During his storied legal career, Frank Ragano kept reputed Tampa crime boss Santo Trafficante Jr. out of jail and 114 murder defendants out of the electric chair. But now, at 69, Ragano appears headed to federal prison himself. An appeals court last fall upheld Ragano's 1990 conviction on tax evasion charges and recently denied his request to remain free during any further appeal. Early next week, U.S. District Judge Owen Forrester of Georgia is expected to sign an order giving Ragano 30 days to surrender to U.S. marshals and begin a three-year sentence. Ragano could not be reached Friday. His Atlanta attorney did not return a telephone message seeking comment. A Tampa federal jury convicted Ragano of failing to report more than $100,000 he received in 1982 and 1983 from investors bankrolling a planned movie, The Life and Death of Jimmy Hoffa, the late Teamsters Union boss who relied on Ragano's counsel for many years. In the early 1980s, Ragano told Tampa investors he had exclusive rights to Hoffa's life story. Among the investors was former client Mary Haire. In 1983 Ragano successfully defended her against charges she murdered her husband, millionaire car dealer Ernie Haire Jr. A Florida Bar inquiry began after Mrs. Haire complained that Ragano took advantage of her emotional state by asking her to invest in the movie on the eve of her testimony in the trial. Ragano surrendered his license to practice law last year after Bar officials sought his disbarment. Ragano said federal prosecutors indicted him on tax charges only after he refused to wear a wire and gather incriminating statements from members of the late Trafficante's family. Ragano said one prosecutor has had a vendetta against him since a failed 1986 prosecution of Trafficante. Ragano contended that investors in the Hoffa movie later agreed to call the transactions loans and that he relied on his tax preparer's advice that the money did not have to be reported as income. The movie was never made. Ragano made headlines nationwide last year when he said he unwittingly carried an order in 1963 from Hoffa to Mafia bosses that they should kill President John F. Kennedy. He said the assertion was to counter theories promoted by the film JFK, not to promote a planned biography of his own career.