3:20 PM Fri, Oct 31, 2008 | Permalink
News staff Email

PROVIDENCE -- Charlestown assistant solicitor for Indian Affairs Joseph S. Larisa Jr. has agreed to step aside and let a former U.S. solicitor general argue a landmark tribal land case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

The decision comes shortly after the high court rejected an emergency motion from Larisa seeking to let the argument be divided between him and Theodore B. Olsen.

The feud over who would present the high-stakes case had pitted Charlestown Town Council members, who backed Larisa, against Governor Carcieri, who supported Olson.

The court today sent the question back to the parties involved to settle.

Larisa said the court had also given the parties 60 minutes to decide on one person to argue the case. If they did not, he said the court told them they would forfeit the ability to make an oral argument.

Larisa said he and other parties were at the governor's State House office today when the high court's decision came through.

"We agreed that we need to have an oral argument, and the governor and the attorney general were very adamant in their position that there would be no argument unless Ted Olson would do it," Larisa said.

In Washington today, Olson said that it is ``a privilege to be representing the Rhode Island family'' in next week's arguments.

Olson, who is among the lawyers most experienced in arguing before the high court, also expressed pleasure with the prospect of working on the case with Larisa

Carcieri, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch and Charlestown Town Solicitor Robert Craven officially announced the choice in a joint press release sent at 1:21 p.m.

In the press release, Carcieri, Lynch and Larisa took pains to put the feud over the choice behind them in their statements.

Lynch said, "Everything that has led to this point is now, fortunately, in the past. What's done is done. The Governor, the Town of Charlestown, and I are united in our choice of Ted Olson to argue the case, and our only focus now is assisting Mr. Olson in preparing to present the best case that he can possibly present on Monday."

Olson will handle the entire oral presentation before the justices Monday afternoon, but Larisa and a representative of Lynch's office will join him at the lawyers' table. The governor and Lynch will also attend oral arguments.

The court will be hearing oral arguments in a case that could resolve, once and for all, who controls 31 acres of land in Charlestown owned by the Narragansett Indian tribe.

Both the state and the Town of Charlestown agree that they don't want the land to be held in federal trust, and, thus, free of most state and local laws. But for weeks they had been unable to agree on which lawyer can best represent their interests in oral argument before the court.

-- With reports from Journal staff writers Randal Edgar and Katie Mulvaney and from John Mulligan of the Journal Washington Bureau