In the end, the judge decided.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers haggled for weeks over terms of a plea agreement for Michael and Jeffrey Derderian.

All the while, Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr. read the testimony of hundreds of potential witnesses, viewed the most "disturbing" pictures from the fire at The Station nightclub where 100 people died, and exercised his prerogative, he said yesterday, to spare any further hurt.

Darigan said he accepted no-contest pleas from the nightclub owners -- even though prosecutors and defense lawyers had not reached agreement on sentences for the Derderians -- because he was convinced that their trials and the release of evidence "would only serve to further traumatize and victimize not only the loved ones of the deceased and the survivors of this fire, but the general public as well."

But while the judge's remarks yesterday, made to reporters in a packed courtroom, shed some light on why the criminal prosecution against the Derderians is ending, they did little to explain how the controversial substance of those plea agreements had been crafted or how they had reached Darigan's desk.

Journal photo / Bob Breidenbach

Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan speaks to the press concerning the Derderians' plea in The Station fire case.

In exchange for their pleas, Darigan agreed to spare Jeffrey Derderian any prison time (he must perform 500 hours of community service) and to sentence Michael Derderian to four years to serve.

The clash over who offered up those terms for Darigan's acceptance began Wednesday night when a copy of a letter Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch had sent to fire victims was leaked to the media. In it, Lynch condemned the plea agreement and indicated he had not agreed to the disposition.

His letter infuriated Darigan, who called the timing of its release "despicable" and "unethical." It also prompted lawyers for the Derderians to continue lashing out at Lynch, whom they said was misrepresentinghow the deal was put together. It was his office that crafted it, said Kathleen Hagerty and Thomas Dickinson, lawyers for the Derderians and both former state prosecutors.

In an interview yesterday afternoon with The Journal in his Providence office, Lynch insisted that the sentences to be imposed, perhaps as early as next Friday, were proposed by the defendants' lawyers.

"To suggest that we put it on the table would be wrong," said Lynch, "and would be to accept Kathleen Hagerty's representations which I would call nothing more than spin at this point . . . a bunch of lies."

When told what the attorney general had said about her, Hagerty, a former assistant attorney general, called Lynch "sick."

On Wednesday night, Hagerty gave The Journal a copy of what she says was the state's written plea deal proposal. They were the handwritten notes of William Ferland, the lead prosecutor in the Station fire case. And they reflect the sentences Darigan will impose.

Journal photo / Bill Murphy

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch speaks with Journal reporters about the plea.

But Ferland was merely writing down what the defense said their clients would accept -- not what the state was proposing, Lynch said.

"The office of the attorney general, Patrick Lynch, would never, ever have accepted those terms," he said.

And none of his prosecutors, Lynch said, would have put that deal on the table without his permission.

The attorney general said he wanted the Derderians to serve more time in prison -- he wouldn't say how much -- than Daniel M. Biechele. Biechele, the former tour manager for the rock band Great White, set off pyrotechnics inside The Station igniting the fatal fire on Feb. 20, 2003. Darigan sentenced him in May to serve four years in a minimum-security work-release program. Lynch's office had recommended 10 years to serve.

Lynch said the Derderians were more culpable that Biechele.

"They used pyro in that club more than 20 times," said Lynch. "They put up [flammable] foam, they crowded the place. . . . I can not, and will not, get by the fact, that Jeffrey Derderian is not going to jail."

But Hagerty said she had witnesses to the state's plea offer to the Derderian brothers, which she said doesn't include any prison time for Jeffrey. Further, it calls for the same prison sentence for Michael as Biechele received.

Dickinson, who represents Jeffrey Derderian, said the deal the Derderians are getting was proposed by Lynch's office and that Ferland had told Darigan as well as the defense team that he'd been authorized to make the deal. Dickinson said that Ferland did not name Lynch as the source of his authority, but that he assumed it was Lynch.

He said Ferland made that representation Sept. 14, after Lynch balked at the deal.

Dickinson said that on Sept. 7, Ferland put in writing the current plea offer and that a few days after that -- either on Sept. 11 or Sept. 13 -- the Derderians agreed to what the state had proposed: Jeffrey would receive a 10-year suspended sentence and Michael four years in a prison work-release program.

Dickinson said he first learned of Lynch's objections to the plea deal in a Sept. 14 chambers meeting, called by Darigan to "work out logistics . . . when it would happen, the date and time . . . ."

