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May 31st: Happy Tax Protester Day!

By JJ MacNab | May 31, 2008

May 31st is the annual anniversary of Lady Godiva’s infamous naked ride through town which took place roughly 950 years ago.  The Saxon Lady was a teenager at the time, and she complained mightily to her elderly Danish Lord husband that the tax rates imposed on his tenants in the town of Coventry were too high.  Her husband told her that if she rode naked through town, he’d cut the taxes (can’t you just hear the old fart snickering at the challenge.)  But she did it, so he honored his word about cutting taxes and died shortly thereafter.

They just don’t make tax protesters like they used to.

The legend later grew to include a nifty story about a guy named Tom.  During her famous nekkid ride, the townspeople were forbidden to go or look outside.  One perv cut a hole in his wall so he could watch the nudie girl on horseback, thus the expression “Peeping Tom.”

These days, the investigators just read your email and go through your trash which does far less damage to the walls of your home.

Topics: Tax Deniers | No Comments »

Judgment Day, the Final Chapter

By JJ MacNab | May 19, 2008

The jury continued deliberating this morning but just couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on the four remaining tax evasion charges, so a mistrial was declared on those counts.

Bottom line, the detective was convicted on two felony counts, and faces a maximum sentence of 15 years and a fine of $250,000.  He still has to pay all of his back taxes, plus interest and penalties, plus all of his legal fees which are likely to have gone into the $250,000 to $500,000 range, considering he had three attorneys on his defense team.

That’s some nasty stuff.   Realistically, he won’t get the maximum jail sentence — unlike Wesley Snipes, he doesn’t owe tens of millions in back taxes — but he’s likely to face roughly two years in federal prison.

Topics: Michael Irving | 4 Comments »

Judgment Day, Part I

By JJ MacNab | May 16, 2008

GUILTY

NOT GUILTY

NO VERDICT YET

The jury will return to the courthouse on Monday to continue deliberations on those four remaining counts.

Topics: Michael Irving | 16 Comments »

Day 8: It’s all up to the jury now

By JJ MacNab | May 15, 2008

The jury came in to the courtroom at 11:05 am to hearing closing arguments. 

The courtroom was so crowded (more than 85 observers) that 15 lawyers (including Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Marella) were allowed to sit along the bench inside the bar.  Imagine how nerve-wracking that must have been for the two prosecutors running the case.  The AAG and DAAG have been taking a keen interest in this trial and have attended most of the proceedings for the past four days.

The Short Version of Closing Arguments

Prosecutor Michael Ben’Ary:  He’s guilty.

Defense Attorney DeMaurice Smith:  No he’s not.

Prosecutor Karen Kelly:  Oh, yes he is.

The jury finally left the courtroom at 1:15 pm to have lunch and begin deliberations.

The Long Version

The prosecution themes were fairly simple:

  1. The defendant was driven by greed. 
  2. Please use common sense in making your decision, ladies and gents of the jury.
  3. A lot of important services such as firemen, police, sanitation, libraries, teachers, and so on are funded with taxes.
  4. The defendant can’t have a good faith belief in the program if he can’t even describe how the program works.
  5. While the Officer Next Door real estate purchase program through HUD also sounded too good to be true, it was administered by HUD, an agency of the federal government.  In comparison, the tax scheme was not administered by the IRS.  On the contrary, the IRS and DC Office of Tax and Revenue clearly told the defendant in a series of 13 letters that his program was frivolous.  Furthermore, the defendant was able to clearly explain the real estate program to the jury, unlike the tax scheme.
  6. The defendant didn’t tell anyone (friends, family, accountant, wife) about his program because he knew that they would tell him it was ridiculous.  He kept it hidden because he never believed in it at all.
  7. What triggered the defendant’s come-to-Jesus moment in 2004 (my phrase, not the prosecutor’s) was that the IRS had levied his bank account, so the detective returned to his old accountant and filed real returns for 2002.  (I’m glad they cleared that timing issue up.  I didn’t catch it before if it was discussed during the trial.)

The defense laid out a similarly simple closing.  The lawyer said that the case has six undisputed facts and then listed five of them.

  1. Detective Lonon showed the defendant his paycheck stubs, which convinced the defendant to go to promoter Stephen Harris (aka “carburetor guy.”)
  2. Other detectives (Stallings and Richmond) also bought into the plan.   (I don’t think anyone has ever told the jury that they also gave up the plan long before criminal charges were brought, and made good by filing their past returns and paying their back taxes.)
  3. The “I’m going to go after you criminally” Affidavit, the UCC Filing, and the phony W-4T were turned into the Metropolitan Police Department, the IRS, and the DC Tax Office.
  4. None of those three forms were returned to the defendant.  According to the defense attorney, “When the government gets something that’s wrong, they always send it back.”  Hmmmm.  The IRS certainly doesn’t.
  5. No one ever told the defendant the three forms were wrong.  The attorney advised the jurors to look through the evidence and try to find anything from anyone official saying the Affidavit, UCC Filing, and Form W-4T were bad.

From what I recall, the IRS and DC Tax Office never even saw these forms.  The DC payroll office simply processed “exempt” Forms W-4 and D-4 that accompanied them, and then tucked everything into a file.  Because the defendant didn’t declare 10 or more exemptions, they didn’t forward anything to the IRS or DC tax offices. 

The defense attorney closed his presentation by comparing his client to the “innocent taxpayers” mentioned in the IRS color brochure warning consumers that evil promoters were peddling a lot of garbage.  The defendant was sent three copies of this brochure over the years by the IRS as warning that he was engaging in a program that doesn’t work.

The prosecution’s rebuttal was very quick.

The prosecutor started by talking about the need for every taxpayer to pay their fair share and that our’s is a system of voluntary compliance.  The defendant became animated at this comment and started scribbling notes to his lawyer.  She pointed out that, despite being a trained detective, the only question Irving asked about the program was “Where do I sign?”  She compared the defendant to an ostrich, burying his head in the sand to avoid hearing that the program might be wrong.

