ON TO CHAPTER 1
IT BEGAN WITH a fugitive financier and a tip about a rigged state lease.
The year was 1990. The heady '80s were over, and Rhode Island was about to be plunged into a crisis of confidence. A popular movie that fall was Reversal of Fortune, about the Claus von Bülow case, with its line "Rhode Island is the most corrupt state in the nation."
Nobody realized it, but one of the biggest corruption cases in the state's history had begun -- one that a Rhode Island Supreme Court justice would later compare to the voyage of the Titanic. The investigation would sweep up leaders in business and government, and culminate in the first criminal action ever against any Rhode Island governor, sitting or past.
In 1994, former Gov. Edward D. DiPrete and his son Dennis L. DiPrete were indicted on charges of perjury, bribery, extortion, and racketeering.
Today, 14 years after the voters first sent DiPrete to the State House, 8 years after the investigation began, and 4 years after the DiPretes were charged, the case of the State vs. DiPrete lives on.
The case has spanned two attorneys general, numerous prosecutors, and several grand juries; produced evidence filling some 600 boxes and hundreds of hours of grand-jury tapes; and provoked a legal counter-offensive that the DiPretes say has cost them more than $3 million.
For the past two years, the case has been delayed by hearings and appeals concerning misconduct on the part of Atty. Gen. Jeffrey B. Pine's prosecutors. The defense lawyers accused the prosecutors of withholding evidence, and then trying to cover up what they had done. The prosecutors' behavior led a Superior Court judge to throw the case out. And when the Rhode Island Supreme Court reinstated the charges, two justices lashed out at the "reckless disregard" and "nefarious machinations" of Pine's office. Eight weeks earlier, Attorney General Pine had announced that he would not run for reelection.
Next year, on Jan. 4, 1999, the DiPrete case is scheduled to come to trial. A jury and the public will finally hear the evidence. The stakes are high. This case has grown to involve more than just the DiPretes' innocence or guilt. Rhode Island itself is on trial -- its political culture, its way of government, its system of justice. The story of the State vs. DiPrete stands as a morality play, depicting power, greed, and infidelity in a place where the motto is Hope.
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