On September 20th, 2005, the USC Mock Trial Team kept with its tradition of beginning the school year by attending a function focused on human and/or civil rights legal issues. Over the past few years, members have attended Doe v. Unocal hearings, a civil rights in light of the Patriot Act conference, and a dinner with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. This year, team members began their season at the Skirball Center with a lecture on human rights issues from international human rights hero and advocate Paul Rusesabagina.

Mr. Rusesabagina, the real-life hero of the Academy Award-nominated film "Hotel Rwanda," risked his life to protect others while their countrymen were slaughtered.

For two months, Mr. Rusesabagina held insanity at bay as he watched his country fall into the grips of genocide in 1994. A Hutu manager of a luxury hotel in Rwanda's capital city of Kigali, he sheltered more than 1,200 people, including his own Tutsi wife and children, saving their lives at a time when extremists massacred more than 800,000 members of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu tribes in just 100 days. While militants threatened and surrounded the well-groomed grounds of the hotel, he spent hours on the phone, pleading with influential leaders, his international connections his only defense against attack. He bartered luxury items for the lives of strangers seeking refuge. No one housed at his hotel died during the massacre.

During his talk, Mr. Rusesabagina traced Rwanda's contemporary struggles back to the nation's European colonization in the latter 1800s, noting that the tribal tensions began when the German rulers found it useful to play one group against the other--a practice that continued, he said, when the country became a Belgian protectorate following World War I and resulted in ongoing strife when Rwanda won its independence. After next recounting his own story, he emphasized that the tragedy of ethnic conflict and genocide is not limited to Rwanda alone and challenged the international community to call the killing what it is and to do something to end it, decrying the lack of action taken to help Rwanda and elsewhere.

"What does it require to call a genocide a genocide?," Mr. Rusesabagina asked. "In Rwanda, just like the Sudan and Darfur, the whole international community did not call a genocide by its name until the time it had ended." "Ladies and gentlemen, almost the whole of the Sub-Saharan Africa is burning," "... all of these people need you," he said.

Legendary trial attorney Samuel Leibowitz (pictured to the left), born in 1893, immigrated to the United States from Romania when he was four years old, attended college and law school at Cornell in New York, then embarked on a career as a criminal defense attorney, seeing it as one path relatively open to Jewish people at the time. In the courtroom, Leibowitz was known for his meticulous preparation, knowledge of the law, vibrant voice, and flamboyant style.

By the late 1920's Leibowitz' New York criminal defense practice had earned him recognition as the most dynamic criminal defense attorney of his time. He defended everyone he could, believing that "you can't perfect your technique -- as a spectator." Moreover, he always prepared two cases for every client, his case -- and the prosecutor's. He lived with his cases 24 hours a day and knew every inch of them by memory. Out of 78 capitol murder cases tried in a span of 15 years, he secured 77 acquittals and one hung jury -- no losses.

In 1932, Leibowitz undertook his famous pro bono defense of the Scottsboro Nine. A year earlier in 1931, nine young black men, ages 13 through 18, had been falsely accused of raping two young white women, aged 17 and 21. Though the order of the day in Alabama was to immediately lynch black men for so little as looking at white women, these nine young men actually made it to court, luckily.

Leibowitz, convinced of the young mens' innocence, set out to defend them. Over a seven year period, all nine were convicted and sentenced to death at least three times each. Leibowitz convinced the local trial judge to overturn one set of the convictions, the other two were both appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. They were also overturned. (Leibowitz pictured with four of the Scottsboro Nine -- to the right)

The first Supreme Court decision, in 1932, Powell v. Alabama, established the precedent that a criminal defendant is entitled to effective assistance of counsel. The second, in 1935, Norris v. Alabama, struck down the practice of systematically excluding black Americans from jury rolls.

Leibowitz' relentless defense of the Scottsboro Nine, the worldwide attention focused on the case, and the Supreme Court decisions spawned by the case, forever altered the American legal system. Leibowitz eventually secured the freedom of all but one of the nine defendants by embarrassing and exhausting the State of Alabama -- morally, socially and financially. The ninth defendant escaped years after the others were freed.

After Scottsboro, Leibowitz returned to his successful New York criminal defense practice, and later took the bench -- first as a Judge for Kings County and later as a State Supreme Court Judge for Brooklyn. He served for 29 years, then retired.

While on the bench, Judge Leibowitz was a strong proponent of trial advocacy instruction. In fact, he taught courses in trial techniques at the Cornell Law School and at Harvard Law.

Judge Leibowitz remarked that: "Emphasis on trial techniques can reverse the decline of courtroom advocacy. … Many eminent lawyers and judges agree with me that training in fact gathering and trial techniques should become a major focus of all legal education."

Due to their dedication to serving the interests of others, and their excellent trial advocacy skills, USC Mock Trial Team seniors, Rebecca Blank and Stephen Borello, (pictured to the left with Mrs. Marjorie Leibowitz Finch and team Coach Olu K. Orange) are the first recipients of the annual Samuel S. Leibowitz Award For Excellence In Trial Advocacy.

The 2005 AMTA Western Regional Mock Trial Tournament turned out to be a true "Clash of the Titans!" Tournament Host, USC, faced off with defending National Champion, UCLA, and mock trial teams from 11 other Southern California colleges and universities. The outcome: USC dominates the Top-Five -- taking second, third and fourth place trophies; UCLA takes first and fifth place trophies. All of both teams' four squads finished in the Top-Ten. The other two Top-Ten spots were earned by Claremont McKenna and UC San Diego.

Though the Western Regional is always a "high drama" affair, the air was extra thick with anticipation this year.

While First Place is important in any tournament, the overriding concern of teams competing in regional tournaments is winning bids, particularly "gold bids" to the National Championship Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa. AMTA also awards "silver bids" to two "feeder" tournaments in Kentucky and Florida. The top teams from the feeder tournaments also earn bids to Des Moines.

This year, the Western Regional was only allotted 3 gold bids and 3 silver bids. Moreover, though a school may field up to 4 teams in a regional tournament, no one school may send more than 2 teams to the national tournaments. Accordingly, between USC and UCLA, four teams may attend nationals. However, there were only three gold bids.

Thus, there were not enough gold bids available for both schools to send both of their eligible teams straight to the top-flight tournament. Moreover, excellent competition from other schools in the region made it very possible that neither USC, nor UCLA would earn two gold bids.

Therefore, as Presidents' Day weekend approached, the 500+ teams comprising the American Mock Trial Association had a question: "Who will take two gold-flight bids out of the Western Regional tournament, and who will be left with only one gold, and perhaps a silver?"

The answer: the University of Southern California Mock Trial Team dominates the Top-Five, taking two gold-flight bids, leaving UCLA with only one gold bid, and one silver. UCLA will be joined in Florida by Claremont McKenna and UC San Diego, who also earned silver bids.

Congratulations to all of the participants in the 2005 AMTA Western Regional Mock Trial Tournament!!!