Critical Mistakes Attorneys Make

Ethics and Demeanor

Section 2 page 7

Develop a Theme throughout the Trial

Section 3 page 11

Proper Use of Notes

Speaking Confidently in Court

Section 4 page 15

A Knock Out Opening

Section 5 page 18

Closing Arguments

Section 6 page 22

The Art of Direct Questions & Cross Exam

Section 7 page 28

Putting Items into Evidence

Are Jurors Ignoring your evidence

Objections

Section 8 page 32

Mock Cases

Elliott Wilcox publishes Trial Tips Newsletter. Sign up today for your free subscription and a copy of his special reports: “How to Successfully Make & Meet Objections” and “The Ten Critical Mistakes Trial Lawyers Make (and how to avoid them)” at www.TrialTheater.com

Section 1

Critical Mistakes

#1 *Not Being Prepared

In a trial you get one chance to present your case. One critical factor that can determine the outcome of your case is how well prepared you and your team are! Nothing matters as much!!

Do you know your opponent’s case well enough to try it yourself? You will have greater success if you know more, do more and understand more than the other team. Even if you are up against a team with more skills and better at presentations but they are lacking in preparation, you will have better results to your case when you present yourself as prepared.

By being well prepared you will be able to better predict what the other team is thinking, their strategies, what questions they will ask, even are able to easily predict their next move. As a team, it is easy to be prepared for a case. There is NEVER a reason for you to leave your cases preparations to the day of the trail! NEVER! If the youth court coordinator sees that you are not prepared for your case, it will be a cause for you not to be assigned to future cases. The role as a youth court attorney is a very serious role and is not to be taken lightly. The outcome of the cases you will be assigned to can radically change the life of the respondent!

*www.trialtheater.com

#2 *Lack of eye contact with the jury

If you want to be persuasive you need to look at your jurors! Eye contact is a very powerful tool. Use it to gain trust, to convey sincerity, to draw the jury in to what you are saying. There are 3 reasons why eye contact is so important!

1. You gain the trust of your audience. We have more trust and faith in someone when they look us in the eye. How does it make you feel when someone is talking to you but looking in another direction? Speak to each jury member like you are having a one on one conversation with them.
2. Eye contact lets you connect to your listener. You feel more personally connected to a speaker when they make direct eye contact with you. As a listener, you tend to pay closer attention to the speaker when they are looking you in the eye!
3. This is a key point, eye contact lets YOU read your jury members. “You need to check in with your jurors periodically. If you don’t, you can’t adjust your presentation to best suit their needs. Maybe you need to speed up, slow down, or answer a question-you’ll never know if you aren’t reading them.” *www.trialtheater.com

Presenting to the jury can be a nerve wracking experience especially if you are NOT prepared! Most youth court attorneys will hide behind their notes and read what they wrote because that have not adequately prepared for their case. If you know the facts to your case you should be able to easily address the jury without your written statement. Get rid of the written out speech and use an outline with your key points. This will automatically make you have more eye contact with your jurors.

The most effect way to have eye contact is to look at each member of the jury. Don’t skip anyone, don’t rush the look. Maintain eye contact for several seconds and then move your glance to the next juror. Make it as if you are having a conversation with THAT specific person.

#3 Not Using your evidence

Often in youth court we present evidence but don’t use it to your full advantage. Often it leaves the jury wondering why it was presented in the first place. Don’t hesitate to move from behind the podium and show or have the jury pass around the evidence. Don’t start to speak or ask questions again until all the jury members have had a chance to look over the evidence. If you start to speak, ask the witness questions, or make a statement about the evidence the juror could miss vital information or not look over the evidence because they were listing to you.

Hold eye contact with the jurors as you present the evidence to them. Don’t look at what you’re showing them. If you are prepared for your case you don’t need to look at the object you are presenting. If you want to persuade your juror members you need to remember to look at them and not your evidence.

Make sure to ask the witness questions so that jury knows exactly what you put into evidence and why you put it into evidence. Don’t leave the jury wondering about anything! Remember they are a blank canvas and it is your job paint an accurate, detailed picture of the case you are presenting!

#4 Not listening to the witness

One thing that drives the jury nuts is when an attorney asks a question that just answered by the witness simple because the attorney was not listening to what the witness is saying but instead looking at their notes getting ready for the next questions.

Just as you want to give the jury eye contact, you want to give your witness eye contact when they are speaking, this is active listening. Listen to what they are saying so you can ask follow up questions so, again, the jury is not left wondering about details.

At the same time don’t bore the jurors by asking meaningless questions for the sake of asking questions. Get to the point and move it along.

