ALEXANDRIA, La. — After four years of court proceedings, a jury will hear a civil rights lawsuit Monday from former sheriff candidate James “Jim” Whittington against Concordia Parish Sheriff Randy Maxwell.

The case will be heard in the Western District Court of Louisiana in Alexandria starting at 9 a.m. under Federal Judge Dee Drell.

In December, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court judgment stating that Maxwell was not entitled to qualified immunity from the lawsuit.

Qualified immunity is a legal protection for government officials that serves to shield them from legal damages for actions that do not violate clearly established laws that should be reasonably known by that official.

The judgment also states that Maxwell will have to pay the legal fees associated with the appeal.

This judgment does not, in and of itself, make a final determination about the facts of the case.

Though the case has been working its way through the court system for some time, the jury trial will be the first trial of evidence.

Timothy Richardson, Maxwell’s lead counsel, said he would not comment on pending litigation, but confirmed that he and his client would be in court Monday morning.

Whittington’s suit alleges he was victim of a law enforcement vendetta following the 2003 election for sheriff, in which he was a candidate.

“I’ve been waiting for my day in court for a long time,” Whittington said. “What they did to me was illegal and more than that, it was wrong because it was done in nothing but mean spirit.

“I want to show the people of Concordia who was wrong here, and it wasn’t me.”

In the suit filed in 2008, Whittington alleges that six months after the election, as part of a conspiratorial vendetta against him, he was arrested on trumped up robbery, stalking and harassment charges after allegedly harassing and forcibly taking two rings from a former romantic partner.

Whittington claims the charges were upstaged because of campaign ads he ran that were embarrassing to Maxwell’s campaign.

In those ads, Whittington claimed that Maxwell’s Deputy Sheriff, Jimmy Darden, had been arrested in Mississippi on charges of marijuana possession.

Maxwell defeated Whittington in the general election and won a run-off election against a different candidate in November 2003.

At Whittington’s preliminary hearing in July 2004, Judge Leo Boothe of the Seventh Judicial District Court determined that the state had probable cause to arrest Whittington and to detain him subject to bond. Boothe set Whittington’s bond at $175,000.

Whittington said that the bond amount was unreasonably high, given that he only had one prior misdemeanor conviction.

Because of the high bond amount, Whittington was detained for 50 days — some of that time in an out-of-parish prison — until Boothe reduced Whittington’s bond to $30,000.

Whittington claims that Maxwell, Boothe and then District Attorney John Johnson had engaged in improper ex parte communication regarding his criminal prosecution.

The charges against Whittington were quashed in September 2007 because two years had passed and prosecution had not moved forward.

The circuit court’s opinion states that — if Whittington’s factual claims are viewed as true — his Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.

“No reasonable police officer could have thought that it was objectively reasonable in the light of clearly established Fourth Amendment law to detain an individual in jail for over 50 days, pursuant to the officer’s fabricated charges, so that the officer could fulfill his own personal vendetta against that individual,” the court opinion stated.

The suit originally named Maxwell, Johnson, Darden and Boothe. The courts have dismissed the claims against Boothe and Darden, and a claim against Johnson as an individual was also dropped. However, a claim against him in his capacity as district attorney was allowed to stand.

Johnson died Jan. 10 after a lengthy battle with cancer.