PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – Former Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to review his racketeering conspiracy conviction, his lawyer, Terry MacFadyen said.

Cianci – brought down by a federal probe into widespread corruption at City Hall – is asking the court to review the charge against him, and the exclusion of a tape recording from evidence during the 2002 trial, MacFadyen said.

The same request was turned down by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in October, and the Supreme Court rarely grants such requests.

Cianci was sentenced to 64 months for his conviction on a single count of racketeering conspiracy. Last month, he was handed the same term by U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres, who resentenced Cianci after the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory sentencing guidelines were unconstitutional.

With good behavior, he is scheduled to be released in July 2007.

MacFadyen said Cianci sought to use the recording at trial, but his request was turned down.

It includes a 1995 conversation between Cianci and an undercover FBI agent posing as a businessman seeking a city contract.

According to Friday’s request, Cianci is heard on the tape telling the agent that if anyone asked him for a bribe, Cianci would see to it that the person was arrested.

During the trial, prosecutors cast Cianci as the head of an administration plagued by corruption.

The FBI’s investigation, code-named “Operation Plunder Dome,” relied heavily on testimony from corrupt former city officials. The star witness was an air conditioning contractor who posed undercover as a corrupt businessman to ensnare some of Cianci’s closest aides.

That informant, Antonio Freitas, carried a hidden video camera and captured Cianci’s top aide, Frank Corrente, taking a $1,000 cash bribe. Corrente was convicted of several counts, including racketeering.