Mock Trial Weekend in Detroit

After enduring two months of learning how to mock trial, I was sent by plane to Detroit to actively participate in a mock trial competition. Our case was a thinly veiled Oscar Pistorius story using How I Met Your Mother names. I, of course, got to play the defendant in addition to my responsibilities as prosecution closer and expert-witness examiner.

Team D (from left to right): Jessica, Nik (our wonderful coach), Caitlin, Travis, and Me.

We arrived in Detroit last Wednesday and were immediately struck by how not-bankrupt the airport and the immediately surrounding area looked. Then we realized that the airport was about a half hour from real Detroit, where we would be headed.

This is more like it.

When we got to the downtown area, all of the buildings were beautiful but something seemed... off. We slowly realized that there were just no people around. None. We were in the middle of what looked like a large downtown metropolitan area, and there we were the only people. We sauntered across a six-lane highway while the red hand was on. It was like a zombie movie. A very dull zombie movie. We were hungry so we went into a large sports bar. It was not late, but we were the only people there. When we walked in there was some loud rap music, but when the bartender saw us he changed it to quiet Bon Jovi. I'm not sure what to make of that. 

A view of our bar in the daytime. Note that we are right in the middle of downtown and you can see one whole person in this picture. 

A view of the "People Mover" (two-car monorail) tracks and the GM Renaissance Center.

Apparently Detroit refers to itself as "The D." I don't believe that has caught on outside the immediate area.

Closer view of the GM center, which was pretty great. 

View from the top of the GM Center. You can see Canada over the river.

Anyway, my team was great and we had a lot of fun. We won two rounds and lost one, which was probably my fault for using the wrong inflection in a sentence about the nature of intent. That was almost good enough to break into the top 4, but we ended up in 5th place. For a team full of first-timers, it was a very good result. Hopefully I will have another opportunity to do a trial next semester.

Now it's time to do all-Cabaret all-the-time. We go up next week!