JOSEPH L. DeCAPORALE JR. was in trouble.

Tears welling in his eyes, he pleaded with the attorney general, James E. O'Neil, to let him keep his job as a prosecutor.

It was September 1992, two years before he would be assigned to the DiPrete corruption case.

DeCaporale had faced adversity before. A fixture in Rhode Island courtrooms for two decades, DeCaporale had overcome two bankruptcies, a divorce, hospitalization for "major depression," and complaints from clients to find himself, at the age of 48, embarked on a hopeful new start as a prosecutor.

Now, just a few months after his hiring, everything seemed at risk: the new job, the increased financial security, and the hope, someday, of becoming a judge.

DeCaporale was about to help prosecute a major bank-crime case when word came that the state Supreme Court's disciplinary board for lawyers had scheduled confidential hearings into a former client's complaint that DeCaporale had stolen money from him.

DeCaporale had endorsed the client's name on a $21,000 check received in settlement of a police-brutality lawsuit, and kept the money. DeCaporale said he had signed the check and kept the money, as his legal fee, with the client's permission.

Word of the disciplinary hearing came as DeCaporale was helping to pick the jury for the trial of two prominent figures in the Rhode Island banking crisis. If the disciplinary board found him at fault, he could be stripped of his license to practice law.

Attorney General O'Neil pulled DeCaporale off the trial, and suspended him without pay.

Shortly after the suspension, a colleague found DeCaporale at his desk, crying.

"I'M A GOOD LAWYER," Joseph DeCaporale once told a friend in the 1980s, "and I can't make a dime practicing law."

In the early years, when DeCaporale was an aspiring lawyer with a wife and three young children, money had been tight. Son of a welding foreman from Providence's blue-collar Silver Lake neighborhood, DeCaporale put himself through law school stocking shelves at the Smith Street Stop & Shop. He then struggled through the years to succeed in private practice, worked as a Rhode Island public defender, even sold insurance, to make ends meet.

Court records paint the picture of a man chronically beset by financial problems.

DeCaporale liked stylish cars; a former client recalled DeCaporale's picking him up for court in a Porsche. He invested in a nightclub in West Warwick, decorating it with bronze griffins and naming it the Quo Vadis, after a restaurant he said he had frequented in London.

Saddled with debts from the Quo Vadis, DeCaporale in 1977 declared bankruptcy for the first time. Within weeks, his partners in the nightclub were indicted for federal securities fraud in a separate business venture. At their trial, DeCaporale testified as a defense witness. Two of the three defendants were convicted; one of them was sentenced to three years in prison.

In 1983, public records show, DeCaporale borrowed $20,000 at 20-percent interest, from a client who had served a prison sentence for robbery and was later arrested for drug trafficking. The debt was repaid after the client sued.

In 1989, after his divorce, a Family Court judge garnished DeCaporale's wages for nonpayment of child support.

In 1991 DeCaporale and his second wife declared bankruptcy, reporting liabilities of more than $900,000. About half of that money, he said, was being sought by clients of his, a family that had sued him; he was disputing the family's claims.

The DeCaporales' creditors included, in addition to several former clients, banks, credit-card companies, DeCaporale's divorce lawyer, DeCaporale's father, and a Rhode Island judge. DeCaporale also owed about $25,000 in back taxes. And he owed money for law books.

BUT IN SPITE of all his troubles, Joseph DeCaporale loved his calling, loved being in a courtroom. It was the kind of work, said a friend in the public defender's office, that gets in your blood.

DeCaporale met his second wife, a stenographer, in court during a rape trial. It was not love at first sight. DeCaporale was cross-examining the accuser, questioning whether she'd really been forced, bringing out that the woman had smoked some marijuana and drunk some beer. Elaine DeCaporale later recalled that her future husband seemed "cocky," "irreverent." During a recess, she recalled, she told him, "You're awful. How can you be so mean and rotten?"

She didn't realize it until later, she said, but DeCaporale was doing what a lawyer is supposed to do: advocating for his client. Bold and brash, smacking a table to drive home a point, DeCaporale was the voice of righteous indignation -- seeking to generate sympathy for his client, pointing the finger at the accuser, the police, the prosecutors. He had presence, said one lawyer, a knack for understanding what was important to a jury.