#5 No use of tonation or theatrics

Being an attorney requires some theatrics. Being flat and monotone will drive the jury right to sleep. Not only is boredom a concern but when you show no animation (worse yet look bored yourself) your jurors are not paying attention to you or to the details of the case.

You have to see yourself as the director and STAR of the trial’s show! You are in control of your witness and the jury if you choose to be, by being prepared, having good eye contact and using your voice inflection.

The way in which you use your voice can be another powerful tool in the courtroom. A whisper can be just as powerful as a yell. When we lower our voice, people will become still and lean in, where making your voice loud and powerful can grab their attention. Using inflexion can drive home an important point as well. It takes practice to perfect this skill so give it a try and see how your jury reacts!

Ethics and Demeanor

In this section we will be talking about the ethics and demeanor required for your participation in youth court. There are certain expectations about the way people should act and behave.

Ethics has to do with what you are expected to do, the right to do. When you serve on youth court, these expectations increase. Being an officer of the court, you are expected not only to abide the law (including not drinking alcohol, using drugs; marijuana, tobacco or others, attend school regularly, and following school rules) not engage in problem behaviors and be a positive role model in school as well as in your community. You are expected to take youth court seriously and pay full attention during all court proceedings, including training. Also, it is expected that you follow our youth court dress code for each hearing. It is expected that you keep all information that you learn in a youth court case confidential. If this confidentiality is broken, you will be removed from youth court. You may not even speak about a case to another youth court member outside of the hearing, to your friends, parents, teacher, administrators, family dog, etc. We cannot stress how serious we take confidentially in our youth court.

There are ethical ways to behave in the courtroom. Whenever anyone in the courtroom addresses the judge, you must stand and address him/her as “your honor”.

As a jury member you do not speak during the hearing. You give your full attention, take notes and actively listen for information and details. If you personally know the respondent and are not comfortable serving as a jury member you may be excused; or if you feel you cannot serve for any reason, it is ok to be excused.

The prosecution and defense attorneys have an ethical obligation to the court as well. They have to tell the truth, be enthusiastic in their fight for their clients; not calling witnesses to the stand that you know will lie to the court and not helping or encouraging your client to lie when testifying. **Attorneys MUST investigate the case sufficiently, be prepared for each case, be on time for their hearings, meet deadlines and advise their clients using their best judgment.

Both attorneys also have an obligation to turn over to the other side any statements, documents or evidence that will be used during the hearing. Prosecutors have additional ongoing obligation to turn over to the defense any evidence they discover that is favorable to the respondent as soon as they discover this evidence. Attorneys also need to reveal their list of witnesses they will call during the hearing prior to the start of the trail. Lawyers are not allowed to contact any jury members privately to try to influence the outcome of the deliberations.

Notes:

Section 2

Develop a Strong Theme

The theme you choose for your case will have a major impact on the jury. When you develop a powerful theme you are giving the jury the chance to see the case from another perspective. For example in a shop lifting cases, the defense may want the jury to see that the respondent needed the items to feel better about her/himself but didn’t have the means to purchase the items; where the prosecution will want the jury to see how stealing effects them directly, through higher prices and paid security.

The more you get the jury to feel sympathy toward your “theme”, the more likely they will listen to evidence to support your view. This is why it is so important that you develop a strong theme and grab the jury’s attention right from your opening statement.

“If you go to the movies on a regular basis, you probably see dozens of movie posters every year advertising the upcoming attractions. Using splashy graphics, powerful images, and the draw of seeing your favorite celebrity, Hollywood does its best to grab your attention, spark your interest, and arouse your desire to go see the movie. In addition to the imagery, however, they also use another powerful technique to promote the movie. That technique is the use of a tagline.

A tagline is simply a short phrase or two that helps explain the movie. A good tagline will resonate with the moviegoer, sticking in his head even after he walks away from the poster, and subtly push him to go see the movie. Every once in a while, however, someone writes a great tagline, and it jumps to the forefront of our collective conscience. Here are a few examples of great taglines: Is there a phrase you could repeat occasionally throughout your opening?

§  “In space, no one can hear you scream.” (Alien)

§  “You’ll believe a man can fly.” (Superman)

§  “We are not alone.” (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)

In this article, you’ll find dozens of different taglines taken from movie posters and promotional pieces. Read through them (or, better yet, read them aloud) while thinking about your case. They’re not arranged in any particular order, and they’re not necessarily the best (or the worst) movies ever created, but they’ll serve as a great jumping-off point for writing your own themes.

§  “The first casualty of war is innocence.” (Platoon)

§  “With great power comes great responsibility.” (Spiderman)