The prosecutor ended by pointing out that, even though a person does good work, he is not above the law. 

So now, the jury can do what juries do.

Interesting bits:

I doubt it was intentional, but the defense attorney set up some vivid mental imagery of both the defendant’s autopsy experience and his Safeway meat-cutting experience within a couple of sentences of each other.  When describing the meat-cutting experience, the lawyer pretend-sawed on his own arm.  I know.  I’m weird.  I notice stuff like that.

The Patton Boggs lawyer gets brownie points for bringing his daughter with him to meet the court staff and watch his closing presentation.

The judge said the alternates could have a free lunch too.

Topics: Michael Irving | 6 Comments »

Day 7: Just when you think the Judge couldn’t get any slower

By JJ MacNab | May 14, 2008

At the end of the day on Tuesday, the jury was told not to come back until 1:15 today.  The judge needed to make some decisions on the jury instructions and he put aside a half day for that discussion.   Seriously, a half day.

Since jury instructions are about as exciting as watching golf on TV, I showed up at 1:15 pm so I could watch the prosecution rebuttal witnesses and closing arguments.

Poor jury.  The judge finally brought them in for the first time today at 2:55 pm.   The defense rested, the prosecution rested without calling any rebuttal witnesses, and, after spending only five minutes in the courtroom, the jury was told to go back to their waiting area until 3:30, since the judge still hadn’t finished hammering out the details on the jury instructions.

I went home.  Assuming the judge does actually finalize the instructions, the most that could happen today was the reading of those pages to the jury.  Closing arguments will now take place tomorrow morning.  A case that should have taken one week now looks like it will stretch into two full weeks.

Interesting bits:

The courtroom was completely full for that five-minute period when the jury came in, because most people assumed that closing arguments would take place today.  The defendant had more than 40 family and friends, most of them police employees, there to support him.

Rumor has it that had the defense called their character witnesses to the stand, we’d have heard from Department of Justice prosecutors vouching a man who has been indicted on multiple felony counts.  These witnesses would have been rebutted by the testimony of an Internal Affairs investigator who would have stated that Detective Irving lied to IAD regarding an “inappropriate sexual touching” charge he faced in 2005.

Rumor also has it that the Metro Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division is watching this case carefully.

The Judge gets really cranky in the early afternoon. 

The Washington Post still isn’t covering this story and it’s right up their alley.  I’ve now contacted two reporters and one editor and no one has responded.

Three jurors have expressed potential time conflicts if the trial goes to Friday.  Considering that the jury only has two alternates, this could get interesting if the Judge continues to drag this trial into additional days.

Topics: Michael Irving | 11 Comments »

Day 6: Doesn’t everyone have carburetors in their living room?

By JJ MacNab | May 13, 2008

You just know it’s not going to be a good day for a criminal defendant when a federal prosecutor immediately starts shooting at him with the really big guns…

Prosecutor:  You put people in jail for breaking the law, isn’t that true?

Prosecutor:  To be a good detective, you need good instincts … common sense … street smarts … skepticism … be detail-oriented, right?

And what was learned through these hard-core questions?

The defendant is really good at his job but all of his skepticism and natural curiosity magically vanishes when he’s off the clock.  Detective Irving is so good at interviewing witnesses that the Department uses one of his interrogation tapes as a training tool for rookies.

Summary of the Defense

The defendant trusted Detective Lonon’s tax advice blindly, without ever asking his Justice Department lawyer girlfriend (now wife), the IRS, the many prosecutors he worked with daily, his accountant, or literally anyone else whether the zero tax program was legitimate.  Heck, he says he didn’t even look it up on the internet.  Furthermore, when he decided to go back to his accountant, he failed to tell him about, or provide him with copies of his tax denier filings.

The Soap Opera Questions 

The jury learned that Detective Lonon was married with kids at the time he was living with Detective Jamell Green, and that he was seeing a third woman on the side.  He fathered a child with this third woman.  She also worked at the police department and was good friends with government witness Carla Sumptor.

When asked about his girlfriend, government witness Carla Sumptor, the defendant got loud and angry.  “She was never my girlfriend,” he insisted.  He agreed that he had a long term intimate relationship with her over a three year period, but apparently that doesn’t qualify for girlfriend status at the Metropolitan Police Department.  According to Ms. Sumptor, they were “intimate” until 2005, even though he found out his DOJ girlfriend was pregnant in late 2004 and they were married in spring 2005. 

Ah, young kids these days.  (I can call the defendant a young kid, since I’m four months older than he is.)

The Stephen Harris, Tax Promoter Questions

The defendant said he felt victimized by Stephen Harris.  He and four other police detectives were all victims, in fact.

The prosecutor’s questions were so good, the answers didn’t even matter.

Prosecutor:  You noted what kind of car Harris drove, but you didn’t notice the two surveillance cameras mounted over his front door?

Prosecutor:  You knew Stephen Harris was a computer repairman and car mechanic, right?

Prosecutor:  You didn’t notice the living room filled with car parts? … You didn’t see the carburetors and mufflers in the living room?

Prosecutor: You “reclaimed your birth certificate on bond paper to remove your debt” right?  Are you aware that Harris based his theory on how to “reclaim strawmen” on Ezekiel from the Bible?

Prosecutor:  Why did you file your UCC Financing Statement at a court in Georgia?  You don’t know?  Was it because DC Courts won’t accept such UCC filings because they’re ridiculous?

Prosecutor:  Did you know that the painted donkeys and elephants placed all around DC a few years ago were put there as surveillance devices, according to Harris?

Alas, the defense has apparently decided not to put Stephen Harris on the stand after all, so the jury will never know that his own sister went to federal prison as a result of his tax scheme.  Cassandra Harris was both a tax protester and a long term employee of the Central Intelligence Agency in the human resources department.  I don’t know about you, but putting a tax protester in contact with sensitive personnel information gives me the heebie jeebies.