A long-time friend, veteran public defender Richard Brousseau, noted DeCaporale's ability to "bob and weave -- to roll with the punches, to adapt himself in the courtroom to different situations."

Outside the courtroom, life was more complicated.

THE FUTURE PROSECUTOR began his law career with two of the best-known criminal-defense lawyers in Rhode Island.

In 1969, after graduating from Suffolk University Law School, Joseph DeCaporale went to work with Joseph A. Bevilacqua, another son of Silver Lake and the future Rhode Island chief justice, and his partner, John F. Cicilline.

Bevilacqua and Cicilline presided over a thriving criminal-defense practice that featured an array of mobsters, including the New England Mafia boss, Raymond L. S. Patriarca.

The two lawyers became DeCaporale's mentors. He admired Cicilline's charisma in the courtroom, and emulated Bevilacqua's loud, blustery speaking style.

By 1971, in addition to his criminal-defense work, DeCaporale was a part-time lawyer at the General Assembly, where Bevilacqua was speaker of the House. He also began working as a part-time public defender, a job that in 1974 became full-time. But in 1977, earning $23,000 and facing his first bankruptcy, DeCaporale returned to private practice at Bevilacqua & Cicilline.

It was a turbulent year.

That February, a state judge referred DeCaporale and another lawyer to the state Supreme Court's disciplinary board after concluding that at least $4,000 had been "embezzled" from a receivership they had handled. The judge, Ronald R. Lagueux, called the lawyers "interlopers." DeCaporale said that he had never received any money, and that the other lawyer was to blame for any discrepancies.

According to DeCaporale's later testimony, the Supreme Court gave him a private reprimand. And DeCaporale and the other lawyer agreed to repay $4,000 to the receivership, to settle a lawsuit they said would have cost them more to defend.

DeCAPORALE RETURNED to the Bevilacqua & Cicilline law office at an interesting time.

John Cicilline was emerging as Rhode Island's pre-eminent criminal-defense lawyer -- a position, he told a reporter, that required him to socialize with "these people," as he referred to mobsters. But these relationships were beginning to draw the attention of law enforcement.

In 1978 Cicilline hired as a paralegal Mafia underboss Nicholas Bianco, freshly paroled from federal prison. The next year, Cicilline, who had split from Bevilacqua, opened an office with DeCaporale on Federal Hill's Atwells Avenue. Later, a few other lawyers joined them.

The building, the former site of a dry cleaner's, was owned by Raymond Patriarca, the New England Mafia boss, who gave a good deal on the rent. Patriarca's vending-machine business was across the street. Bianco, Cicilline's paralegal, oversaw the renovations. Cicilline hung a picture on the wall of Patriarca and his son, Raymond J. "Junior" Patriarca.

At the end of a typical workday, Cicilline later recalled, clients and friends would drift in. The regulars included Junior Patriarca and mob enforcers Frank "Bobo" Marrapese and Gerard T. Ouimette. Cicilline said that he and DeCaporale would drink with them at the Gaslight lounge, as had Bevilacqua, too, in earlier years.

Business came in spurts. Some weeks, the lawyers made no money. Other weeks, infighting among mob factions created a demand for the lawyers' services. "It seemed," Cicilline recalled, "like people were getting shot every other week."

One former drinking partner, Richard A. "Dickie" Callei -- whom DeCaporale had once represented for threatening a state-police detective -- ended up in a shallow grave near a golf course. The killer turned out to be another client of Cicilline's, Bobo Marrapese. (Marrapese would later be prosecuted by DeCaporale's future boss, Michael F. Burns.)

Cicilline said that DeCaporale was talented, aggressive, and well prepared; had he stuck with criminal-defense work, he could have been one of the best such lawyers in New England. But, said Cicilline, DeCaporale was impatient for the riches and recognition he believed were his due. It would bother him to read in the newspaper about a case he and Cicilline were working on and find no mention of his name.

Cicilline, sensing DeCaporale's frustration, would give him pep talks.

"It'll work out," Cicilline would say. "We'll make it."

IN 1980, the year after Cicilline and DeCaporale had moved to Federal Hill, four FBI agents slipped into their offices and planted electronic listening devices. Two months later, agents walked in the front door with a search warrant. And they began taking surveillance pictures of who went in and out.

