A pair of LSU Law students will claim the Fall 2021 Ira S. Flory Mock Trial championship on Thursday, Oct. 7, at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center.
The final round of competition will be held at 6 p.m. in the Robinson Courtroom. The LSU Law community is invited to attend the final round of competition in person or view it via a livestream on the LSU Law Advocacy Programs Facebook page. Those who plan on attending in person are reminded that face masks are required in the Paul M. Hebert Law Center and the Robinson Courtroom.
In the finals, the team of Connor McCain and Chad Thornton will represent the prosecution and the team of Sarah Hufft and Sammons Corbett will represent the defendant in the mock criminal case. The distinguished panel of judges who will determine the champions are Judge Don Johnson (’82) of the 19th Judicial District Court for the State of Louisiana; Kathleen Barrios Heap (’08), assistant district attorney at the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office; and Lindsay Jarrell Blouin (’12), trial attorney at Manasseh, Gill, Knipe & Bélanger PLC.
Named in honor of the late LSU Law professor, the Ira S. Flory Mock Trial Competition is an internal advocacy competition open to all second-and third-year law students. A Flory Trial is held each semester, with the fall Flory trial traditionally being a criminal case and the spring Flory trial a civil case. Throughout the competition, teams of LSU Law students present a full mock trial—including opening statements, witness examinations, evidentiary presentations, and closing arguments—before panels of attorney evaluators.
For this fall’s competition, 14 teams of LSU Law students took up the hypothetical case of the State of Louisiana v. Conrad Grayson, in which the defendant is charged with soliciting the murder of his wife, Victoria Grayson. The defendant, Conrad Grayson, is charged with one count of solicitation for murder, in violation of La. Rev. Stat. § 14:28.1.
According to the indictment, Grayson solicited Frankie Stevens to commit the murder of Victoria Grayson on Nov. 26, 2014. Stevens, the couple’s gardener, has admitted to killing Victoria by hitting her in the head with a hammer and pushing her into the pool. One day earlier, a local gossip website had published that Conrad was having an affair with his neighbor, Lydia Davis, which caused Victoria to leave Conrad. Conrad claims he was with Davis the night of the murder, which she corroborates, and that he never solicited Frankie to kill Victoria. Those who would like to follow along with the case can access the full case file and all the exhibits.