The Money Questions

In addition to the four-unit apartment building, it turns out that the detective purchased another investment property through HUD in 2001 and flipped it within the year for a $48,000 profit.  He didn’t report the gain from the sale on his tax return.  He also formed a partnership with a friend called B&I Enterprises which owned both the hair salon and One and Only Towing.

He didn’t remember how he qualified for that whopping big home mortgage without being able to show the bank tax returns, and never discussed his tax situation with his wife before they got married.  The jury does not yet know (and I’m not sure they ever will) that Mrs. Irving chose the married, filing separate status when she filed her 2005 return.  She also claimed the mortgage interest deduction and exemption for baby Irving.

After wiggling around the question for a bit, Detective Irving admitted that the reason he followed Lonon’s and Harris’ advice was because he “wanted the money.”

No-Curiosity-at-All-About-the-Plan questions

Lonon based his belief in the program on a couple of books that he read constantly over a period of months.  Detective Irving didn’t read the books, never even looked at them, and didn’t remember their titles, other than the word “tax” was on the cover. 

The defendant said that he had no idea what the program said or how it worked, and never made any effort to find out.

Prosecutor: You didn’t ask anyone about the scheme because you didn’t want to hear that it was complete and utter nonsense, isn’t that true?

Defendant:  There was never any scheme. 

…

Prosecutor:  You had a good faith belief in something you can’t even explain?

Defendant:  I was a victim of the program.  If I could explain it, I’d have told the world.

Why the Defendant Flip-Flopped in 2004 Questions:

To summarize, the detective bought into the plan in late 2002.  Since he’d had significant taxes withheld for 2002, in February 2003, he filed a Form 1040 EZ requesting a full refund of the amounts withheld.  Lonon died in April 2003.  The IRS, with uncharacteristic speed, started their frivolous filing letter campaign within three months of the refund request.  When the 1040EZ plan didn’t work, he filed multiple years of trust returns, requesting full refunds for 2000, 2001, and 2003.  After Harris stopped returning his calls in 2004, the defendant went back to his accountant and filed a real return for 2002, and didn’t file 2003, 2004, and 2005 returns until 2008, right before the criminal trial started.  He continued to file “exempt” Forms W-4 and D-4 until 2006.

His reason for not filing those returns?  What’s the big deal, he’d filed late returns in the past and it wasn’t a huge problem. 

Well, in the past, he always filed within a few months, presumably after his accountant filed for an extension.  He also had real refunds coming in those past years.  In comparison, he owed more than $130,000 in back taxes for the 2003-2005 tax years. 

His excuse was that he was waiting to sell his apartment building, but he was spending massive amounts of money on non-essential items instead of paying taxes, and was buying expensive homes, jewelry, a Mercedes, and Redskins tickets while waiting for that building to sell.  When the IRS criminal guys came knocking in late 2006, he’d sold the building but still hadn’t gotten information to his accountant to complete the returns.

Closing Questions

Cross-examination took most of the day, but the above should give you a taste of how things went.  The defense has indicated that they will not be calling any more witnesses so the case should go to the jury tomorrow afternoon after a couple of brief prosecution rebuttal witnesses, closing arguments, and jury instructions.

I’ll leave you with one final question from the prosecutor which likely struck a chord with a DC jury:

Prosecutor:  If the citizens of the District of Columbia all decided that they didn’t feel like paying their taxes, you as an employee of the Metropolitan Police Department would not get paid, right?

Defendant:  I don’t know.

Prosecutor:  Your salary is based on the taxes paid by the citizens of the District of Columbia, isn’t it?

Interesting bits:

When asked to define the word “clue,” Detective Irving couldn’t. 

Topics: Michael Irving | 27 Comments »

Day 5: The detective takes the stand

By JJ MacNab | May 12, 2008

Finally, we got to hear from the detective himself. 

Michael Irving grew up in DC and attended Howard University for two years before dropping out to become a “journeyman meat-cutter” at Safeway in Georgetown.  He joined the Metropolitan Police Department in 1989 and worked his way up to Homicide Detective First Class where he ended up on the cold case squad in 2003.  He looked at the police career as job security and invested elsewhere in such ventures as an apartment building and a beauty salon.  His hours as a policeman were brutal; most of the high pay ($181,000 in one year, for example) reflected significant amounts of overtime.

Detective Irving worked with a fellow detective name Eugene Lonon, a man he’d known since grade school, and Lonon was the one who got him involved in the tax denier scheme.  Lonon died in a car accident just a few months after introducing the defendant to a detax guru named Stephen Harris.

What the defendant claimed

Lonon told Detective Irving that he’d attended an out-of-town tax seminar, had filed certain documents with DC and the IRS, had received almost $20,000 in refunds, and was receiving his biweekly paycheck without any taxes being withheld.  He showed the defendant his tax refund and his paycheck stubs to prove his point. Lonon studied two tax books “all the time” and carried them around with him for months.  Irving never read or even looked at the tax books.

Lonon then took Detective Irving to guru Stephen Harris’ house and advised Irving to do the same plan he was doing.  Per Lonon’s advice, Irving brought with him his birth certificate, social security card, driver’s license, and money to pay Harris (approximately $800 - $1,000.)  Irving seemed to think that Harris’ nice home, silver Mercedes SUV, and second home in West Virginia meant that he was a legitimate tax preparer.  I’d insert a sarcastic comment here, but it’s too easy.

Harris had Irving sign a typical tax protester UCC Financing Statement which he filed in Georgia, a bootleg Form W-4T, and an Affidavit filled with tax denier frivolous arguments.  Harris also told Irving to go to his payroll department to complete and sign ”exempt” Forms W-4 and D-4.   It’s a really good thing that Harris didn’t tell him to jump off a bridge or drink Drano, because the detective did everything he was told (right down to signing his name with lots of silly colons) without apparently questioning what he was doing or even reading the documents he was signing.  