The listening devices were part of an investigation targeting Mafia boss Patriarca, Mafia underboss and paralegal Bianco, and lawyer Cicilline, federal prosecutors later revealed. One case emerged from the bugs -- a bank-fraud case against Bobo Marrapese and another mobster who had been recorded talking with Bianco.

Nothing damaging about DeCaporale emerged from the tapes. But he was unnerved by the fact that he had been picked up on the bugs, recalled Cicilline. Not long after federal marshals disclosed the bugging, Cicilline recalled, DeCaporale left for an office on Providence's East Side.

"Nobody wanted to stay in the hot box," joked Cicilline.

DeCaporale told Cicilline that he was leaving to do more civil work, in hopes of earning more money. Later he told a mutual friend that although he respected Cicilline, he had been uncomfortable with all the mobsters coming and going.

IN 1986, things fell apart for Joseph DeCaporale.

His first marriage was crumbling. His long-time girlfriend, whom he would eventually marry, was demanding a commitment. And he was being pressed to account for thousands of dollars he had collected on behalf of a family he had long represented. (DeCaporale has declined comment for this series.)

According to his second wife, Elaine DeCaporale, and court records, DeCaporale checked himself into Butler Hospital, the Providence psychiatric and substance-abuse treatment center. DeCaporale said later in court papers that he had been "excused" from practicing law in Rhode Island from April through September of 1986. He would also testify that he had been suffering from "major depression" over separation from his children.

After his hospitalization, DeCaporale wrote to a law associate: "I guess you weren't too surprised to hear about my problem. It was just a matter of time before I bottomed out.

"What is very important," said the letter, contained in court records, "is [that] the current and new clients not know the nature of my illness."

DeCaporale implored his associate not to tell one particular client, who was seeking money, about "my problem."

"Tell him I've had back surgery."

DeCaporale also asked the associate to take care of some pending cases.

"And don't worry about our squaring up," DeCaporale wrote.

JOSEPH DeCAPORALE'S law practice continued to struggle. He divorced, remarried, and, with money an issue, abandoned the law.

In 1988 he became an insurance salesman.

On his sworn application for a state insurance license, DeCaporale lied about his job history. He omitted references to his recent law practice -- which by then involved lawsuits by his former law associate as well as his former clients. He wrote that he had worked since 1969 for the law firm of Jackvony & Dimitri. William A. Dimitri Jr., now a Superior Court judge, said that DeCaporale had in fact, only briefly, rented space from the firm.

DeCaporale had thought he was going into an insurance executive-training program, but he found himself writing policies, meeting clients nights and weekends. He was good at it, said Elaine DeCaporale; one year he met his sales quota and the couple was rewarded with a trip to Puerto Rico.

But something was missing. DeCaporale and his wife would sit around with their neighbors, Superior Court Judge Henry Gemma Jr. and his wife, Susan, also a court stenographer, swapping courthouse gossip. DeCaporale now felt like an outsider; he stayed away from the courthouse, according to Elaine DeCaporale and Judge Gemma.

Joseph DeCaporale longed for the action. He also longed to be a judge, said Gemma, and fretted that his past ties to Cicilline and Bevilacqua would taint him as a "mob lawyer." Seeking to broaden his resume, he asked Gemma, a former prosecutor, to sound out Atty. Gen. James E. O'Neil about putting DeCaporale in charge of prosecuting organized-crime cases.

According to Gemma, O'Neil laughed at the idea of putting a former defense lawyer for mobsters in charge of prosecuting mobsters.

DeCaporale then returned to the public defender's office. His financial woes followed him.

The month he started work, September of 1989, DeCaporale's wages were garnished, for nonpayment of child support. Meanwhile, an agreement to buy a North Smithfield house from Susan Gemma, the judge's wife, led to more problems -- and the dissolution of a friendship.

The DeCaporales took possession of the house and moved in, agreeing to pay the Gemmas once they had sold their condominium. But 18 months later, unable to sell the condo, the DeCaporales backed out of the deal. They had lived in the house rent-free, court records show, and had also failed to pay some of the real-estate taxes.

