Speaker 1: Welcome into Mock Trial Masterclass, your guide to controlling the courtroom. I'm Luke, and I want you to be a Mock Trial Master. Let's talk about how you can make that happen. You probably know that in trial, the things that a witness says while they're on the stand is only part of the evidence that we deal with. The other part is physical evidence. This can include actual physical evidence, like a murder weapon or something like that, or traditionally in mock trial, paper evidence. It can include something very formal like a business record, maybe a police report, maybe an accounting document, or something a little bit less formal like a note that someone wrote saying that they hated the person that they killed. There's all sorts of paper or physical exhibits in the mock trial world, and so when we're dealing with them in the course of a trial, it's important that we do it correctly. In this video, what we're going to talk about is the steps that you need to go through to enter an exhibit into evidence. Simply talking about an exhibit and saying, you know these phone records, you dealt with these phone records. If you don't actually do the steps we're about to talk about, the jury, when they go to deliberate the trial, if this were real life, wouldn't be able to take the documents with them, and you also wouldn't be able to give the jury the documents during the trial. If you follow the steps that we're going to go through and put the exhibits into evidence the correct way, you can publish those exhibits to the jury, and again, if we thought of this as a real trial, they'd be able to take those exhibits with them to the deliberation room at the end of the trial. So, I hope you understand just how important it is to do this correctly. Ready to go? Let's do it. Step one to getting an exhibit into evidence is you've got to help us understand what it is we're dealing with here. This comes before you even pull the piece of paper or the physical item out to give it to the witness. You've got to ask some questions that lay the foundation for what we're even talking about. So, for example, if we're talking about a cell phone record, you might ask the witness a few questions about that cell phone record in a general sense. You're not going to be able to get into the content of the cell phone record until after this process we're about to go over, but you at least want to introduce the cell phone record, again, with some general questions. Questions you might ask about a cell phone record for this stage of the process are, did you deal with any records with this person and their cell phone? Are you aware of any cell phone records that this person had? And do you see how those questions, again, don't get into the content of the records? Don't ask any specific questions about the record. It just lets the witness establish that they know what we're talking about here, and it gets the jury's eyes and ears in tune with the fact that we're probably about to talk about a cell phone record. Everyone's on the same page. The communication is good, and that sets us up for step number two. Step number two is going to be pulling the piece of paper out and getting it to the witness. So, of course, I don't have to tell you how to do the first part, pull the piece of paper out. Now, getting it to the witness is a little bit more complicated because there's a few things you'll want to do. Very first thing you'll want to do is you'll want to ask the judge for permission to approach the witness and opposing counsel. Now, you'll want to be paying attention because some judges will tell you during preliminary matters that you don't need to ask for permission to approach the witness or opposing counsel. So, just be sure you take a note of whatever the judge says during preliminary matters and follow that. But for this example, let's just pretend that the judge said you do need to ask for permission, and so that's what we'll start with. You'll look at the judge and you'll say, Your Honor, may I have permission to show opposing counsel this exhibit and then give it to the witness? And pretty much every time they will say yes. So what do you do next? Well, you take the exhibit and you walk over to opposing counsel and you show it to them. Now, notice I did not say you give it to them. You show it to them. You keep it in your hand firmly and you show it to them because all you're concerned with at this point is that the document is unmarked. This is mock trial, so both sides know what we're talking about here. Both sides have seen the document. There's no surprises. The other team doesn't need to sit there and waste your time by holding onto the document and reading it before giving you a little head nod telling you you're allowed to keep going. Control the courtroom, keep the document in your hand, show but don't give. After you've shown it to them, keep moving on in the process and give the document to the witness. The whole time you're doing this, you'll want to be announcing for the record what you're doing. If you don't know what the record is, it's basically like a transcript of a trial and in real life, it's really, really important to have a record that includes all the facts. So in mock trial, we want to do the same thing by, as we're showing opposing counsel, saying for the record, maybe let the record reflect that I'm showing opposing counsel a clear and unmarked copy of whatever exhibit. And then as we walk to the witness, we might say, and let the record also reflect that I'm now handing that exhibit to the witness. It's a little bit clunky at this point and it's probably the hardest part of the whole process, but trust me, if you just do this the way I told you, and you just memorize those phrases, you'll be a-okay. So we've introduced the exhibit in the sense of telling us what's coming, right? Is there a phone record? Are you aware of any phone records? Right. Okay. We know that's coming. We've given it to the counsel. We've given it to the witness. It's time for us to figure out what in the world is this thing? And that's exactly what you're going to ask the witness. Maybe you don't quite look at the witness and say, hey, what in the world is this thing? But you are going to ask them this question. Could you please tell us what I have just handed you? And the witness may say exhibit H, if there's a letter on it. And if that's what they say, you're going to want them to explain what is exhibit H. We don't just want to use a letter. We want everyone to be on the same page with what we're talking about. So if the witness says, this is exhibit H, you can say, and what is exhibit H? And the witness is going to say, well, exhibit H is phone records for XYZ person. Now there's one more question you'll want to ask the witness before you actually put the document into evidence. You'll want to ask the witness, is this a fair and accurate copy of the exhibit? And the witness is going to answer, yes. And then once you do that, you're ready for the final step. Before we get to the final step of putting an exhibit into evidence, I want to remind you that you can schedule coaching with me. I can meet with you one-on-one, I can meet with you and a teammate one-on-two, or I can meet with your entire team over Zoom to do, well, whatever you'd like to do. I can lead a workshop on a particular area of mock trial and then lead an activity to help you all practice what we just learned. I can listen to your speech or your cross or whatever part of the trial and give you instant feedback. Or we can have a brainstorming session about theme and theory or really anything else. It's all up to you. So if you want to schedule a coaching appointment, be sure to go to the description on YouTube or the show notes if you're listening on a podcast platform and hit that link. The final step of the process is the easiest. You'll look at the judge and you'll say, your honor, we offer exhibit whatever into evidence. And that's it. Now you might get an objection and you'll have to deal with that. And if you do have to deal with an objection, don't worry, I've got videos on objections that you can go and look at on the Mock Trial Masterclass channel to learn a little bit more about how to do those well. But in terms of the actual process of putting an exhibit into evidence, that's it. It's a little bit confusing the first couple of times you do it, but the more you work through this process, the more you start to understand why we do the various things that we do as a part of this process, and the more it starts to become second nature. So what at first might seem a little bit confusing and overwhelming and you're having to do a lot of memorization, by the end will be very second nature and you'll be able to do it very easily and you'll be doing it like a Mock Trial Master.