ALEXANDRIA, La — Opening statements from both attorneys in the civil rights lawsuit from former sheriff candidate James “Jim” Whittington against Concordia Parish Sheriff Randy Maxwell began at 1:20 p.m. today.

The case is being heard in the Western District Court of Louisiana in Alexandria under Federal Judge Dee Drell.

Jury selection began at 9 a.m. and dwindled a large potential pool of candidates into an 8-person jury.

The case is expected to last three days including today’s proceedings.

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

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.

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.

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.