CORRENTE DARIGANFlahertyGOLDBERGROBINSON SUTTELL

PROVIDENCE –– The Judicial Nominating Commission will decide Tuesday night who the “most highly qualified” candidates are to become the next chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

There are six candidates vying to become chief justice –– four justices who currently sit on that court, one longtime Superior Court judge who was previously selected as a finalist and Rhode Island’s top federal prosecutor. Whoever is selected will become the top judge and judicial administrator in the state. The position carries a base annual salary of $167,644 with lifetime tenure.

Frank J. Williams abruptly resigned as chief justice effective Dec. 31 after just eight years on the job, stunning the legal and political community. However, at the invitation of acting Chief Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg, he has continued to sit on the bench almost full time since then, collecting a daily stipend of $112.83 in addition to his $138,306 pension, which is 75 percent of his former salary.

The candidates competing to replace Williams are Goldberg –– who if selected would become the state’s first female chief justice –– and Associate Justices Paul A. Suttell, Francis X. Flaherty and William P. Robinson III; Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr. and U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente.

The nine-member nominating commission –– which includes five lawyers –– interviewed each of the candidates at a three-hour public hearing last week. Tuesday’s hearing is scheduled to begin at 5:15 in Conference Room A on the second floor of the Department of Administration building. Each of the candidates has been invited to have two witnesses testify in their behalf. Members of the public can also weigh in.

Afterward, the commission members may adjourn to deliberate in private. But their votes must be cast in public. By the end of the night, they will select three to five of the candidates to send to Governor Carcieri who will then choose one of the finalists. Rhode Island law says that in choosing the finalists, the commission should consider the candidates’ “intellect, ability, temperament, impartiality, diligence, experience, maturity, education, publications and record of public, community and government service.”

The law requires Carcieri to make his choice within 21 days, but he isn’t expected to. Political insiders are betting that the contentious battle playing out at the State House over the governor’s proposed budget revisions will stall the appointment. Asked last week how long it would take Carcieri to appoint the next chief justice, his spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, said she did not know. “Choosing the chief justice or any person for the bench requires a significant and thoughtful vetting process and much consideration. The appointments are lifetime appointments,” she noted. “Traditionally,” she said, “we have viewed the 21-day period to be merely advisory.”

Carcieri has had been sitting on two nominations –– one for the District Court and one for the Superior Court –– since last July. There are seven judicial vacancies in the state’s court system and there may be two more if sitting judges become the next chief justice and the chief judge of the District Court.

The only candidate for the chief justice’s job who is not currently a judge is Corrente, who used to be chairman of the Judicial Nominating Commission. Commission rules require that a commissioner disqualify himself from voting if “a substantial conflict of interest is apparent.” The commission’s current chairman, Stephen J. Carlotti, is a former law partner of Corrente at the Providence firm of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder. But he said last week that he had no intention of recusing himself from voting because he and Corrente haven’t practiced together for many years and Corrente no longer receives any residual payments from the firm.

In interviews last week, several of the candidates for chief justice said they were shocked at Williams’ resignation. A few hinted that he had been the victim of burnout because he was known to be a micromanager. Most of them made a point of saying that if selected for the job, they would delegate more to staff who work under them.

Darigan and Corrente said they would also work to repair a rift that developed between Williams and the chief judges of the lower courts. “The collaboration between the various courts hasn’t always been as strong as it should be,” said Corrente. He said that if he were chief justice, he would initiate a schedule of weekly meetings among the chief judges of all the courts to collaboratively work on problems that arise.

All of the candidates said they recognized the importance of trying to cut down on expenses during this time of fiscal turmoil in Rhode Island. None recommended constructing any new facilities or hiring more personnel at this time. But all of them stressed the importance of trying to modernize the way the court system works.

The candidates acknowledged that it would be expensive –– and cost-prohibitive right now –– to get an electronic filing system, the kind of system currently in operation in the federal courts where a person, with the click of a mouse, can file and access all information relating to a criminal or civil case. But they said such a system is necessary. In the long run, it would save money on staff needed to file documents. Under the current paper file system, only one person can see the records for a case at a given time.

The candidates also proposed an immediate way for the courts to save more money –– to expand videoconferencing so the state would not have to continue to pay for so many prisoners to be transported to court and for the security personnel to guard them. The courts

•Rhode Island’s judicial budget: $85 million

•Amount returned to the state treasury collected by the courts in 2008: $25.9 million

•Number of judiciary employees: 685, including judges and magistrates (729 positions are authorized but because of anticipated budget cuts and judicial vacancies some jobs aren’t filled)

•Number of courts: 6

•Number of judges: 65

•Number of magistrates: 21

•Percentage of minority employees: 10 percent

tbreton@projo.com