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Congrats to the participants and winners of the Mock Trial Competition in Saipan 2010.



First place winners: MOUNT CARMEL SCHOOL. Final tally was 6 to 3 in their favor. They will travel to Philadelphia for the national competition in May 2010.

Second place winners: MARIANAS BAPTIST SCHOOL. Hard fought. Good job.

Third place winners: SAIPAN SOUTHERN HIGH SCHOOL. They're already talking about next year!

Fourth place winners: ROTA HIGH SCHOOL. First time in the winners circle and great performance.

Team Professionalism award: MARIANAS HIGH SCHOOL. This award speaks volumes. Congrats.

I don't have all the individual awards (best prosecution attorney, witness, best defense attorney, witness), but what I do know is that MHS student Christian Cruz won for Best Prosecution Witness; MCS student Anastasia Schweiger won for Best Defense Witness. I also heard that the best attorney awards on both sides went to MBA students (but I don't know the names of the winners).

The competition was very good. The students worked very hard and show tremendous talent and promise. Wow!

Tomorrow, the state memorial for former Justice Marty W.K. Taylor.
Friday and Saturday, the CNMI high schools' Mock Trial Competition.


Both events serve important purposes.

One--to remember a man who worked for a long time in the legal field and served as Public Defender, an Associate Judge on the Superior Court, and an Associate Justice at the Supreme Court.

He wasn't perfect. He wrote some horrible opinions, like the lower court ruling in Ada vs. Sablan, adhering to the archaic common law that women were merged into their husbands and had no interest in property bought during the marriage, so that the wife in the case would get none of the land purchased during the marriage. The case was overruled on appeal, and it seemed fairly clear that then-Judge Taylor had intentionally written a decision that required action as a means of bringing the matter to a head. Eventually, the Legislature did act to reform the law and passed a marital property act. But it was a risky and unjudicious method to make an outrageously unequal decision to achieve that end.

He also had some more cavalier moments on the bench and in his personal life, some endearing and some offensive. He also made some very good judicial decisions and had a good understanding of the community.

And he had a sense of humor.

What is important now is to realize that our justice is in the hands of men and women who aren't perfect, but who, nonetheless, work at doing what is right. And Marty Taylor, for all his contributions and imperfections, for his effort, for his successes and his failures, should be remembered and honored.


2. Our students are just starting their lessons in life. The mock trial competition gives them an opportunity to learn about how trials are conducted, how testimony is elicited with questions, how tangible objects and documents are introduced and used at trial, and how objections are made to keep out irrelevant and unfair matters.

The competition gives them a chance to see how their individual skills can be used in an adversarial process. The way the competition is set up also forces them to look at both sides of the case, and take turns advocating each side of prosecution and defense.

While some schools act as if the competition is about winning, the better schools actually treat the competition as a tool for teaching. Students get a chance to realize having a lawyer is important for access to justice, at least in our system. And they begin to understand their own strengths and weaknesses in working toward that end.

Colin Brake's The Price of Paradise is the last of the New Doctor Who Adventures novels to feature Rose (played by Billie Piper) as the companion of the Doctor (played by David Tennant).

The TARDIS picks up an emergency distress signal from a spaceship that's crash-landed on Laylora, the Paradise Planet, a world of breath-taking beauty, where the peace-loving natives live in harmony with their environment. However, the Doctor and Rose arrive to find that the once-perfect eco-system is showing signs of failing and the paradise planet has become a death trap where terrifying four-armed creatures with very sharp and dangerous claws have reappeared from ancient legends and are stalking the natives. Is there a connection between the human explorers whose spaceship has crash-landed on Laylora and these savage creatures? And what price might one human have to pay to save the only home he has ever known?

This was a gripping story. The Doctor was presented at his most talkative and utterly baffling to strangers. The issue of ecological harm wasn't too over the top. Brake's tale isn't too didactic or bullying in its presentation of ecological concerns. The Price of Paradise is also available as an Audiobook and from Amazon.com.

Future New Doctor Who Adventure novels will feature the Doctor's new companion, Martha Jones, as played by Freema Agyeman, whose screen debut will be in exactly 5 days time on BBC 1.