SIDNEY — Consider this: A rookie police officer, who is white, shoots an unarmed black teenager during a traffic stop and the officer gets charged with a federal hate crime. The officer hides his body camera in his police locker after the shooting and secures it with his own personal lock. A fellow officer, who is black, uses bolt cutters to retrieve the body camera, which he turns over to investigators.
Based on evidence from the camera, the rookie cop is found guilty. However, he appeals the decision and the appeals court reverses his verdict because it claims the body camera evidence was obtained through an unlawful search and seizure.
The prosecution then takes the case to the Supreme Court. The issue is whether there was unlawful search and seizure.
This fictional case is the premise of 40- to 50-page legal briefs written recently by teams of students in law schools across the country as part of their entries in the American Bar Association (ABA), Law Student Division, National Appellate Advocacy Competition.
Shelby County Common Pleas Court Magistrate Gary Carter judged eight of the 192 briefs submitted.
“It’s a blind review,” he told the Sidney Daily News. “I have no idea which law schools submitted them.”
According to Sara Stretch, associate director of programming for the ABA Law Student Division, a committee of attorneys and professors select a “case,” which is referred to as a “fact pattern,” for each year’s contest.
“The fictional fact pattern for this year’s competition could be ripped from today’s headlines,” Carter said.
Students compete in teams by first submitting written briefs, then presenting oral arguments to volunteer attorneys and judges who sit as the “Supreme Court” for the contest. There are six regional, oral-argument “trials.” Winners from each region then compete in Chicago in April for the national prize. Regional oral arguments take place this month and next. The teams whose briefs Carter judged will present them in Brooklyn, New York.
Several law schools in Ohio have fielded teams this year, Stretch said. Among them are Ohio Northern, Ohio State, Cleveland State and Case Western Reserve universities and the University of Cincinnati.
“Six judges look at each set of eight briefs,” Stretch said. “Then we average those scores.” The brief scores are combined with the oral argument scores to determine who wins in each region.
“Students have to research actual cases to back up their arguments (in the fictional case),” Carter said. He looks at which facts they decide to use and how they apply those facts to the law. The ABA provides judges with bench brief.
“It lays out the law for me. The ABA has done a nice job of providing information. I graded four (briefs) arguing for the cop and four (arguing) for the prosecution against the cop,” he said.
Melena Siebert, of Cincinnati, a second-year law student at the University of Cincinnati (UC), said, “They usually write a problem so you could argue either side.” She found it interesting that this year’s case was quite similar to a real incident that had happened near the UC campus not long ago.
She is on a team for the first time. So is Jonathan “Jack” D’Andrea, of Upper Arlington, a second-year student in the Ohio Northern (ONU) law school.
Siebert wrote briefs and made oral arguments as an individual before she was invited to join the UC Moot Court Honor Board. It has two teams in the current competition. She wrote the brief for her team.
“The other two ladies wanted to do oral arguments. I like to write,” she said. The ONU team took a different approach.
“Each advocate on the team had to write on one issue, and we combined the issues and made one uniform brief,” D’Andrea said.
Both students found that, while compiling a legal brief is hard work, the biggest challenge was trying to do it during final exam time and Christmas break.
“Studying for finals and trying to write a high-quality brief was not, by any means, an easy task, but luckily, my teammates and I were all in it to together, so we could rely on each other for motivation throughout the drafting process. We were all relieved when finals were over, so we could put the finishing touches on our briefs and make them the best that we could for the competition,” D’Andrea said.
Carter asks himself questions as he goes through the students’ documents: “Does it make sense? Does it flow? Is it convincing me or not?” Carter noted that “the briefs look like something the U.S. Supreme Court would receive. These students take it very seriously.”
Siebert thinks looking at a legal problem from both sides of the issue is a fascinating process.
“Because you advocate for one side, you have to look at arguments from the other side to prepare to be that advocate,” she said. She will argue once during the team’s oral presentation, which will be in Boston.
The ONU group will argue in Philadelphia. To get ready, they created a road map of their brief and then began making their case to each other, first, and then in front of faculty.
“Whoever judged that day offered constructive criticism on both style and substance. Through this practice regimen, we refined our road maps and discovered more ways to respond to questions in a clearer and more concise manner. With our competition date coming up in about two weeks, all of my teammates and I have been practicing daily,” D’Andrea said.
It takes hundreds of volunteer judges, attorneys and magistrates to make the ABA program work, Stretch said. Once one of them has taken a turn at judging, he usually returns year after year, she added.
This was Carter’s third year as a brief judge.
“It’s a good learning experience,” he said. “It’s fun.”
