Maine’s longest-serving judge was sworn in for the last time this year.

AUBURN – One vote.

That’s all he needed to clinch the political leadership post.

The last man to hold that job went on to become governor, then congressman.

Robert Clifford considered a similar career for himself. He’d already served as Lewiston’s mayor.

The post was Maine Senate minority leader.

On the first round, his Democratic party had split 7-7. The next vote was 8-6.

Clifford lost.

He knows who cast the deciding vote. He’s not telling.

Three decades later, he said: “That loss was one of the best things that happened to me.”

Had he won, Clifford says he might never have become a judge.

A couple of years after that vote, he wrote a letter to then-Gov. Joseph Brennan. He asked to be considered for a judgeship. The two had served in the Senate together. Brennan had become a fast friend and mentor.

Brennan responded to Clifford’s letter, offering him a job at Maine Superior Court. Then Clifford changed his mind. Persuaded by two brothers at the family law firm to rethink his career change, he withdrew his name.

But the bench beckoned. In 1979, when Brennan asked again, Clifford talked it over with his wife, then answered, “Yes.”

Now the most senior member of the state’s highest court, Clifford is Maine’s longest-serving judge at 29 years – and one of its most respected.

A different spin

It was Clifford’s first murder trial. And second. And third.

It happened nearly 30 years ago, but it’s the case he remembers best.

The defendant was prominent in Biddeford politics. The trial was moved to Skowhegan.

Nancy Fredette was charged with murdering her husband. She denied it.

It was a “whodunit.” That intrigued Clifford.

The smoking gun was found in Fredette’s washing machine. It had gone through the spin cycle, plastered to the side of the drum, hidden under a towel.

Her glove had powder burns. Her forged signature showed up on a withdrawal slip from her husband’s bank account – written for the same amount she allegedly paid a man to find someone to shoot her husband.

But Fredette made a convincing witness, Clifford said.

That man made up his story, Fredette said. He tried to frame her because of a past debt, she said.

She claimed she was stuck in the bathroom at the time. The door jammed shut when her husband’s real killer opened the kitchen door, which she said pushed up against the bathroom door. For that reason, she said she couldn’t describe the culprit.

The first trial ended with a hung jury.

The second verdict, guilty. She appealed. The state’s highest court vacated her conviction and sent the case back to Clifford. That court said he had improperly allowed witnesses to corroborate the story of the man who had testified against her.

At her third trial, she was acquitted.

Three decades later, Clifford easily recalls the evidence, testimony, names and the time line. It’s a factual recitation. No opinion. No speculation about her guilt.

‘Never felt such tension’

The most infamous case during his tenure was the Boise Cascade paper mill workers stike in Rumford, Clifford said.

He was the judge when the company asked the court to keep strikers from interfering with workers going to their jobs.

“I’ve never felt such tension in the courtroom,” he said. Union members filled one side of the courtroom; management, the other.

A videotape played in the courtroom showed strikers trying to keep suppliers and managers from the plant. They shouted threats, scratched cars, he said.

“It was pretty rough,” he said.

After the first hearing, Clifford denied the company’s injunction request.

When they came back a second time, he issued a limited injunction. It included a clause that barred the children of strikers from the plant gates, Clifford said, but allowed the union to demonstrate.

Justice is key

“He’s got the perfect judicial temperament,” said William Maselli. The Portland defense lawyer has appeared before Clifford at both courts.

Meticulous in his preparation and approach to each case, Clifford is equally deferential to the opposing parties who come before his bench, Maselli said.

“He is one of the true gentlemen of the law,” Maselli said.

That view is shared by most people whose paths cross Clifford’s, whether judge, clerk, prosecutor or defense attorney.

“He’s never forgotten that justice was the key,” said longtime Lewiston attorney Jack Simmons. “That’s what the people seek. That’s what he seeks.”

The two began practicing law about the same time in the 1960s, Simmons said.

When presiding over cases in trial court, Clifford kept them on track. But he didn’t mircomanage or steer cases in any given direction, Simmons said.

Unlike some judges, Clifford “had no hidden agendas,’ Simmons said. Clifford wasn’t arrogant and didn’t play politics in the courtroom. He didn’t bully or badger people, Simmons said.

“He’s never forgotten to be humble and courteous to all litigants,” Simmons said.

