KU Law News
Ruined vacation turns into victory for criminal procedure national champs
From left: Luke P. Sinclair, KU law student; California Court of Appeals Judge Richard Aronson; Donald A. Dripps, University of San Diego School of Law professor; and David Clay Britton, KU law student. Britton and Sinclair won the 19th annual National Criminal Procedure Tournament held Oct. 18-20, 2007.
By Adam Davis, L’08
David “Clay” Britton and Luke Sinclair’s trip to San Diego in October 2007 could be described as the best ruined vacation they will ever have.
Britton and Sinclair, then third-year law students, and their coach, Professor Jean Phillips, represented KU Law at the 2007 Criminal Procedure Moot Court Competition at the University of San Diego.
As Britton and Sinclair traveled west, they hoped to make a good showing and take in some sights along the way. As it turned out, the zoo had to wait because these Jayhawks were too busy arguing – and winning.
Britton and Sinclair rolled through the competition and defeated the South Texas College of Law in the final round to capture KU’s first championship in the Criminal Procedure competition.
“I remember it feeling really good; it was awesome,” Britton said of hearing his team’s name called after the final round. “And then afterwards at the reception when you have people who wrote the problem and organized the whole competition and saw so many different people saying, ‘You guys are really good, really amazing,’ it just felt really good.”
In addition to winning the team competition, the KU team also won the prize for “best brief,” and Britton was named the competition’s second-best oral advocate. Sinclair said it was a thrill to achieve so much success, even if it did curtail some of their plans.
“I was thinking we’d go out there and try to get past the first round, and then enjoy the rest of our time – go to the zoo, see our friend who lives in San Diego,” Sinclair said, “which made each time we went to the little reception in the evening and heard our number called kind of a surreal experience. We couldn’t do anything we wanted to do, but we were winning, so that was good.”
The KU team argued twice each day in the three-day competition. The first two days, they did not find out definitely whether they won their rounds; they simply learned each night that they had advanced based on their performance each day. The final day, Britton and Sinclair argued against South Texas in both the semifinals and the finals. The teams with the two best semifinal scores advanced to the finals.
Both men said they were nervous arguing in the final round, but clearly they overcame their nerves. Britton said he thought about watching the final round of the KU moot court competition the previous spring.
“I was in the back, watching, thinking to myself, ‘I wonder what’s going through their heads right now? There are so many people watching, and there are real judges now who really do this for a living, and there’s so much riding on it,’” Britton said. “And to actually be up there and have that bunch of people behind you who know the problem inside and out, that was kind of crazy.
“But once I got into the argument, I felt like I was successful at just focusing in and answering the questions, just letting go of the fact that this is the final round, a bunch of people are judging me right now—and not just the ones who are actually supposed to be judging me.”
Sinclair said it was a strange feeling to see so many people in the room who had come to watch him argue. He said he asked himself, “How did we get here?”
“I really enjoyed it. I don’t really remember what I said,” Sinclair said with a laugh. “I remember not understanding a lot of the questions and just kind of scraping for answers and being really surprised when the judges came back out and said, ‘We feel the respondents win.’”
The competition’s problem had two issues, a Sixth Amendment issue and a Fifth Amendment issue. Britton handled the Sixth Amendment issue in writing the team’s brief and during oral arguments, while Sinclair took the Fifth Amendment issue.
The problem’s fact pattern involved a fight in a prison yard. The Sixth Amendment question was whether a prisoner’s statement to a guard during the fight was “testimonial” and therefore barred from being entered into evidence under the confrontation clause.
After identifying a suspect, the police questioned him in the prison library without Miranda warnings. However, the police issued warnings before the suspect implicated himself. Thus, the Fifth Amendment issue was whether the suspect’s confession was valid.
Britton and Sinclair advanced to the semifinals of KU’s in-house competition in the spring of 2007, but the criminal procedure competition was the team’s first national competition. Both men credited Phillips – their coach and a criminal procedure professor at KU – with playing a major role in their success.
“Professor Phillips brought an enthusiasm to our competition that really pushed us to succeed, while at the same time being an incredibly friendly, understanding coach,” Britton said. “Her hard work and thoughtful criticism was as much a part of our success as anything else.”
Added Sinclair: “Jean was a fantastic coach. She was neither aloof nor overbearing. She took on pretty much all the administrative things, from scheduling practices with faculty and practitioners to setting everything up in San Diego.
“She also was incredibly helpful in the preparation for the orals and fine-tuning after each round because she wanted to win and she has a wide, comprehensive knowledge of the substance of criminal procedure. Besides all that, she’s a riot to hang out with.”
Sinclair, who is originally from Milwaukee, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and graduated from KU Law in May 2008. After taking the bar exam, he will go to work for Woner, Glenn, Reeder, Girard & Riordan, a business/commercial law firm in Topeka.
Britton is from Olathe and did his undergraduate work at KU. He plans to graduate from KU Law in December and hopes to work for the Kansas attorney general. Britton took a semester off in the fall of 2006 to serve as finance director for U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore’s successful re-election campaign.