When Lonon passed away, Detective Irving turned to Detective Jamell Green, since she had lived with Lonon and knew everything he knew.  He returned to see Harris a few times to have the guru complete tax returns seeking full refunds from prior years.  Irving didn’t review those returns prior to signing them and sending them in.

When the correspondence started coming in from the IRS, Green told him that such letters were no big deal and wrote up a 20-page demand letter to the IRS that the detective signed without reading.  Detective Irving “wondered why the IRS was sending letters at all”  and was told by Green, “They send letters all the time.  The program isn’t wrong, the IRS just doesn’t want people doing it.”  Hmmm. 

First he said that he was convinced the program was legitimate because he turned in “exempt” forms and neither the IRS nor DC had problems with it.  When it turns out the IRS and DC did indeed have big problems, to the point of warning the defendant about criminal prosecution, penalties, and fines, he decided that such correspondence was just the IRS being a big fat mean bully because he’d learned their secret of tax freedom.

In 2004, Irving lost contact with Stephen Harris, so he called his old tax preparer Michael Smith and sent the IRS correspondence to him to review.  In late 2004, Smith prepared true returns for tax year 2002 and submitted them.  While he didn’t comment on the time frame, this was about the same time that he found out his federal prosecutor girlfriend was pregnant, and it would appear that he was trying to put his financial life back in order before their wedding, the purchase of a big home, and the arrival of their child.

If he’d continued down that path, there probably wouldn’t be a trial today.  But he never filed the 2003, 2004, or 2005 returns, and continued to turn in “exempt” Forms W-4 and D-4 in those years.  According to his testimony, he didn’t see any point in filing true returns unless he could also pay the taxes due. He testified that he was waiting to sell his apartment building, but that didn’t actually happen until two years later.

In October, 2006, he was visited by three IRS Special Agents who told him of the grand jury investigation.

When asked by defense attorney Schertler (who in my quasi-humble opinion is a very effective and professional defense lawyer) whether he filed “exempt” in 2003, 2004, and 2005 out of greed, the defendant responded angrily, “I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve got.” 

The defendant has not read the indictment against him “word for word” but believes that he is “not guilty” on all counts.

Cross-examination will take place tomorrow, and I predict some fireworks.  The defendant was getting hot-headed just answering the softball questions tossed to him by his own defense counsel.  When tomorrow’s fast balls start whizzing by…

What the witness didn’t claim

I found what the witness didn’t say just as interesting as what he said.  He never recited a single legal definition or Internal Revenue Code section.  He had no idea what a UCC Financing Statement was, and the heavy-handed political rhetoric usually found in tax denier cases was completely missing from his speech.  He’s a tax denier without even knowing what one is.  And I’m guessing he has no idea that the garbage he was sold was once the brain-fart of some really hideous white supremacist nuts from the 70s and 80s. 

Instead of blindly following his friend or guru out of ideological principles, he did so out of greed.  He simply signed and filed ludicrous documents because he could, not because he was fighting the evil beast called the government.  In fact, he doesn’t seem to suffer from any of the delusions found in the typical Cheek defense.  His answers didn’t illustrate a good faith belief; they simply indicated acceptance of the advice of people with no tax or accounting background because he wanted to keep his money in his pocket.

Yikes!  Tax denying has gone mainstream. 

Topics: Michael Irving | 9 Comments »

Curiouser and curiouser

By JJ MacNab | May 11, 2008

I’m posting two blog entries again today.  Be sure to read “Day 4″ first. 

I’m really interested in hearing from the defendant in this case, and I would imagine the jurors are too.  Based on the strong evidence the jury has heard so far, the defendant is going to have to take the stand if he hopes to convince the jury that he really had a good faith belief in his zero tax scheme.

The defendant is young, handsome, makes a great living doing what he enjoys, and he’s married to an attorney who, until recently, worked for the US government as a federal prosecutor.  What the heck happened? 

How could he not know that what he was doing was going to land him in hot water? 

He’s a detective, trained in sniffing out crime and is an expert at knowing when people are lying.  He’s won numerous awards and accolades for his detecting skills.  Why didn’t he detect that the obvious garbage being peddled to him was a scam?  Where does he think the money comes from to pay for things like police salaries?

His federal prosecutor wife was paying her taxes and had chosen “married, filing separately” on her own tax returns.  Didn’t they talk about his mistaken beliefs? Didn’t she warn him?

The IRS was sending him one nasty letter after another threatening liens, levies, and criminal charges.  He’s hired multiple lawyers to defend him now, so why didn’t he hire a lawyer then to answer any questions he may have had about the tax laws? 

And why hasn’t he paid his taxes yet?

According to public records and what we’ve seen in the trial so far, the defendant lives very well.  He and his new wife purchased a 7 bedroom, 3.5 bath home in the nicest quadrant of DC on 3/31/2005 for $805,000.   His wife later left the Justice Department and has since taken a job as the “Institutional Integrity Officer” at the World Bank.   She’s obviously pretty stinkin’ smart and successful.  The defendant also owns a four unit apartment building, and a beauty salon, so he’s doing pretty well.

To purchase that $805,000 home, he and his wife took out a fixed-rate, conventional mortgage of $644,000 from Bank of America.  What did he use as tax returns to qualify for that loan if he hadn’t filed returns since the 2002 tax year (which he only sent in late in December, 2004.)

In addition to that property, the detective’s wife bought another piece of real estate - a condominium also in northwest DC - less than a month later.  The sale price was $495,000 and the mortgage (a variable rate conventional loan) was for $445,500. 

Within a 30-day period, between the two of them, they had qualified for almost $1.1 million in loans.

