County Champions Head to Statewide Mock Trial Contest

La Reina High School students head to Riverside today to compete in the statewide mock trial competition, after winning the countywide contest last month.

The all-girls Thousand Oaks school will send 20 students to argue a criminal case in front of actual judges. The students will pretend to be prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses, clerks and bailiffs during the weekend competition at the Riverside Convention Center.

This year’s fictitious case, “People vs. Brunetti,” centers on a 19-year-old, Shawn Brunetti, who was charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. His cousin had shot and killed a high school classmate. But during a crime scene investigation, a student told police that it was Brunetti who actually planned the killing.

Each school was given the scenario in October.

Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Don Glynn, who has coached the La Reina team for more than 10 years, said the young women have spent hundreds of hours after school and on weekends preparing for the competition, which will draw 32 high school teams from throughout the state. They have written and rewritten questions, pored over evidence and dissected diagrams of the crime scene.

“This is the strongest team we’ve had,” Glynn said. “They can compete head to head with any other team and do quite well. We have some expectations, but the state competition is tough.”

Although La Reina has yet to win the state championship, the school has won Ventura County’s competition in seven of the past 10 years. This year, the students beat teams from Oxnard, Channel Islands and Buena high schools.