01/02/2025
Marcus Patton, a long-time mock trial participant and volunteer, has been posting about the mock trial experience. I thought this post was particularly worth sharing. (But please check out his other posts about Georgia High School Mock Trial!)
My Mock Trial Diary – entry no. 11 – The Dream Team
After more than 30 years of involvement with the Georgia Mock Trial Competition, my favorite story about mock trial is one that did not even involve my own team. Early in my experience with the program, I was working as a volunteer at the state finals tournament and learned about “The Dream Team.”
In the early 1990s, a dedicated and resourceful teacher named Elizabeth Ackman, who was working at the Lorenzo Benn Youth Detention Center, a juvenile prison, had started a team for the young men who were incarcerated there. A number of very dedicated attorneys coached the team on the law, courtroom decorum, and in many cases, the use of standard English. A local men’s clothing company donated suits to the boys to wear. The administrator of the facility arranged for the team members to be released into the custody of the attorney-coaches so they could participate in the tournaments.
But as admirable as the adults’ actions were in supporting the team, the real heroes of this story were the kids.
These young men had, with few exceptions, not been academic high achievers. Their primary experiences with the law had landed them on the losing end. Their participation on the team was contingent on their good behavior behind bars, and for many of them the only way they had ever found to exercise control over their own environment was to rebel against authority. Not every student who was offered the chance to be on the team followed through. But those who did thrived on the experience. And through mock trial, they experienced success. In two of the ten years of the team’s existence, the young men of the Lorenzo Benn YDC won their regional tournament and competed in the state finals. In the official publications of the tournament, they identified themselves as “The Dream Team” from the Lorenzo Benn Center. It is likely that the vast majority of the students they competed against had no idea they were facing convicted juvenile offenders.
However the greatest success of the team was not in mock trial tournaments. It is a sad reality borne out by statistics that the majority of those who are incarcerated as juveniles will run afoul of the law again, either as juveniles or as adults. But the percentage of Dream Team members who became repeat offenders was dramatically lower than that of the general population at Lorenzo Benn. Their experience with mock trial taught them that mastering the rules and exercising self-control enabled them to make the system work for them instead of against them.
I watched The Dream Team compete, and heard some wonderful stories from some of their coaches. But as the years have passed, I have lost track of some of the details. I know there was data on recidivism because some of the numbers were recited to me, but I have no idea how to retrieve that information now. Their teacher, Elizabeth Ackman, sadly passed away a few years ago.
If anyone has any memories of The Dream Team from the Lorenzo Benn YDC, I would be grateful if you would share.
