Law students face off in court in educational mock murder trial
With the judge's bench and other courtroom seats still warm from hosting the city's most recent murder trial, local students took to a Superior Court of Justice courtroom in downtown Windsor on Monday to square off in a mock homicide case.
Part of the Ontario Justice Education Network's (OJEN) efforts to inform about the justice system and give budding lawyers (and judges) experience in a real courtroom setting, legal beagles from three area schools were given a second-degree murder case to whet their appetites.
The Catholic school board's Cardinal Carter Secondary School from Leamington and St. Anne Catholic High School from Belle River, as well as Ursuline College in Chatham sent teams. Each was supported by real lawyers acting as volunteer coaches, as well as by University of Windsor law school students and working judges presiding over the trials.
St. Anne fielded its first team ever, while Cardinal Carter was back after an absence of several years. Monday saw three trials contested between 3:30 and 9 p.m., with students receiving feedback from the professionals on their courtroom finesse.
Ursuline, the returning finalist from 2019, was declared the courtroom winner this time.
Local OJEN chapter co-chairs are Superior Court Justice Paul Howard and high school teacher Butch Rickeard. This was OJEN'S first live mock trial since 2019, the year before the start of the COVID-19 global flu pandemic.
COVID'S disruption of the justice system is also a reason Windsor's courtrooms have seen a recent flurry of murder trials — the real kind.
Rickeard said the experience and atmosphere of battling a legal case in a real courtroom is not something that can be replicated in a school classroom.