Community help fine tune mock trial students’ skills

TINIAN—The success of the Tinian High School Mock Trial team for the past three years is due in most part to the helping hand of the community.

Attorney-coach Lucia Blanco-Maratita and teacher-coach Chester Hinds invited members of the community who could help the students fine tune their skills.

“I think it’s wonderful to be able to give something back to the community,” said Elliott Sattler, legal counsel of the Tinian Casino Gaming Control Commission. “I think [the mock trial team is] making wonderful progress at this point. They have a difficult case for the nationals, and due to hard work they are making good progress,” he added.

Sattler is just one of a few other members of the legal community who have lent time, expertise and guidance to the high school students. Others include Joseph L.G. Taijeron, Jr., an assistant Attorney General in the civil division, and a former mock trial coach on Guam; Angela Bennett, formerly the legal counsel of the Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems, Inc.; and Jeffrey Moots from the Office of the Public Defender, and his wife, Kate Moots, a Fisheries Biologist at the Division of Fish and Wildlife.

“I enjoy helping these group of students,” said Moots. “The entire community should be proud of them,” he added.

Other volunteers include Janet King, Executive Director of the Tinian Municipal Council; Richard Creecy, Jr., Tinian Public Library’s librarian; Kimberlyn King-Hinds, a Regent of the Northern Marianas College; and numerous parents, such as Juanita M. Mendiola, former chairman of the Eighth Tinian Municipal Council.

Creecy, who has a master’s degree in Library Science from Catholic University, acts as a resource for retrieving factual information surrounding the case that they can use to gain a better understanding of the arguments they have to make.

King helped coach the first mock trial team with Loren Sutton and Blanco-Maratita in 1999. As an adjunct faculty member at Northern Marianas College whose past courses include a speech class, King helps fine-tune the speaking skills of the attorneys, especially the opening and closing remarks made by the attorneys.

King-Hinds and Mendiola, along with the team members’ parents, have been working non-stop since the regional competition to raise the $45,000 needed to send nine students and three adults to Minnesota. Commissioner of Education Dr. Rita H. Inos has pledged that PSS will contribute $11,000 to the team’s coffers, but a significant amount more is needed.

Minnesota will host the National Mock Trial Tournament in May 9-12, 2002 in St. Paul. The case involves deciding responsibility for the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a ship that sank during a storm on Lake Superior in November 1970.

For more information on how to help the mock trial team, including donations, please contact Chester Hinds at Tinian High School at 433-9257.