Susan Gemma sued the DeCaporales. Things turned ugly one night, Elaine DeCaporale later recalled, when Joseph DeCaporale went pounding on the Gemmas' door.

"Why can't you control your wife?" he shouted at Henry Gemma.

DeCaporale went home, recalled Elaine DeCaporale, after Henry Gemma threatened to call the state police and have him arrested.

IN 1992, Joseph DeCaporale finally got to be a prosecutor.

Attorney General O'Neil, who had previously been unwilling to put DeCaporale in charge of organized-crime cases, hired him because he needed an experienced trial lawyer to help clear a backlog of cases.

It was rare for a seasoned defense lawyer to cross over to the "other side."

John Cicilline wished his former law associate well, with a caveat -- "if you can live with yourself doing that kind of work."

DeCaporale was eager for the change. The prosecutor's job paid more, and there was more room for advancement.

The public defender's office could be a thankless place, with its patina of despair. The lawyers were overworked, underpaid, and susceptible to burnout. DeCaporale had defended a man who stabbed his cousin to death at a birthday party; a husband who killed his pregnant wife with a shotgun; a woman who gave her 5-year-old daughter a lethal dose of methadone to cure a cough. When he left, he told a reporter that he was sick of working so hard for people who never said thank you.

In his best-known case, DeCaporale represented Willie Scurry, a Woonsocket man convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman from Providence's East Side. At a hearing on Scurry's motion for a new trial, DeCaporale sharply questioned James W. Ryan, chief of the attorney general's criminal division, about the prosecution's failure to provide the defense with certain information.

Later, the state Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Scurry, for a different reason: the trial prosecutor had provided inaccurate information regarding the criminal record of a potential witness. The Scurry case, the court ruled, "demonstrates the hazards of untimely production of discovery material." (Ultimately, the charges against Scurry were dismissed.)

JOSEPH DeCAPORALE'S honeymoon as a prosecutor was short-lived.

In September 1992, the month after he had joined the attorney general's department, DeCaporale was suspended without pay by Attorney General O'Neil, who had learned of the disciplinary complaint against him.

At the time, DeCaporale was picking a jury for the trial of the leaders of the failed Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corp. Now, pulled off the publicized RISDIC trial, DeCaporale confronted private allegations of his own financial impropriety. The Supreme Court's disciplinary counsel charged that DeCaporale had "wrongfully converted funds belonging to [a client] to his own use."

It was the second time in his career that DeCaporale had faced the disciplinary board -- the first having been in 1977, after the accusation of his mishandling of a receivership in which $4,000 was missing. In that case, the board had recommended a public censure but the Supreme Court opted to issue a private reprimand, according to DeCaporale's testimony at his later disciplinary hearing.

The new complaint involved a former client whom DeCaporale had helped settle a $21,000 police-brutality, in 1985, lawsuit. DeCaporale had signed the man's name on the release form to receive the check, and then on the check itself, and kept the money for himself.

At his disciplinary hearing, in October 1992, DeCaporale testified that his client had given him permission to sign both the release form and the check. He also said that his client had agreed that he could have the money, as payment of past legal fees; DeCaporale had represented the man in several criminal cases involving his use of drugs and alcohol.

DeCaporale testified that he had not gotten the client's signature because the man had no interest in coming to DeCaporale's Providence office -- he lived in Burrillville, had no driver's license, and knew he would not be getting any of the money.

DeCaporale denied that he had been having financial problems at the time. And even if he had been, he said, "I would not have stolen money. I spent 23 years building up a reputation. . . . I'm just not a thief."

The client disputed that he had given DeCaporale permission to sign his name or take the money, or that he had owed DeCaporale back legal fees. When he called DeCaporale and asked for his money from the police-brutality settlement, the former client testified, DeCaporale told him that "it was in the mail."

In his final argument, DeCaporale's lawyer, Stephen R. Famiglietti, said that the former client was either lying or confused because of his history of drug and alcohol abuse.

The disciplinary board should give DeCaporale the benefit of the doubt, Famiglietti argued, because "his entire career is hanging in the balance. . . ."

AS HE AWAITED the board's decision, Joseph DeCaporale was allowed to resume his work as a prosecutor.

After the hearing, Attorney General O'Neil called Famiglietti and asked him what he thought would happen to DeCaporale. Famiglietti said he thought DeCaporale would not receive a disbarment or suspension, and O'Neil reinstated DeCaporale.