Dickinson said that Ferland and prosecutors Randall White and Christopher Bush told those assembled that "there were now problems." That's when Hagerty turned to Ferland and said: "Bill, did you have authority to make this deal?' And he said "Yes, absolutely."

Dickinson said "I was stunned" by the turn of events. "It left me speechless."

The next morning, Sept. 15, the prosecutors and defense team reassembled in Darigan's chambers, Dickinson said. Hagerty had Ferland's handwritten notes with her -- which she told the judge was the offer the state had put in writing for her, at her request, on Sept. 7, according to Dickinson.

Dickinson said Hagerty told the judge she had asked for the offer in writing so she could take it to the Derderians in an attempt to resolve the case. She had a copy of the notes for the judge and gave them to him, Dickinson said.

Dickinson said Darigan asked Ferland about the note he had made detailing the state's offer and that "Bill said, 'Yes, I wrote it out' ." Dickinson said Ferland told the judge he wrote it twice on the same piece of paper so that both he and Hagerty would have copies.

Attempts to reach Ferland yesterday were unsuccessful.

Last evening, Hagerty let a Journal reporter listen to a voice-mail message she had on her law office phone from Ferland. He had returned her phone call last Friday about the plea deal, which she said Darigan had approved earlier in the day.

In the message, Ferland said he had just left a meeting with Lynch and "it looks like we just have a lot of details to work out in terms of logistics."

Ferland's message seemed to anticipate that the plea deal would be unpopular but that it would be the judge's burden now, not Lynch's: "There's nothing he [Lynch] can do really about it, other than . . . the judge is taking the weight or whatever: so obviously that relieves him."

Yesterday 10 television cameras formed a line in front of the defense and prosecution tables in Darigan's Kent County courtroom as the judge, speaking from the bench, excoriated Lynch's office for releasing the letter before the judge had sent his own letter of explanation to the fire victims.

The release, he said, "was unethical, reprehensible, devoid of any consideration for the victims of this tragedy and totally abrogated an agreement reached after weeks of discussion between the parties in this case."

Darigan said he wanted to explain in his letter why he was accepting the pleas, before the pleas were reported in the news media. He said prosecutors and defense lawyers collaborated on his letter and its timed release.

"Because of the despicable action taken by the anonymous source within the attorney general's office," Darigan said, "this court sincerely regrets -- beyond the court's ability to articulate -- the shock, anger, disbelief and sense of betrayal some of the families must feel . . ."

Further, Darigan said if Lynch was insinuating in his letter that the plea agreements were "a complete surprise," the court "can ensure you that this is not the fact at all."

"The negotiations leading to this court's agreement to accept the defendants' change of plea were fully engaged in by both the attorney general's office and the defendants over a period of several weeks," the judge said, while both parties simultaneously prepared for trial.

In response to Darigan's remarks, Lynch issued a statement yesterday saying he respected Darigan as a "jurist and as a human being" and commended him for his handling of the case.

Yet, he said, however well-intentioned the plans were for informing victims about the plea, "from the moment I learned of the terms of the sentence the judge planned to impose, I knew that the victims would be deeply hurt, regardless of how they heard the news."

In his interview with The Journal, Lynch said he believes it was his responsibility to notify victims about plea agreements -- not the court's job.

The Derderians are each pleading to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the criminal case.

The brothers have also been sued civilly in federal court by families of the people killed in the fire and most of the more than 200 injured.

But last year, the brothers filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, saying they each had assets of less than $50,000 and debts estimated at more than $100 million. Their company, Derco LLC, which owned the nightclub, also filed for bankruptcy.

More than 500 people with potential claims were put on a list of creditors by the brothers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

But this August, the deadline for filing objections to the Derderians' bankruptcy petitions passed with no objections, clearing the way for the brothers' debts to be forgiven. This effectively removes them as defendants in all civil lawsuits.

However, lawyers for the fire victims are still attempting to recover money damages from a host of deeper-pocket defendants, including foam manufacturers, a radio station and beer manufacturer Anheuser-Busch.

In the more than two years that Darigan has presided over the Derderians' criminal case, he has talked often of the importance of disseminating information about one of the biggest criminal cases in state history. Yesterday however, he said he would not talk about the controversy surrounding the plea deal.

"The court does not wish to continue a dialogue about who said what to whom, as it serves no useful or palliative purpose . . ."

- With reports by Mark Arsenault.

tmooney@projo.com / (401) 277-7359

tbreton@projo.com / (401) 277-7362