A cop accused of murdering his wife, the son who was in the house the whole time and a Creighton student who described the whole situation as “a lot of fun.”

It’s all fiction as part of the mock trial that put Creighton’s Mock Trial team in the semifinals.

The Creighton University Mock Trial team participated in the Quinnipiac University Criminal Justice Trial Advocacy Competition the weekend of Oct. 30-Nov. 1 and finished as national semifinalists.

The four third-year Law students that comprised the team were Molly Blazek and Patrick Lee as the prosecution and Andrew Portis and Emily Wiechmann.

The team members debated in a nation-wide mock trial tournament.

The tournament, which took place in Quinnipiac, Conn., involved one fake case, which the team had to try multiple times against different schools in front of actual judges.

“They give us a hypothetical problem that’s pretty detailed,” Portis said.

“We also get a full record of previous witnesses, statements, facts and what happened, etc.

“And what you do is you learn both sides of the report or the record and you learn how to try the case.”

The team spent 20 hours a week reviewing documents and preparing for the trial.

“Preparation is key for us,” Blazek said. “We practice every week, perfecting our questions, objections and responses to objections, and our openings and closings.

We were always all together, and it was always a group effort. And though everybody played their own role, everybody else contributed.”

The trial situation they were given was a murder trial involving a police officer.

“We had one case, a murder case, fictional obviously. It had four specific charges: murder, risk of injury to a minor, tampering with evidence and interfering with an officer,” Blazek said.

“In the case, a former police officer allegedly murdered his wife while his minor child was in the home,.

“It is alleged that he murdered her, transported her body to the woods, went home to clean up the murder scene, then he damaged the front door of his house to make it look like somebody broke in and at a certain point in the investigation, he received a letter that said where he could find his wife’s body to throw off cops.”

The group would extensively practice its opening and closing arguments for the trial and for the last four weeks it has been running full trials at practice including cross-examination of

witnesses.

“It was full trials five days a week” Wiechmann said.

The students have to do more than just fulfill the role of lawyer in the trial. They also have to act as witnesses in the case providing testimony and answering questions.

“I was a defense attorney and then I was the mother of the victim as a controlled witness,” Wiechmann said.

The team made it all the way to the semifinals in the tournament, beating such prestigious schools as George Washington University, whose mock trial team is ranked 28th in the nation.

The team lost in a tiebreaker to Fordham University, who Wiechmann pointed out, had been to three tournaments while this was their first.

The official score forms had not been returned as of

publication.

“It would have been nicer to win it all. But I’m satisfied with it. It’s more about the educational experience in my book,”

Portis said.

“I wasn’t upset about it, to tell you the truth. I just wanted to learn how to do a trial and go to Connecticut for free.”