As I said, there are a lot of questions that can only be answered if the Detective takes the stand. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Interesting Bits:

Ironically, the defendant purchased his home from a lawyer named Jerome A. Swindell, a man who used to be the assistant special counsel to the Special Committee on Police Misconduct and Personnel Management of the Council of the District of Columbia. At the time he sold the home to Detective Irving, Swindell was working at the Federal Trade Commission, the government agency that shuts down scams.

Topics: Michael Irving | 7 Comments »

Day 4: I hope the Redskins were worth $19,169

By JJ MacNab | May 11, 2008

You know how I said that the government’s case had finally picked up some momentum on Thursday?

All gone. 

Two government witnesses that should have taken up no more than three hours between them dragged out into an all day event, thanks to a glacial-paced judge and a defense attorney who — well, you’ll see.

Government Witness Rene Brown

Mr. Brown has been with the IRS for 26 years, and is a Revenue Agent.  He tends to mumble his words a bit, which made him very difficult to understand when he testified.  The judge had to repeat his testimony just so the court reporter (and jury) could hear what he said. 

The witness reviewed the various tax returns and financial data for the defendant and his testimony was brief and easy.  The defendant owed $34,162 for 2003, and had only had $2,078 withheld.  He owed $28,006 for 2004, and only $1,143 had been withheld.  His total federal tax bill was $41,506 for 2005, and nothing had been withheld from his paycheck.  Bottom line, before interest and penalties, the Detective owes a total of $100,453 to the federal government.  While he finally filed real returns in February of this year in anticipation of the trial, he still hasn’t paid the past due amounts.

Based on the above, the witness opined that the detective was not entitled to file an “exempt” W-4 and testified that the phony W-4T form Irving filed one year was not even an IRS form.

The witness then presented his summary of the cash that flowed through the defendant’s bank accounts.  For the tax years in question, the cash flow was clearly not that of a man living below the poverty line.  The Detective obviously had ample monies on hand to pay income taxes, had he been so inclined.  He obviously made enough money to have to file tax returns.

On cross-examination, the Patton Boggs attorney all but ignored the vast majority of the evidence discussed by this witness (the tax returns, the exempt W-4s, the amounts still due the IRS), and spent more than an hour and half on the cash flow diagram, even though the government had spent only a little more than five minutes on it.  Ugh.

The defense tried to characterize the exhibit as the complete financial statement of the defendant, even though its purpose was simply to track money flowing through his bank accounts.  The defense attorney pushed hard in an attempt to badger the witness into stating that there was some nefarious purpose in choosing to show only non-essential expenditures.  Mortgage interest, health insurance premiums, groceries, and the like were not shown.  Washington Redskins tickets, expensive jewelry purchases, and huge tailor bills were.

And between 2003 and 2005, the Detective wrote a lot of interesting checks and made a lot of large withdrawals.

  1. Credit Cards $61,131
  2. Restaurants / Alcohol $27,714
  3. Department Stores $44,461
  4. Beauty Salon $35,121
  5. Trip to Italy $4,122
  6. Cash Withdrawals / Transfers $161,180
  7. Vitamins and Supplements $8,124
  8. Contractor $38,450
  9. Redskins $19,169
  10. Dry Cleaner/Tailor $13,547
  11. Jewelry $22,150
  12. Mercedes $44,795

Zow.  And according to the witness, this represented only half of the money flowing through the accounts.  Stuff like mortgage payments had been left out. 

Perhaps the most interesting game by the defense attorney came when he tried to get the witness to recite numbers from memory.  The exhibits had been removed from the witness stand during a break, and the attorney asked the witness to break down that huge “Cash Withdrawal / Transfers” figure.  Even though the prosecutor offered the exhibits to the attorney to hand to the witness, the defense attorney ignored her offer and tried to get the witness to work only from memory, all the better to impeach his testimony if he made mistakes. 

In an attempt to make the witness look like an evil liar, the defense attorney repeatedly tried to show how putting “transfers” on the chart was a nefarious attempt to inflate the defendant’s spending.  The attorney would take a few dollars out of one pocket and put it in his other pocket as an example.  He also cited a number of hypothetical situations which he wanted the witness to apply to the numbers on the chart. 

The witness stood his ground.  The purpose of the chart wasn’t to track the detective’s expenses; it was to track the cash flow through his bank accounts.  The Revenue Agent had no idea what the cash was spent on, or what the credit cards purchased.

Personally, I think the defense attorney’s games were ugly.  They probably also worked with the jury.  By spending and hour and a half on the one expenditure chart, no attention was paid to the vast majority of the witness’ testimony - the amount of taxes due and the false nature of the “exempt” Forms W-4.

One interesting tidbit came out of the defense cross-examination.  The lawyer kept pushing the witness to admit that the beauty salon checks ($35,121) were actually business expenses and therefore didn’t belong on a personal expenditure chart.  Funny thing is, that beauty salon (and its income) has never appeared on any of the defendant’s tax returns, even the “correct” ones filed just before the trial started.  Oops.

Government Witness Michael Fahey

Mr. Fahey has been a tax analyst for the DC Office of Tax and Revenue for more than 10 years.  Prior to that, he was with the IRS as a Revenue Agent for 31 years.   His resume has some really impressive stuff on it and in his career, he has done thousands of audits.  He also has a bad habit of answering direct questions with long, rambling answers that are not responsive to the question asked. 

His testified that the defendant owed DC $11,819 for 2003, $10,191 for 2004, and $13,243 for 2005, for a grand total of $35,253 before interest and penalties.  He also testified that the “exempt” Forms D-4 were false.

Fortunately, a different defense attorney handled this witness so the cross-examination was short and to the point.

The prosecution rested.

The jury was sent home at 4:45 pm, and the judge denied the defense motion to dismiss the charges.

Interesting Bits:

Said during a break:

Judge to the Patton Boggs Lawyer:  Can you do that dollar trick again?

Lawyer:  [Laughing]  No, your honor.

Judge:  Did you used to work for a carnival or something?

Warning:  Rant about  the Judge ahead.

