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Trial Advocacy,

Telling Helen's Story

TLC is dedicated to training and educating lawyers and judges who are committed to the jury system and to representing and obtaining justice for individuals.
Nancy Ro
January 10, 2011


How the 2009 Advanced Seminar helped me tell Helen's story
By Greg Eiesland, TLC 2004
Last fall I had the opportunity to tell Helen's story to a South Dakota jury. Helen graduated from college in 1929. Her family thought education was important. So did Helen. She taught school for a number of years and remained particularly active with her alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan University (DWU). After reaching 100 years of age, she became unsteady on her feet and fell. Helen informed her family that she was going to a nursing home because she would need assistance to keep walking. "I don't want to be in a wheelchair."   

That autumn a new library was being dedicated on the DWU campus to its most famous alumnus and Helen's former pupil, George McGovern. The dedication speakers in this small college town were President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole. Helen was to be an honored guest and a plaque placed in the library as a tribute to Helen and her family.

On August 14th an overworked and undertrained CNA dropped Helen. She broke her hip and shoulder. Helen died a month later and six weeks before the library dedication.

Kaitlin Larimer helped me pick the jury. A crucial question to the jurors was “does it make a difference how you die?” Is Helen entitled to live out her life in peaceful serenity? Or, should she die a lingering death from the forces of bone breaking trauma? 

One of her devoted sons, recreated a hospital room scene of Helen having to be repositioned every two hours and the pain that it caused her. The case was tried in a small South Dakota town against a “mom and pop” nursing home. The defense emphasized the nature of their local business and urged that with Helen’s severe heart condition, blindness and being 100 years old, that any award would have to reflect those realities. The jury decided that “it did matter how you die,” and awarded $500,000.

At the 2009 graduate seminar at the Ranch, Josh Karton and Jude Basile got me up in front of the group and told me to make an opening statement on a case that was on my mind. I chose Helen’s case. Then they said “no, I want you to sing your opening statement.” So I sang Helen’s opening statement to the group. While I didn’t sing my opening statement at Helen’s trial, the insights from that exercise helped me portray the passion of Helen’s life and death.

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