Taricani, a reporter for WJAR Channel 10, NBC's Providence affiliate, was found in criminal contempt on Nov. 18, at which time Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres said Taricani could face up to six months in federal prison. But Taricani, who received a heart transplant several years ago, urged the judge to consider a lesser sentence due to his increased susceptibility to infection.
At the Dec. 9 hearing, Torres said he would have sent Taricani to prison had his health not been so fragile.
"I'm reasonably confident that the Bureau of Prisons could provide appropriate care (for Taricani), but I'm not sure enough that I'd want to put (his life in danger), and apparently the special prosecutor agrees," Torres said.
Torres said that Taricani's home confinement will be "very strict" and "designed to mirror as close as possible" prison conditions. As part of the conditions of the confinement, Taricani is not allowed to leave his house except for doctor's appointments and is not allowed to give any interviews. Taricani will be electronically monitored, and Torres assured him that if he is found in violation of any of the sentence's conditions he will be sent to jail.
The ruling was the end of a three-year-long attempt by the court to learn the source of a secret FBI tape, which was given to Taricani in violation of a court order. WJAR aired the videotape before former mayoral aide Frank Corrente and three codefendants were tried on corruption charges, which resulted from the four-year-long public corruption investigation nicknamed "Operation Plunder Dome."
Taricani was found in civil contempt last March for refusing to reveal the tape's source and was fined $1,000 a day as a result. WJAR, which covered Taricani's fines, paid a total of $85,000 before the court ruled Nov. 4 that the fines were not sufficient to force Taricani's compliance with the court order. After giving Taricani one final chance to reveal his source, the court found him in criminal contempt Nov. 18.
But in an unexpected twist, the source of the disputed video was revealed only six days after Taricani was found in criminal contempt. On Nov. 24, local defense lawyer Joseph Bevilacqua admitted under oath that he had given the tape to Taricani. In previous testimony Bevilacqua had denied doing so.
Bevilacqua had received the FBI tapes while representing Joseph Pannone, a former tax official who pleaded guilty to corruption charges and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Bevilacqua came forward after Taricani informed him that he had inadvertently revealed Bevilacqua as the source during a discussion with an FBI agent right before Taricani's Nov. 18 criminal contempt trial began.
During the Dec. 9 hearing, Taricani and Bevilacqua offered markedly different accounts of the circumstances surrounding the videotape.
Taricani maintained that Bevilacqua had given him the tape on a promise of confidentiality. But Bevilacqua testified that he had never asked Taricani to keep his identity secret. Instead, he said Tarciani told him he wouldn't reveal the source based on the "newsman's privilege." Bevilacqua said the only thing he asked of Taricani was that he wait to air the tape until the jurors had seen it.
Torres, however, said he believed that Bevilacqua had wanted to keep his identity secret - at least for a while - or he would have revealed himself before Taricani's criminal contempt hearing.
Torres also said he didn't think Taricani was "particularly interested" in finding out whether Bevilacqua wanted to identify himself. "I guess this was because he wanted to be a champion of the newsman's privilege," Torres said.
Taricani's case has drawn national attention because it highlighted the conflict between journalists' rights to inform the public and defendants' rights to a fair trial.
Through the trial, Taricani maintained that he had believed his acquiring and airing of the video were protected by the First Amendment. Torres, however, reiterated during the Dec. 9 hearing that Taricani was being punished for willfully violating a court order to reveal the source of the video, not for airing the tapes.
Torres was intent on clarifying this point; the day after the trial he released a statement on the court's Web site about five "myths that have been created by spin and the media hype" surrounding the trial.
"The first myth is the myth that the promise of confidentiality that was made in this case enabled Mr. Taricani to uncover corruption in City Hall that otherwise would have gone unpunished or the public wouldn't have known about," the statement read.
Torres wrote that this was not the case, since the video was recorded by the FBI and was going to be made available to the public when shown in the Plunder Dome trial.
"The second myth in this case is the myth that requiring disclosure of Mr. Taricani's source in this case will deter future sources from coming forward with information that the public ought to know and will chill reporters from using confidential sources," Torres wrote.
Torres wrote that this distorts the principal issue in Taricani's trial - whether a reporter can conceal a source's identity when the source committed a criminal act by providing the material to the reporter.
The Taricani ruling suggests reporters must reveal the identity of sources who provide information in violation of the law. While that may make it harder for reporters to gather information they feel is newsworthy, laws also forbid reporters to break into people's homes or tap their phone lines, Torres said. He said such difficulties for journalists are the price of living in a society "governed by the rule of law."
"The third myth is the myth that Mr. Taricani is being punished for just doing his job," Torres wrote.
That claim was repeatedly made by WJAR, which released a statement following Taricani's Nov. 18 trial reading, "No reporter should have to pay such a terribly high price for honestly and legally reporting the news."