After Jeffrey B. Pine had defeated O'Neil, in November 1992, the attorney general-elect asked all the prosecutors who wished to remain in the department to sign a waiver allowing Pine to check their disciplinary records.

"My criteria are merit, qualification and performance," Pine wrote.

DeCaporale worried that Pine might not keep him, according to Elaine DeCaporale. She said that Michael Burns, Pine's ally who would head Special Prosecutions, had encouraged DeCaporale and put in a word for him with Pine.

When Pine took office, in January 1993, he kept DeCaporale on, and assigned him to Special Prosecutions. That June, DeCaporale found himself back in the spotlight, trying a big case.

In a trial emanating from the state banking crisis, DeCaporale won the conviction of businessman David LaRoche, who had defrauded credit unions of nearly $5 million.

"This case is about a man who needed money and couldn't borrow it," DeCaporale told the jury. "His methodology was to borrow as much as possible and pay as little as he could."

Late in 1993, the disciplinary complaint against DeCaporale was finally resolved.

A three-member panel of lawyers recommended to the full disciplinary board that the complaint be dismissed. The panel had determined that DeCaporale was more credible than his former client, whose memory had been clouded by past alcohol and drug abuse.

But when the matter went to the full disciplinary board, there was debate about whether DeCaporale should be punished. Some of the board members were bothered, according to a written dissent, that DeCaporale had tried to disguise signing his client's name.

"We would feel less inclined to dissent had [DeCaporale] written "by his attorney' or words to that effect, or even had he written his initials in parentheses after writing [his client's] name," said the dissent. "We think, too, that had he signed in this manner, neither the release nor the check would have passed.

"Here, respondent-attorney DeCaporale falsified a client's signature not once, but twice, and falsely witnessed or attested to one of the signatures he himself had forged."

The dissent noted that the Supreme Court had suspended other Rhode Island lawyers for signing clients' names on documents. "At a minimum," said the dissent, DeCaporale deserved a public censure.

DeCaporale's fate was now in the hands of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

That December, in a private hearing in the court's ornate conference room, DeCaporale pleaded for mercy before the state's five highest judges.

Tearfully, DeCaporale said that he should have acted differently. What he did, he said, was a mistake, an isolated occurrence. He said that he should have gotten his client's permission in writing, or driven to Burrillville to get the client's signature.

One justice offered comforting words.

In the end, there would be no public punishment. The Supreme Court decided to issue a private censure.

The client, who had sued DeCaporale, never collected any money. But the man's brother -- another former client -- persisted in his own lawsuit, accusing DeCaporale of having misappropriated money in other matters. DeCaporale would later agree to pay $17,500 over five years; according to Elaine DeCaporale, he settled so that the case would not come to trial and jeopardize his career.

DeCaporale's lawyer, Stephen Famiglietti, later said that he subsequently received a call from Jeffrey Pine. The attorney general wanted to confirm that the censure was private, not public. Pine also asked Famiglietti if he thought Pine should keep DeCaporale on as a prosecutor. Famiglietti said that Pine should, because "to my knowledge, this was an isolated incident."

About a year later, Pine assigned DeCaporale to work with Michael Burns and J. Richard Ratcliffe on the DiPrete case.

AFTER JOSEPH DeCAPORALE joined the DiPrete case, Richard Ratcliffe became concerned that his role in the trial would be diminished.

Ratcliffe had been the prosecutor on the case from the beginning, more than four years before. Now, he told people in the office, he felt that he was being pushed aside.

Ratcliffe would still have a role in the courtroom; for instance, it was discussed that he would cross-examine Edward DiPrete should the former governor testify. But most of the major witnesses would be questioned by Burns and DeCaporale. Ratcliffe, his friends said, would be "carrying their bags" -- researching legal issues, writing briefs, filing motions.

At a strategy meeting early in 1995, Michael Burns, who would be the case's supervising prosecutor, discussed how he and DeCaporale would handle the opening and closing arguments.

Ratcliffe then talked to James Ryan, chief of the department's criminal division. Ryan agreed that Ratcliffe was being pushed too far into the background and urged him to talk to Burns. Ratcliffe did so, but nothing changed.

