The Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics has just taken a break in its deliberations on its report on the ethics case of state Sen. Ulysses S. Currie and is expected to reume talks later in the day.

Members spent almost two hours meeting behind closed doors Wednesday and had little to say as they filed out.

Co-chairman Del. Brian  McHale said the panel expects to meet today to go over changes to the draft report but did not say when the panel might resume. The Baltimore Democrat would not predict when a final decision would be reached.

Earlier, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said he hoped to be able to distribute the printed report to senators as early as tonight and to bring the matter to the floor as early as Thursday. It is not clear now whether the panel will be able to meet that timetable.

Members of the ethics panel are required to keep deliberations confidential until the committee reports its findings to the full Senate.

Miller referred the Currie case to the committee after a federal jury found him innocent at a bribery-extortion trial. During the trial, Currie's defense admitted that the Prince George's County Democrat had failed to make required disclosures of payments he received from a grocery chain for whom he interceded with high state officials.

Options available to the committee if it finds Currie violated ethics rules range from reprimand to censure to expulsion, though the most severe of the sanctions is considered unlikely.