The Marianas High School mock trial team members pose for a photo with their teachers and attorney coaches after winning the perpetual gavel trophy at Guma Hustisia on Friday.
MARIANAS High School students will represent the CNMI at the national mock trial competition in Little Rock, Arkansas on May 18-20, 2023.
MHS bested Saipan Southern High School in the local competition that concluded Friday at the Guma’ Hustisia. Dr. Rita Hocog Inos Jr.-Sr. High School came in third. It was MHS’s third consecutive victory in the annual event.
MHS students also swept the individual awards.
Mylan Goodwin of MHS received the best prosecutor and best defense attorney awards; Conna Hartig was named the best prosecution witness while Jane Mozundar was the best defense witness.
Goodwin, an intern at KSPN 2 News, said she may “look into law school after I [obtain a] mass communications degree.”
As for this year’s mock trial competition, Goodwin said, “The case was really difficult, specifically because there were a lot of inconsistencies between the witness’s statements and the other things in the case.”
This year’s topic was the hypothetical theft of parts of the historic Japanese WWII tank on Beach Road.
Goodwin said after the Covid-19 pandemic “it’s just great to be able to be back in competitions…and receiving awards. The only other person who has gotten both the best prosecution and defense awards is my mentor, and someone I look up to as an older sister, Shae Hartig, and she won that in my freshman year and so it’s really just coming full circle.”
Goodwin thanked her MHS team, teacher and attorney coaches. “We put in so much time and worked together as a team,” she added.
The other MHS team members are Hayden Igisomar, Hannah Lim, Prapti Mondal, Sienna Morgan, Jia Ross Nicdao, Anastasia Shamanaeva, and Kelly Zheng.
Their teacher coaches are Robyn Spaeth and Don Cohen while their attorney coaches are Chief Public Defender Douglas Hartig and Assistant Public Defender Vina Seelam.
District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona presided over the championship round between MHS and SSHS.
“I have seen many attorneys before me, [but] these students are really just stellar,” she said. “The attorney students are very much informed of the actual rules of evidence that we apply in our courtrooms, and these are high school students, so it is very impressive.”
She said, in jest, that the student witnesses are “Academy Award winners — I mean one of them actually shed a tear at the right moment. The statements were quite credible. They were into their roles. Performance-wise, their substance and their ability to digest…[these] young high school kids [were] able to articulate and use technical and scientific terms….”
They were “impressive,” the judge added. “The NMI will be well represented in the national competition for sure.”
MHS was the mock trial champion in the previous two competitions held in 2019 and 2020.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the mock trial competition was not held in 2021 and 2022.
First held in 1999, the annual event is sponsored by the CNMI judiciary, the CNMI Public School System, the NMI Bar Association, and the Northern Marianas Judiciary Historical Society.
