“We should be doing this in law school,” said Turner to his colleagues when he returned to Dayton. “We should be recreating the real world.”
Thanks to a seasoned theatrical director and a group of talented actors, Turner’s idea is now an integral part of UD’s law school training. He believes it’s the only law school in the country hiring thespians.
To launch the project, Turner reached out to community theater director Fran Pesch who’s has been the official acting coach at the law school since 2005.
“Over the years, we’ve had over 70 actors participate in various law classes, intersessions, trials, and two regional mock trials and we’ve also provided actors for eight professors,” Pesch said. “What’s special about Dennis and his vision for using actors to benefit the law classes and trial, is that he believes actors can provide realism and challenges. ”
In addition to helping the students, the actors have helped their professor as well.
“They are such eclectic thinkers, and I am such a linear thinker,” Turner said. “Sitting at a conference table with a group of actors is like watching a fireworks display with ideas, quips and bon mots, plus quotes from famous works of literature tossed around and batted back and forth.”
Acting in court
K.L. Storer is a local actor who has been working with the program since it’s inception. His first gig was a character involved in a bar fight. Since then, he’s often played an expert witness or law enforcement agent. He’s been a bystander, a defendant and a client seeking legal counsel.
“There was one instance where I played a father whose adult daughter had been with an underage male prostitute in London and was now back in the states and the father wanted to keep her off the sex offenders registry,” Storer said. “The unavoidable fact was that she would have to go on the list. I was instructed to take the news badly, to get angry at the lawyer. I felt so bad because when I exploded, that student was dumbfounded and burst into tears. I wanted to comfort the student, but I was to stay in character. But I guess this happens in a lawyer’s practice and the students need to be prepared for that reality.”
Storer said the biggest challenge is memorizing the detailed facts of a case, especially when you’re playing an expert witness. Actor Annie Pesch would agree.
“Preparation and memorization of facts for each mock trial can take quite a bit of time,” she said. “We are usually given a deposition and other pertinent information, like exhibits. If we are playing multiple witnesses, we might be given the entire case. When I serve as an expert witness, I sometimes spend extra time looking up additional information the expert would have in their line of work.”
Some of her roles have involved giving bad news to clients.
“For example, I am the parent of a child who has died. As the representative for the law clinic, the student has to inform me that I do not have a case. I become very emotional and start crying, and they have to figure out how to handle the situation.”
To watch Pesch handle the bad news, go online to facebook.com/reel/2270661872959410.
In one case, Pesch played a girl who had bought a lighter as a present for her mother. There is an accident and she watches her mother’s body catch on fire.
“My mother passes away as a result of her injuries, and I have to testify about her death. Talking about the details of her final moments is very emotional; the students have to walk a fine line to get the information they need and not seem insensitive while asking me questions on cross examination.”
Benefitting law students
Earlier this month, in preparation for an upcoming regional competition, law school students from the class of 2026, had the opportunity to work with actors and real-life attorneys in a mock trial.
“In the past we’ve practiced and even competed with other students playing our witnesses,” said Nathan Kraft who prosecuted the case along with Arabella Loera. “This was convenient because it meant we got to ensure that when we were asking questions, we would always get the answers we wanted. While in real trials it’s best practice to never ask a witness a question you don’t know the answer to, it’s unrealistic to expect that the witness will always answer exactly how you want them to.”
Working with actors, he said, was better practice for real life. He was impressed with the way they stayed in character.
“A real witness may give too much or too little information, may misinterpret a question you ask, or worst case say something completely unexpected. No scripting out answers, no guarantees of what they were going to say or how they were going to say it.”
Dayton attorney Dennis Lieberman has worked as a UD law school coach for a decade. When he was in law school, Turner was his coach.
Lieberman said the actors are “very, very good at what they do” and improve the performance of his students, teaching them how to be actors as attorneys.
“It is acting,” he said. “You are relaying facts to a jury that you hope they remember and you have to persuade them that those facts are favorable to your position. That’s the acting.”
The unique approach apparently worked. UD’s Mock Trial Team won the Regional Round of the National Mock Trial Competition in Cleveland and will be heading for Dallas, Texas for the Final Rounds in April.
Juror invitation
Turner also teaches law-related classes to seniors at UD’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Often he invites them to serves as jurors at the mock trials.
Judy Thompson of Kettering is taking Turner’s class entitled “How to Be A Better Juror” and sat in on the recent mock trial
“I thought the actors did an excellent job,” she said. “The way they answered the questions and were very believable. It didn’t appear as if they they were acting, they were so convincing.”
Acting is a life saver
Storer said his law school acting experience actually saved his life. For a few years, he played an expert witness in an annual trial that dealt with the same medical malpractice wrongful death case.
Storer played an emergency department doctor certified in chest trauma. The case surrounded a woman who went to the ER for a chest-related pain, was misdiagnosed, released, and then died of a heart attack.
On December 27, 2015, Storer was awakened in the morning by painful cramps in his lower and middle back.
“I tried to stretch my back out, but it wasn’t working. Then the cramps started radiating up into my shoulder and the back of my neck. No chest pains; no cramps in my left arm. But because of my familiarity with the facts, I recognized that this could be a heart attack. I called 911 and told them I believed I was having a heart attack.”
The EMTs put him on an EKG in the Medic bus and confirmed he was indeed having a heart issue and rushed him to the hospital where a stent was inserted that kept him alive until they could perform a quadruple heart bypass.
“I live alone. I might have eventually gotten to the chest pains that morning, but by then I may not have been able to call 911. Had I not been educated by that particular mock trial about alternative symptoms, there’s a pretty good chance my last day alive would have been Sunday, December 27, 2015.”
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