As a member of Cupertino's mock trial team, Struck argued this fictional court case during scrimmages held at the Santa Clara County Office of Education on Jan. 10. Teams from more than 20 Bay Area high schools came to the scrimmages to fine-tune their arguments in the case of People v. Casco and get feedback from the attorneys and judges before whom they presented their case.

The office of education hosted the scrimmages in preparation for the Santa Clara County championships on March 3. The winning team will move on to the California Mock Trial competition, slated for April 2­4 in Orange County.

In his closing arguments for the prosecution, Struck maintained that the defense team from Coast Union High School had based its case on hearsay. But attorney Robert Weeks, who presided over the scrimmage, found the defendant not guilty. Weeks said the prosecution hadn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Madison Casco was guilty of theft, grand theft or possession of stolen property. The charges stemmed from a random canine drug sniff at Casco's school in which $1,000 was found in the defendant's backpack.

Weeks admonished both teams for not requesting that the exhibits they provided be introduced into evidence. Since they'd overlooked that procedural detail, Weeks said, the exhibits were inadmissible.

The scrimmages gave mock-trial teams the opportunity to iron out these kinds of kinks. Until last weekend, the only practice Cupertino's prosecution and defense teams had gotten was against each other, and the only judge they'd been before was their coach, attorney Brian Nagatani. (Unlike most mock-trial teams, Cupertino has no teacher coach.)

"It's really helpful and important," Nagatani said of scrimmaging. "It gets them in front of a judge who's a stranger. It's a confidence-builder for them."

The California Mock Trial program was introduced in 1980 by the Los Angeles­based Constitutional Rights Foundation, which each year develops a case based on an issue of importance to American youth. More than 8,000 high school students in 36 counties participate in the program, acting as prosecutors, defense attorneys and witnesses in the case.

Freshman Vinaya Mulkaredey is a defense witness for the Cupertino team. She said she joined the mock-trial team because she's thinking about a legal career. "I like learning what each attorney does," Mulkaredey added.

"I thought I'd do it to learn the proper techniques of debate," said freshman Swasti Shukla.

Whatever their motivation, Nagatani said the Cupertino students are fun to work with. "Everyone who's here wants to be," the coach added. "They're all ambitious and bright."

Nagatani, an employment lawyer who represents management in disputes, said coaching the mock-trial team helps him with his own courtroom skills. "It really is a trial situation," he added.