As of mid-August, two lawyers have submitted bills of $58,000 and $61,000 to the U.S. District Court.

10:09 AM EST on Wednesday, December 1, 2004

BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The lawyers who are prosecuting reporter Jim Taricani for his refusal to disclose who leaked to him a secret FBI videotape have billed the government more than $100,000 to date for work they have done in connection with the case.

According to Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, special prosecutor Marc DeSisto -- the lawyer he appointed in 2001 to find out who gave Taricani the tape in violation of a court order barring its dissemination -- has submitted bills totaling about $58,000 so far.

The judge said that Joan McPhee -- a lawyer who works for the firm of Ropes & Gray, and who was hired to assist DeSisto when Taricani unsuccessfully appealed Torres' finding that he was in civil contempt -- has submitted bills amounting to $61,000.

The bills aren't up to date. They run through mid-August of this year, when Taricani's employer, Channel 10, began paying a $1,000-a-day fine that the judge imposed on the reporter for refusing to tell DeSisto who his source was.

Torres halted the fines last month after he turned the civil contempt case into one of criminal contempt, based on the reporter's continued refusal to obey a court order to answer DeSisto's questions about his source.

Torres said that DeSisto's hourly fee is $125 per hour -- less than the lawyer makes in his private practice -- but that the hourly fees charged by Ropes & Gray were higher. He did not say by how much.

Torres said that about $25,000 of DeSisto's charge was consumed with his trying to ferret out from sources other than Taricani who illegally leaked the tape to the reporter. The judge has said that DeSisto questioned about 14 people under oath in an effort to determine who leaked the tape to Taricani before the trial of the defendants in the Operation Plunder Dome case. No one admitted being Taricani's source.

DeSisto has told the court that he has gone to Taricani only as a last resort. Torres said that about $33,000 of DeSisto's bill stems from the legal fight the special prosecutor has had with the reporter over his refusal to identify his source.