Even outside the courtroom, Clifford took an interest in seeing justice served.

After winning a big drug case in federal court, Maselli passed Clifford on the courthouse steps. The judge congratulated him on his success. Another time, after Maselli lost a case against Lewiston police officers involved in a shooting, Clifford consoled the defense attorney.

‘The heart of the case’

The respect Clifford earned behind the bench has carried over into the chambers of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

“He’s a role model for all of us” justices at the state’s top court, said Chief Justice Leigh Ingalls Saufley.

“He’s the kind of person we aspire to be and often fall short,” both at work and at home, she said.

Off the job, he’s out visiting the sick and shut-ins, delivering the eucharist. He used to bring his certified therapy dog along until it passed away. On Sundays, he’s a lector at St. Joseph Parish in Lewiston.

On the job, Clifford is assiduous in his attention to detail.

“He has the ability to get right to the heart of the case,” Saufley said.

A defendant who appealed his criminal conviction insisted his constitutional rights had been violated. He told the court he had tried to represent himself during his trial.

Clifford directed Crystal Bulges, his law clerk since 2004, to comb through the trial transcript for any reference to that claim. She found the passage, which provided an accurate picture of exactly what transpired, she said. The man lost his appeal.

During deliberations, Clifford mostly listens, Saufley said, better than anyone she knows.

Clifford also is a walking reference library, she said. His institutional memory spans decades. He not only remembers when laws were passed, he remembers which laws they replaced. He knows the latest version of the Maine Criminal Code because he helped shepherd that document through the Legislature as a co-sponsor.

Dissent

Despite his retiring manner, Clifford isn’t shy about taking a judicial stand. A devout Catholic, he dissented when a case concerning public financing of parochial school placement came before the court.

He split with the rest of the court, arguing the restriction violated constitutionally guaranteed equal protection under the law.

By taking such a stand, Clifford risked the perception that he might be letting his personal beliefs interfere with his legal thinking. Bulges knows that would never happen. It was always about fairness.

“It shows the strength of his character,” she said.

“You bring your background and history to the court,” Clifford said. “You’re always on the lookout for improper discrimination, whether it’s religious or other discrimination. And my position was this was and is improper discrimination against parents who live in those towns who want to exercise their right to send their children to a school that is religiously affiliated.”

The state could decide that all students must attend public schools or pay their own tuition at private schools, he said. “I don’t think there’d be any discrimination if that occured. But they allow the children to attend private schools; the only condition is that they can’t be religious affiliated.

“U.S. Supreme Court has said you can give money in the form of vouchers. It’s permissible. It doesn’t violate the separation of church and state. If the Supreme Court didn’t say that, I couldn’t have written that opinion.”

Two states allow vouchers to be used at any private school.

In his most recent opinion on the subject, Clifford, referring to the nation’s highest court’s ruling, wrote in his dissent: “In essence: ‘I told you so. They have allowed it.'”

In his blood

Law was a natural choice for Clifford. His father and two brothers worked at the Lewiston firm, Clifford and Clifford.

His uncle, John, was a lawyer, U.S. attorney and federal judge. John Clifford also is the grandfather of Thomas Delahanty II, a justice at Androscoggin County Superior Court.

One of eight children, Clifford said he was an underachiever in school and especially at sports. He lacked confidence. After law school, Clifford served in the U.S. Army as a captain and company commander.

He was a fraternity president in college, but the military instilled in him leadership skills and self-confidence he would draw upon from the bench.

In Europe, he met his wife, Clementina, a civilian worker for the military.

Back in Lewiston, he joined the family firm before making his foray into politics. After three years on the City Council, he was elected mayor, then served two terms in the Maine Senate.

Before taking his seat on the court, he headed up the city’s charter commission.

Clifford was tapped as the Maine Superior Court’s first chief justice before Brennan nominated him in 1986 as associate justice to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Earlier this year, Gov. John Baldacci reappointed him to another 7-year term. At 70, Clifford said it likely would be his last.

He looks forward to semi-retirement. But not for the usual reasons. Not to play more tennis or read more biographies, two passionate hobbies.

Clifford is most eager to get back into the courtroom as a so-called “active-retired justice.” Nothing gives him more of a thrill than donning his black robe, taking his seat behind the bench and watching justice unfold before him.

“I loved it.”