01:00 AM EDT on Friday, June 17, 2005

BY EDWARD FITZPATRICK
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The state Supreme Court yesterday denied Providence lawyer Keven A. McKenna's request to reargue the lawsuit that claimed Frank J. Williams is no longer the high court's chief justice.

The two-sentence order said: "The petition for reargument is denied. Chief Justice Williams did not participate."

McKenna filed the suit in April, claiming Williams violated the state Constitution's ban on dual office-holding when he joined the military review panel set up to hear appeals by suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But the Supreme Court dismissed McKenna's lawsuit last week, saying McKenna lacked legal standing and that the state Constitution does not prohibit Williams from being both chief justice and a member of the federal panel.

McKenna filed a petition for reargument, saying the Supreme Court's decision was based on "naked and empty fabrications of logic, fact and law." Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch's office, which represented Williams, urged the court to reject McKenna's petition, saying it "simply disputes in often inappropriate and insulting terms the well-reasoned decision entered in this case."

After the court rejected his petition to reargue yesterday, McKenna said, "I'm not surprised." He said the order was nearly as short as his hearing before the Supreme Court, but not quite as short as the section of the Constitution that the court "repealed" to exempt judges from the dual office-holding ban.

"It's not the end of the line," McKenna said. "There are a number of things that political action can change. We should have a statute that makes it a crime for a judge to have more than one job. And the position of administrative judge should be circulated alternately among the members of the judiciary."

Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general, said, "We hope the court's quick answer here, as well as its clarity in answering the legal questions, puts an end to all this business."