Bench Warmers

On a recent morning, Judge Thomas Patrick Curran welcomed 30 prospective jurors into a Summit County courtroom. They looked pained by the inconvenience, so Curran tried to lighten the mood. "Thank you for coming to court," he said. "You all volunteered, right?"

Curran was not trying to charm a room of registered voters, for no ballot will carry his name. He is a retired judge, the courts' equivalent of a grandparent who watches the kids while their parents cruise the Caribbean. Retired judges fill vacancies, relieve sitting judges who may have a conflicting interest, and help reduce the backlog. In Cuyahoga County, two of them spend all their time chopping away at the forest of asbestos cases.

The Ohio Supreme Court keeps a list of 127 retired judges who are willing to serve. The unpretentious Curran, who is 73 and lives in Shaker Heights, seems ideal for the job. After years in private practice, he served a term on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, but came up short in re-election bids, even after being described in a Plain Dealer endorsement as a "first-rate jurist."

But retired judges' services don't come cheap: $400 to $465 a day, depending on the court visited. Last year the program cost the state $2.2 million.

To save money, chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who makes the assignments, has asked sitting judges to swap more cases. Still, a handful of retired judges work full-time. Few punch the clock like William F. Chinnock, a former Lakewood city councilman and juvenile court judge. According to financial disclosure statements, Chinnock earned $101,500 in 2002, nearly matching the salary of a common pleas judge, $106,500.

"I'm one of the more active visiting judges, and that's the way I like it," Chinnock, 65, says. "Work is my life. My children are grown and gone, and I'm proud to serve."

Funny thing about Chinnock is, the voters never asked him to serve.

In 1996, Juvenile Court Judge Kenneth Rocco won a court of appeals race. The Republican party, by virtue of its control of the governor's house, was entitled to name Rocco's replacement. Chinnock got the job, although he was the lowest-rated of five possible candidates. The Cleveland Bar Association deemed Chinnock only an "adequate" choice; the other four names came "recommended" or "highly recommended."

The Cuyahoga County party chairman said at the time that Chinnock was chosen with the next election in mind. It was thought that his days on Lakewood council would make him familiar to voters.

Chinnock's 16 years on council had been colorful. Ostensibly a Democrat, he voted often with the Republicans on council and shared a law practice with the Republican mayor, Anthony Sinagra. Longtime Lakewood Councilman Tom George says it became difficult for Democrats to strategize with Chinnock in the room. "He found himself more and more ostracized," George says.

Cleveland police popped Chinnock for drunken driving in 1983. His most ignominious act while a councilman, though, might have been an occasion six years later, when he tricked the Boy Scouts into passing out campaign literature.

Chinnock summoned the neckerchiefed youths to his home by billing the event as a litter cleanup. When the scouts arrived, they were handed plastic bags and told to distribute them throughout the city. The bags carried two messages: Keep America beautiful -- and reelect William F. Chinnock.

Two months later, Chinnock finished fourth in a primary election. A run for municipal court judge in 1991 ended also in defeat.

Unappreciated by Lakewood voters, Chinnock found warmth in the arms of the Republican Party. Then-Governor George Voinovich named him to the regional Workers' Compensation Review Board, a job that in 1991 paid about $35,000 a year. It was also Voinovich who later appointed him to juvenile court.

Chinnock's supposed electability in a county race was never tested, however. After a year on the bench, he announced that an undisclosed medical condition made campaigning too difficult. Chinnock says today that he suffered from a heart ailment, subsequently alleviated by alternative medicine. He credits chelation therapy, a detoxification procedure that the American Heart Association happens to reject.

Of course, if Chinnock had not taken ill and had stood for election, he would have run the risk of losing his eligibility to work as a retired judge. Retired judges must have left the bench on their own terms, not the voters'. There are ways around this rule. Curran, for instance, was appointed by Governor Bob Taft to the Eighth District Court of Appeals for a term that lasted four days.

Whatever the circumstances of Chinnock's retirement, as a visiting judge, he displays the energy of a man half his age. In 1999, for instance, he reported working 29 of July's 31 days. All but two of those days, he toiled on behalf of Harrison County, which is 130 miles from Westlake, Chinnock's then-city of residence. (He now lives in Avon.)