LEAVY CENTER – Citing an “overwhelming feeling of mental anguish,” top prosecutor Dermot Moore (COL ’15) has announced that he will take an indefinite leave of absence from the Georgetown University Mock Trial Team.
According to Moore, his conscience is in perpetual conflict with the pretend legal system he has sworn to uphold. Midlands, the imaginary state in which all mock trials occur, still has capital punishment on the books. Moore says the knowledge that his prosecution sent so many fictional defendants to the electric chair haunts his every waking moment.
“The law is my life,” Moore announced, “but I abhor capital punishment. I can no longer be a part of a system that sends so many men and women to slaughter. I will no longer be Death’s instrument.”
The announcement was a surprising turnaround in the career of a prosecutor renowned for putting away some of the nation’s most notorious mock mobsters, pretend predators, and phony felons.
“I suppose it all began with State of Midlands v. White Bowman last year,” Moore told the Heckler. “Robbery and felony murder. An open-and-shut case. Tournament after tournament, I would argue that case and win. But now, all I can think about is that plaintive look in the defendants’ eyes when they were sentenced. I see those eyes in my sleep. I feel those empty stares bore into my soul until the sounds of screaming and 2,000 volts wake me up.”
Moore’s departure has come as a shock for a team that relies on him as its ace attorney. Having argued multiple cases before the Mock Supreme Court, Moore has been called “the Atticus Finch of our time.” He was the driving force behind Georgetown’s second place finish at last year’s Colgate Classic and regularly wins Outstanding Attorney awards with perfect 20 ranks.
“Oh, this is bad. This is really bad,” said Moore’s flustered co-attorney, Chuy Buendía (COL ’16), known to many as “the Barry Zuckerkorn of our time.” “With Dermot on the team, I never really had to do anything. I spent most tournaments making eyes at the court stenographer—you’d be amazed what those ladies can do with their hands. No way am I prepared to deal with this!”
Moore says that while he realizes what a burden his unexpected departure is for his teammates, his all-consuming guilt is just too crippling. He recalls one trial in which the judge handed down the death sentence to teammate Betsy Reinbeck (NHS ’17), only for exonerating DNA evidence to emerge at a subsequent tournament.
“I have to live with the knowledge that I put an innocent woman to death. How I am supposed to go to practice after that?” wailed Moore. “She’s always there, alive and reminding me of my sins.”
Moore has recently begun seeking psychiatric help from Georgetown’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services. The mock trial team hopes that with proper treatment, his mental health will begin to improve.