Glacier Judge has brought the temperature in the courtroom to normal levels, but his lack of punctuality is really insulting to the jury.  He tells the jury that the trial will resume at 9:35 am, then makes them wait until 10:10.  He tells the jury that lunch will go from 12:00 to 2:30 pm, but then makes them wait until 3:20 pm.  Every time he tells the jury that it’s time for a 10 minute break, that break invariably ends up being 20 to 30 minutes long.  

And even when the jury is in the courtroom, the judhe delays the proceedings further by engaging in shaggy dog stories.  Surely, it’s possible to let the jury know that they are welcome to stand up and stretch without embarking on a 10 minute long story about the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist’s bad back.   Between jury selection and trial, these poor jurors have now been in the courtroom for six days.  They have jobs and families that need attention, and the judge should be more respectful of their time. 

Based on the number of witnesses, and the relative simplicity of the exhibits and evidence, the trial should be over by now.  Instead, the government finally rested late Friday afternoon.

Topics: Michael Irving | No Comments »

Day 3: Death by papercut

By JJ MacNab | May 8, 2008

Housekeeping: In an attempt to catch up on my blogging, (I blame the apple martini) I’m posting two entries today.  If you haven’t checked the blog in the last couple of hours, be sure to scroll down and read “Day 2: Popsicle toes and many unhappy returns” prior to reading this entry. 

There was a brief hearing before the trial started today.  Turns out that Homicide Detective / fellow tax protester Richmond may have said some things in his grand jury testimony that Ms. Sumptor contradicted in her testimony yesterday.  Ms. Sumptor testified that she told Detective Irving that both he and Mr. Richmond needed to renew their “exempt” W-4s each year.  The defendant then talked to Richmond who called Ms. Sumptor and asked her to complete and sign the forms for him.  In his grand jury testimony, Richmond apparently stated that he and the defendant never spoke about their anti-tax plans.  At the end of the hearing, the judge ruled that Richmond will indeed have to take the stand, since he had waived his fifth amendment rights during the grand jury proceedings.

The defense witness list is shaping up nicely.  Lots of tax protesters on the stand could make for wild and crazy testimony.

Government Witness Jean Moisa (Continued)

A veritable river of IRS forms, letters, and returns continued to flow into evidence through this witness.  To summarize briefly, the defendant filed normally until tax year 2002, he jumped off the tax protester cliff in early 2003, he reverted back to normal ever so briefly in 2004 when he found he could actually get a refund for tax year 2002 because substantial taxes were withheld, went back to tax denier status in early 2005, and finally filed all of his past returns in February 2008.   He still hasn’t paid his taxes for 2003 to the present time.

On cross-examination, defense counsel Dickieson tried to make his client out as an “innocent taxpayer” duped by a wicked promoter.  He tried to portray the IRS as heartless bad guys who didn’t  go out of their way to contact the defendant, give him tax advice, instruct him personally in the errors of his ways, and tuck him in to bed at night.  Ok, I confess — maybe the defense counsel didn’t say that last bit, but his line of questioning was heavy-handed to say the least.

Dickieson kept repeating that the IRS wasn’t showing the “whole truth” in their documents or that what their computer records show was only “partially true.” The witness was a pro and simply answered the questions the lawyer asked.

After a 3.25 hour lunch (poor jury), the cross-examination hammered hard on various letters, brochures, and documents from the IRS, pointing out that nowhere in those exhibits was the defendant warned that he could be criminally prosecuted.

And that’s when the case — and the jury – finally came alive.

The government prosecutor simply pulled up example after example of where the IRS had warned the defendant that he could be prosecuted if he failed to file or continued to push his tax denier arguments on the government.

Five jurors moved forward in their seats to read the warnings on the screen while the witness read them aloud.  One juror even started smiling broadly.  All were very much awake. 

Government Witness David Quinn

The government continued on their keep-the-jury-engaged trend with this witness.  The questions were quick and easy, and the documents were introduced efficiently and clearly. 

Mr. Quinn is a Deputy Director at the  DC Tax and Revenue Division after spending almost 30 years at the IRS.  Through his testimony, the defendant’s tax returns — normal, tax protester, normal, tax protester, normal - were shown to the jury.

Cross-examination was confused in comparison.  The defense argument throughout the trial is that tax collectors should have gone out of their way to call, visit, and act at the defendants tax and legal advisor.  At one point, the line of questioning got so absurd that the Patton Boggs lawyer actually asked the following:

You would agree, wouldn’t you, that a telephone call from one phone in DC to another phone in DC is not a long distance call, right?

I guess government employees are supposed to be mind readers.  Detective Irving wasn’t asking for their help; he was sending them gibberish filings accompanied by not-so-thinly-veiled threats.

Tomorrow, we hear from two government summary witnesses, after which time the government will rest its case.  Their case so far has been simple and clear.  The defendant knew how to pay income taxes, after all he’d done so for years, but in 2002, he became a tax denier.  He filed multiple false refund claims at both the state and local levels, and sent in several false (and in one case phony) withholding forms to claim that he was exempt from taxes.

There’s been little or no talk so far about the defendant’s willfulness other than his affirmative acts of sending junk submissions to the IRS, but I would imagine that such evidence will come in mostly during the defense’s case. 

It’s interesting to watch a law enforcement person on trial.  Ordinarily such a person would be considered a hero in the community.  Does this mean that they are above the law?  I hope not.  Does it mean that the jury might cut him some slack and forgive his tax mistakes?  Possibly, but if it is pointed out that taxes are what pay for vital services such as the police, firemen, ambulances, the roads, people fighting in the military, and so on, then a conscientious jury will understand the seriousness of the crime. 

It will also be interesting to watch the defense’s case starting tomorrow.  They have an uphill battle before them.  They have to convince the jury that a highly decorated, respected, and experienced police detective is so stupid that he fell for an obvious scam that defies all common sense and reasoning.

Stay tuned tomorrow.

