In the 1995 John Wilkes Booth trial, we certainly appealed to history buffs, but also the theory that Booth was acting as a soldier for the Confederacy shooting a Union leader (Lincoln) in a city (Washington) that was under martial law (battlefield?) This makes, for an interesting defense. For this reason, and the inherent difficulty for the defense, this is well-suited for law schools.
     For the Trial of John Wilkes Booth, since most of us know what he did, we instead had the Stage Manager do an interview with Lincoln on the night and prior to the assassination about the ending of the War Between the States and how he and Mrs. Lincoln are going to the theater that evening. After that, the Stage Manager interview Laura Keene, the famed actress on stage about that evening. You may choose to do the assassination instead. We did Booth again in 1999 with fewer witnesses.
     In 1995, we did the first mock trial of John Wilkes Booth. We had 13 witnesses and it took 9 hours. We had a jury of 12 and let them deliberate. But we have learned from that to cut down the witness list to the essentials, about 6 witnesses, and the jury is the audience and they get 5 minutes to deliberate. So in 1999, the second Booth trial ran from 5:00 PM to about 7:30 PM.
John Wilkes Booth
We bend history to the fact that Booth was shot but recovered to stand trial.
-- Pre-trial interviews with Lincoln and Laura Keene
-- Complete case file including Harper's weekly report on the assassination.
ORDER FORM Click Here
For further information or to place an order please send an email to:
info@district-95.com