Projo Politics Blog

If state court officials were hoping to put lawyer Keven A. McKenna in his place with a scathing response to McKenna’s incendiary comments about Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Wlliams, it didn’t work.

The judiciary’s response seems only to have encouraged McKenna.

After McKenna appeared before the House Finance Committee to allege a “power grab” by Williams in a plan to remove the state Traffic Tribunal from the state District Court’s jurisdiction, Williams responded through the Supreme Court legal counsel in a sarcasm-laced letter copied by e-mail to the media.

Not to be outdone, McKenna shot back a 23-page letter, which he also sent to the media. It was accompanied by another document — spanning 21 pages and quoting liberally from the state Constitution — titled “Centralized powers of King Frank.”

McKenna accused Williams of accruing “auxiliary powers” that “have nothing to do with being a judge.” To be a judge, one only needs a computer and a courtroom, McKenna wrote. “You do not need the paraphernalia of a governor.”

McKenna challenged Williams to a public debate, and even suggested a moderator — Patrick T. Conley, a lawyer, retired Providence College history professor and onetime aide to former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. Conley recently wrote a book on the Rhode Island Constitution with former state Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr. — and a location — Conley’s Wharf, on Allens Avenue in Providence.

“Even though some may think it is not politically correct to defend the Constitution, no amount of personal criticism of me by your staff will deter me as a citizen from using my free speech to protect the R.I. State Constitution from abuse by any public official,” McKenna wrote.

Judiciary spokesman Craig N. Berke said Williams has no intention of debating McKenna.

“We have to keep in mind that these comments are from a man who sought two years ago to have the chief justice removed from office, and one year ago sued the chief justice over the dismissal of the director of the Rhode Island Legal/Educational Partnership,” Berke said in an e-mail message.

(McKenna was the lawyer for Claudette Field, who was fired last year from her job as the nonprofit agency’s executive director, a post she had held for 14 years, and to which Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Fortunato ultimately ordered her reinstated. Field initially named Williams as a defendant in her lawsuit, but Fortunato removed him.)

In addition to alleging that McKenna has ulterior motives, Berke offered a fuller explanation of how the General Assembly’s restructuring of the Traffic Tribunal came about: “The Supreme Court’s general counsel drafted legislation this year that would have vested the full Supreme Court with the appointing authority for magistrates, but it was never introduced,” Berke wrote. “The General Assembly chose to vest the chief justice with the appointing authority for a chief magistrate in the Traffic Tribunal. The chief justice did not seek that authority.”

Berke continued: “The Supreme Court and its general counsel continue to review the magistrate system. … The chief justice has previously been on record as saying he favors magistrate selection through the Judicial Nominating Commission.”

---