Topics: Michael Irving | 3 Comments »

Day 2: Popsicle toes and many unhappy returns

By JJ MacNab | May 8, 2008

Glacier Judge earned his moniker today in a new way. Since yesterday was comfortable in the courtroom and since the weather here is warm this time of year, everyone came in wearing short sleeves and in my case sandals (I call it “courtroom grunge” attire.) By 10 am, as a result of his honor lowering the thermostat, we were freezing.

Two defense witnesses have stated that they will not be asserting their Fifth Amendment rights, which means we’ll be hearing from fellow detective/tax protester Jamell Stallings and anti-tax promoter Stephen Harris as soon as Friday.

Government Witness Christopher LaCour

Mr. LaCour is Mr. Redding’s boss (see Day 1) at the Office of Pay and Retirement Services in DC and his testimony was consistent with Mr. Redding’s. His office doesn’t give tax advice to DC employees nor do they check the accuracy of information supplied on Tax forms by those employees.

His testimony outlined how much the defendant had withheld each year from his paychecks, according to his Forms W-2:

Tax Year Wages Federal Tax DC Tax
2002 $155,211 $32,733 $10,534
2003 $152,153 $2,078 $738
2004 $136,962 $1,143 $427
2005 $181,913 $0 $0

And these amounts didn’t even include the defendant’s rental income, or his wife’s income (he got married in 2005 to a government lawyer, but more on that later…)

Mr. LaCour will potentially be returning to the stand as a defense witness.

Government Witness Donald Byrd

Mr. Byrd sounds just like Congressman Charlie Rangel, all gravelly and harsh. Mr. Byrd is a financial planner with ING, and has known the defendant for ten years. After his divorce, he rented one of Detective Irving’s apartments for $800 a month (although the defendant cut him some slack on the rent in the early months when Mr. Byrd was trying to get back on his feet.) He paid the defendant in person by check each month. Detective Irving never talked with Mr. Byrd about his finances or tax beliefs. When asked about the zero income tax scheme, the witness replied, “I wouldn’t listen to that conversation.”

Even though the witness wasn’t particularly damning to the defense, they attacked him somewhat aggressively. The defense attorney confirmed that the defendant had never shown the witness the various frivolous returns, UCC statements, or funky affidavits he filed.  The defense lawyer also worked pretty hard to get Mr. Byrd to say that the government employees never told him that they were “interested in the truth.”

Mr. Byrd was friends with the Detective. He was invited to the defendant’s wedding, and went to the big party that was held when Detective Irving’s wife left her job at the AUSA’s office of the DOJ. 

Government Witness Matthew Smith

Mr. Smith is a hard working guy. For the past thirty years, he’s been holding one full-time plus two part-time jobs. In addition to working full time as a biologist at the FDA, Mr. Smith has a thriving seasonal tax preparation business, and also records public service announcements part-time.

He prepared the detective’s tax return until Tax Year 2002 and had nothing to do with the frivolous returns and attachments that the defendant sent to the IRS starting in 2003. He didn’t hear from the detective for a couple of years until 2004 when the detective asked him to file his 2002 returns.

Since the defendant didn’t get involved with the tax scheme until early 2003, he had had significant taxes withheld from his 2002 paychecks and was actually due a refund. The Detective didn’t tell his preparer, however that he had sent in a frivolous Form 1040EZ demanding a 100% refund, and then a frivolous Form 1041 Trusts and Estate Return, again demanding a full refund after the 1040EZ refund claim was denied by the IRS. The tax preparer was working on returns for 2003 and 2004, but was never given all of the information he needed from the defendant.

While it appeared that the defendant was trying to get back into the system in 2004, he apparently changed his mind again, and filed new “exempt” W-4s and D-4s for 2005. In fact, he didn’t file real income tax returns with the IRS until February of 2008, long after he’d been indicted, and just a couple of months prior to his criminal trial.

Government Witness Carla Sumptor

Until May 2006, Ms. Sumptor was the payroll director at the Metropolitan Police Department. She and her staff of seven employees processed the payroll forms and sent them on to Mr. Redding’s office. She also solved the mystery for the jurors of why some of Detective Irving’s signatures looked different on various W-4 and D-4 forms. At the detective’s request, Ms. Sumptor would complete and sign the forms and turn them in on his behalf.

When asked why she would sign IRS forms, she explained that she had been in an “intimate relationship” with the defendant from 2002 to 2005 and therefore did “work favors” for him that she didn’t do for other employees. She didn’t know what any of the gibberish filings meant and always filed and paid her own taxes.

On one occasion she also completed and signed a form for Detective Richmond, one of the five tax deniers in the Metropolitan Police Department. She had informed the defendant that he and Richmond needed to submit new “exempt” forms at the beginning of the year, and he had Richmond call her.

Even though she was close to the defendant during the years in question, he never told her that he wasn’t filing returns or paying taxes.

Once the defense attorney from Patton Boggs quit flirting with the witness (and what a painful exhibition it was, in front of the jury, no less), he asked her why she didn’t report the detective’s crimes to the IRS or DC tax office. She responded that she had no idea whether the detective’s exempt forms were right or wrong.

When asked if others were filing “exempt” W-4s in the office, the witness mentioned Detective Michael Muhammad who filed similar protester documents claiming to be a “prisoner of war.” Oh dear.

Government Witness Jean Moisa

Ms. Moisa is the Court Witness Coordinator with the IRS, where she has worked for 20 years. Her job is to introduce the really boring but necessary data into evidence.

Between 1989 and 2001, the defendant filed normal returns and always got a refund for the amounts overpaid. The witness then went through the various form letters and publications that the IRS sent to the detective warning him that his refund attempts were frivolous and would result in penalties and possible criminal prosecution.

This witness will remain on the stand tomorrow.

