On Monday, March 12, at 9:30 a.m., the federal jury trial in Shelton v. Wozny, civil action number 14-cv-313, will begin in Courtroom 1. U.S. District Judge McConnell will preside. After some quick preliminaries, it is likely the jury will be seated and Monday’s trial will start with opening statements from counsel for the plaintiff and defense. The trial is a rare opportunity to observe something that usually happens only at the District of Rhode Island’s Litigation Academy – real live opening statements in federal court in a jury trial.
Let’s do the math. Perhaps you’re a Han Solo type, so if C-3PO were to say to you, “the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three-thousand-seven-hundred-twenty to one,” you would respond, “never tell me the odds.” But bear with me. The District of Rhode Island had 5 civil jury trials last year, and there are 365 days in a year. So if you were to wake up one day and say, “I want to go see opening statements at a federal trial,” you’d have a 1.4% chance of actually seeing an opening statement. Might as well make Monday, March 12, the day to visit the federal courthouse.
Opening statements from attorneys are not evidence, but they do offer a preview of the evidence. Most usually include an introduction to the dispute and a road-map to a party’s theory of the case. There’s no federal rule of civil procedure on opening statements, but there’s a handy local rule in the District of Rhode Island, Local Rule (civil) 39, which says “an opening statement shall not be argumentative and shall not exceed 30 minutes unless otherwise permitted by the Court. Counsel for a defendant may make an opening statement either after the opening statement of the plaintiff or after the plaintiff has rested. Counsel for a defendant may not make an opening statement after the plaintiff has rested unless evidence will be presented on behalf of that defendant.”
According to the public docket, Shelton v. Wozny is a federal civil rights case under 42 U.S.C. 1983 involving allegations against police officers and a municipality for excessive force and failure to train and supervise. In addition to watching opening statements, the trial provides an opportunity to observe District Judge McConnell’s style (himself a seasoned trial lawyer) for conducting trials. In past trials, Judge McConnell sometimes provides a mini-jury instruction at the start of the trial so the jurors understand the big picture. Will he do the same here, and what will he tell the lawyers? You have to go to find out.
The Shelton v. Wozny trial has another notable layer as a real-life application of the District of Rhode Island’s highly successful Litigation Academy. Upon information and belief, some of the attorneys in the case have participated as faculty or students in past litigation academies.
Courthouse Stadium 1 (that’s my nomenclature – it’s formally known as Courtroom 1) is on the third floor of the federal courthouse (more about the unique history of Courtroom 1 here), on Kennedy Plaza at One Exchange Terrace (directions here). Allez opening statements!