In the spring of 1995, Ratcliffe pondered his next move.

RICHARD RATCLIFFE'S deliberations played out against an office shakeup that had major implications for the DiPrete prosecutors.

In April 1995, Attorney General Pine removed James Ryan as head of the criminal division and replaced him with Michael Burns. To replace Burns, Pine made Joseph DeCaporale head of Special Prosecutions.

Ryan, who had run the criminal division for eight years, and before that had served as a high-ranking New York City prosecutor, was reassigned to work under DeCaporale in Special Prosecutions.

The changes stunned many of the 100 or so criminal-division employees, who respected Ryan's judgment and integrity, and the high standards he had set for conduct and accountability.

Pine called the changes "part of an on-going process to best utilize the talent and skills within the department" -- part of his original campaign pledge to prosecute crime "efficiently."

Pine did not explain why he had demoted Ryan. When Pine was first elected, in 1992, he had asked Ryan to stay on as chief of the criminal division.

Ryan had been hired by Pine's predecessor, Atty. Gen. James O'Neil. And Ryan and O'Neil had clashed with Michael Burns, who then resigned as a prosecutor. When Pine became attorney general, bringing in Burns as one of his top prosecutors, he sat Ryan and Burns down and asked them if they could work together. The men said that they could.

But by 1995, Ryan's relationship with both Burns and Pine had deteriorated. A major source of friction was Pine's drug-fighting Strike Force.

Under O'Neil, investigators in the attorney general's office had coordinated drug investigations with local police departments and assisted in white-collar investigations, including the DiPrete case.

Pine created a more aggressive, paramilitary unit. Ninja-hooded agents conducted dramatic drug raids, kicking in doors and piling up record numbers of arrests. Pine courted publicity for the Strike Force, which enhanced his reputation as a crime fighter.

But James Ryan began hearing complaints from local police departments about rogue Strike Force operations. In a memorandum dated Jan. 12, 1995, Ryan accused the man Pine had hired to run the Strike Force, Robert J. Sylvia, of deception and "extraordinary bad judgment." The Strike Force, Ryan warned Pine, was "spinning out of control."

Sylvia fought back. He later told The Providence Journal, through his lawyer, that he and Burns had gone to Pine with complaints about Ryan; they told Pine that Ryan was hot-headed and incompetent.

In his memo, Ryan informed Pine that he had ordered one Strike Force agent's gun permit revoked, because of the agent's inexperience. But the agent, a former flight attendant who had been in hock to a mob loan shark, kept his gun. A few months later, Ryan lost his position.

IN MAY 1995, a month after James Ryan's demotion as chief of the attorney general's criminal division, Richard Ratcliffe resigned as a prosecutor.

It was hard to walk away from the DiPrete case, an investigation in which he'd invested so much of himself.

Ratcliffe had been a prosecutor for seven years, longer than he'd intended because he wanted to see the case through. Now, with his role diminished, it was time to leave. Ratcliffe also had other things to consider. He was 38 years old, with a wife and young child to provide for; it was time to start building a private practice.

Ratcliffe had agonized for weeks over his obligation to the DiPrete case versus his obligation to his family. Friends urged him to move on.

The prosecutor never expressed his concerns about his role in the DiPrete case directly to Jeffrey Pine. By the time he had scheduled a meeting with Pine, he had already decided to leave.

Pine asked if the decision had anything to do with the DiPrete case, but Ratcliffe said no. The attorney general offered reassurance; nobody had said that Ratcliffe would play only a minor role.

In retrospect, some members of the attorney general's office saw the moment as a critical event in the history of the DiPrete case.

Ratcliffe's resignation, they said, took "the detail guy" out of the equation: the one prosecutor who had been there from the beginning, the person who knew the complex case best.

A former prosecutor, a friend of both Burns and DeCaporale, said that the two were capable trial lawyers "but they were wrong together. They were both great on their feet, but neither was going to bury himself in the details."

Ratcliffe's co-workers threw him a going-away dinner at a restaurant on the East Greenwich waterfront.

Jeffrey Pine came, and presented him with a pen.

Michael Burns stood up, told a few jokes, and then turned to the guest of honor. "Richard," he said in farewell, "you're one of us."