Special prosecutor Marc DeSisto and lawyer Joan McPhee are charging $150,000 for work that led to the reporter's home confinement.

01:00 AM EST on Saturday, February 26, 2005

BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The final cost to taxpayers of prosecuting reporter Jim Taricani for criminal contempt is more than $150,000.

The private lawyers who prosecuted the Channel 10 investigative reporter, who is now serving a six-month sentence on home confinement, have submitted their final bills to Chief U.S. Judge Ernest C. Torres.

According to Torres, special prosecutor Marc DeSisto -- the lawyer he appointed in 2001 to find out who gave Taricani a secret FBI videotape, in violation of a court order -- has submitted bills totaling about $81,000.

The judge said that altogether, 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 $71,120.

The bills, which will be paid by U.S. taxpayers, cover four years of work by DeSisto trying to ferret out who leaked the videotape, and then prosecuting Taricani for refusing to obey a court order to divulge his source. The tape showed city official Frank E. Corrente accepting a bribe from an FBI informant.

Torres said that DeSisto billed the court $125 per hour -- less than the lawyer makes in his private practice -- and that the hourly fees charged by Ropes & Gray were higher. Attempts to determine McPhee's hourly fee were unsuccessful.

The judge said about $25,000 of DeSisto's charge was consumed with his trying to determine from sources other than Taricani who had illegally leaked the tape. The judge has said that DeSisto questioned about 14 people under oath in an effort to determine who gave the tape to Taricani. The reporter aired the tape before the trial of the defendants in the Operation Plunder Dome case.

One of those questioned was Providence lawyer Joseph A. Bevilacqua Jr., who at one time was a lawyer for Plunder Dome defendant Joseph A. Pannone, a former city tax official who served prison time as a result of his conviction on corruption charges.

When first questioned by DeSisto under oath in 2002, Bevilacqua denied being Taricani's source for the videotape. But the reporter says that last November, just before Taricani's trial for criminal contempt, he inadvertently gave information to an FBI agent after encountering him in a coffee shop, which led DeSisto to resummon Bevilacqua for questioning.

On Nov. 24 -- six days after Taricani was convicted of criminal contempt for refusing to disclose his source -- Bevilacqua admitted to the special prosecutor under oath that he had given Taricani the tape in late 2000.

Torres has asked the U.S. Attorney's office to conduct an investigation of Bevilacqua, who has been a member of the Rhode Island bar for almost 30 years, "and, if warranted, initiate criminal contempt proceedings against" him.

The U.S. Attorney's office is still pursuing the matter, Tom Connell, a spokesman for the office, said yesterday. It is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Madden.

Meanwhile, Taricani, a heart transplant recipient who is serving his sentence confined to his home in North Kingstown, is expected to petition the court for a sentence reduction once the four-month mark passes, at the beginning of April. The judge told the reporter that if he scrupuously abided by the terms of his home confinement, which require him to wear an electronic monitoring device and stay inside his home -- he is not allowed to even walk to the mailbox, get the newspaper, use the Internet or go on his outdoor patio -- he would consider a sentence reduction after four months.

Taricani's employer, Channel 10, has continued to pay his salary while he is serving his sentence, as well as his benefits.