LITTLE ROCK — Joe Volpe, an assistant U.S. attorney and a former law clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge John Forster Jr., who retired last year, has been named as Forster's replacement.
Little Rock lawyer Gordon Rather, chairman of a nine-member merit selection panel that reviewed candidates for the job, said Wednesday that he receiveda letter on Monday from Chief U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes telling him that the district judges had chosen Volpe from a list of five top contenders.
Holmes appointed members of the panel on March 2 to review the qualifications of an undisclosed number of candidates who applied for the position by the Feb. 27 deadline.
The panel members were assigned to narrow the field to fiveand submit that list to Holmes by June 1, after which time the judges were to decide amongst themselves who to appoint to the 8-year term. They weren't expected to make a decision until the end of June.
The naming of a candidate with two weeks left in May took many by surprise, including Rather.
Because of the confidentiality of the process, Rather wouldn'tsay Wednesday when he submitted the list of the five top contenders to Holmes. However, he said in an interview just last week that the names would be submitted by June 1.
"The judges acted expeditiously, just as I anticipated they would," Rather said. He noted that Holmes' letter informing him that Volpe had been chosen was dated Monday.
While the consensus of the six district judges all but ensures that Volpe has the job, it won't be official until he has undergone an extensive background check that could take weeks. For that reason, Volpe didn't want to comment on the matter when reached in his office Wednesday.
Letters have been sent to all those who applied, to let them know that someone else has been chosen, said Rather and U.S. District Clerk Jim McCormack. Rather said Holmes made personal telephone calls to the other four people who were in the "top five."
Forster's last day on the job was May 9, 2008, after serving 22 years. He retired at age 65, before the end of his third term, to take a teaching job at the nationally recognized school of law at the small, historic Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. His wife, Jane Lee, had been one of the college's first women graduates, and had later worked as a law clerk for Forster.
Among those who gathered at the courthouse for a farewell party for Forster on May 5, 2008, were former law clerks Volpe and former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.
Forster's absence left five sitting magistrate judges in the state's eastern district. The Magistrate Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference, the governing body for the nation's federal judges, soon agreed to fill the vacancy.
Magistrate judges hear preliminary criminal matters and misdemeanor trials, hold evidentiary and other pre-trial hearings, and conduct jury trials and dispose of civil cases when both parties agree to forgo their right to have the case decided by a lifetime-appointed district judge.
Arkansas, Pages 9, 16 on 05/14/2009