Team will represent state at National Mock Trial Competition

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 yesterday 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, N.C. May 5-8.

Family Christian Academy from Chattanooga, which reigned as state 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 this past weekend during the Tennessee Bar Association's State High School Mock Trial Competition in Nashville.

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. A complete list of teams that competed is attached.

2005 Qualifying Teams

District 1
Memphis University School, Memphis
St. Mary Episcopal School, Memphis

District 2
Haywood High School (Purple Team), Brownsville

District 3
The Webb School, Bell Buckle

District 4
Franklin High School, Franklin

District 5
Hume Fogg Academic High School, Nashville
Martin Luther King Magnet, Nashville

District 6
Gallatin High School, Gallatin
Rossview High School, Clarksville

District 7
FCA (Red Team), Chattanooga
Ooltewah High School (Red Team), Ooltewah

District 8
Cookeville High School, Cookeville

District 9
Seymour High School, Seymour

District 10
West High School, Knoxville

District 11-12
South Greene High School, Greeneville
Tennessee High School, Bristol
Unicoi County High School, Erwin

District 13
Clinton High School, Clinton