Interesting Bits:

Prior to trial starting for the day, there’s a ten minute hearing in the courtroom over a civil matter before the same judge. One insurance company is suing another. The first eight minutes involve having all eighteen of the lawyers on the case state their name, firm name, and client name into the record. The other two minutes entailed agreeing on a time to meet before the judge in October.

The defense attorney’s lucky podium is sitting all alone in the corner of the courtroom. It looks kind of forlorn and lonely, and is probably freezing its splinters off.

The defendant is looking bored throughout the proceedings. He leans back in chair, closes his eyes, crosses his hand at his waist, and has his legs stretched out and crossed in front of him.

The defendant signs his name in some creative ways such as “:Michael Christopher: Irving” and “Self: Michael Christopher Irving UCC 1-207.”

One of the jurors asked to speak to the judge. He’d forgotten to mention that he’d worked for the IRS for three months in 1987 as a lowly file clerk. Neither defense lawyers nor prosecutors had a problem with his tardy disclosure.

Topics: Michael Irving | No Comments »

Day 1: Homicide detective Michael Irving criminal trial

By JJ MacNab | May 7, 2008

My apologies for not blogging yesterday’s events sooner, but given a choice between an apple martini followed by kick-ass Indian food (Bombay Club in downtown DC) and logging in to describe the day’s event, well … you know how it goes.

First off, the Judge on this case moves very very slowly, and is not at all punctual.  Just seating a 14 person jury took all of Friday and Monday and most of Tuesday morning.  I hereby dub him “Glacier Judge.”  I almost named him “Hollywood Judge” because he keeps flashing this strange Hollywood smile, but “Glacier Judge” became the obvious choice when he started to move the thermostat down to subzero temps on the second day of the trial.

The defendant has three lawyers at his table, and there are two lawyers plus two summary witnesses plus staff at the prosecution table.  Add another ten or so friends and family of the defendant and roughly 30 government employees to the room, and you get a packed house. 

A warm and cozy packed house.  For the first time in ten criminal trials, I was sitting in a courtroom that was actually room temperature.

Why so many government employees, you ask?  Well, it’s pretty rare for there to be a DC trial involving a higher profile defendant who is also a tax denier.  So throughout the day, various DOJ staff would walk over from their nearby headquarters and watch for a while.  Opening arguments were particularly popular.

Background of the case

Michael Irving is a Metropolitan Police Department homicide detective first class.  That’s about as high as one can go in the cop world, according to his lawyers.  On April 24, 2007, Detective Irving was indicted on nine felony counts:

1 count of making a false claim for a tax refund using a Form 1040EZ for 2002 - submitted on 2/20/2003

1 count of making a false claim for a tax refund using a Form 1041 for 2002 - submitted on 9/29/2003

3 counts of federal tax evasion for 2003, 2004, and 2005

1 count of fraud in the first degree against the District of Columbia

3 counts of DC tax evasion for 2003, 2004, and 2005

To give you an idea of the seriousness of this trial, if convicted on all counts, the maximum sentence the defendant could receive is 65 years in prison.  Realistically, the detective would never receive the maximum sentence, but even so, that’s a chilling potential punishment.

Jury Selection

I was only around for the last couple of hours of jury selection, but what I saw was indeed unique in a DC kind of way.  Prosecutors asked that a potential juror be excluded for cause because they felt the juror wasn’t truthful during voir dire.

“She said she was a witness in the community in a drug trial, but the thing she witnessed in the community was herself purchasing crack.”

Ah, DC.  Oddly, the defense lawyers wanted to keep that juror in the pool, although I have no idea why. Surely a person who has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge has no fondness for cops.

Another oddity in attending a DC trial is the number of heavy cigarette smokers in the audience.  The smell of cigarettes permeates more than half of the audience seating, and it just doesn’t mix with my hay-fever.  I’ve had to move a couple of times just to stop coughing.

The jury is made up of seven women and seven men. Nine are African American, and five are white. Assuming that jurors number 13 and 14 are the alternates, the final panel will be made up of eight African Americans and four white jurors, five of whom will be men.

Opening Arguments - US Government

The government’s opening was handled by Karen Kelly.  She’s a strong presenter but talks far too fast.  It’s my theory that she’s trying to make up for the time lost by Glacier Judge.  She briefly outlined the basics of the case.

The defendant made more than $470,000 during the three years in question during which time he paid only $4,000 to the US government and $1,100 to the District of Columbia.

He filed multiple phony returns (a Form 1040EZ and a Form 1041) trying to get all of his taxes refunded for prior years.

He filed numerous W4 and D4 tax withholding forms with his payroll department, declaring himself exempt from taxes.

“Members of the jury, this is a case about greed.”

Opening Arguments - Defense

I’ve never seen a lawyer haul his own podium into a courtroom before.  Just a basic wooden stand – maybe it’s his lucky podium or something.

Attorney David Schertler gave a brief description of the defendant’s background.  Irving is a high school educated local guy who was working as a butcher at Safeway when he decided to become a cop in 1989.  Over the next few years, he was rapidly promoted multiple times to the rank of homicide detective, first class.

The defense’s case is all about intent.  To summarize briefly, according to his attorney, Detective Irving was guilty of “naïveté, ignorance, and plain stupidity.”  In fact, the attorney referred to his client as “stupid” three or four times in his brief opening statement.

According to Schertler, a homicide detective named Eugene Lonon was the first to fall for the tax scam, and it spread quickly to Detective Irving and three other DC detectives.   They worked with a promoter named Stephen Harris, who, for a $1,000 fee, prepared their various nonsense forms and filings.  Detective Lonon died in a car accident in 2003.

Who knew that “plain stupidity” was a communicable disease?

Detective Irving’s lawyers described how their client thought that paying $0 in taxes each year was ”legitimate and legal.” 

“He may be guilty of being stupid… but he is not guilty of doing criminal acts.”

Government Witness Paul Redding

Mr. Redding has worked for the DC government for 37 years and is a payroll manager for the city.  His office processes the payroll for more than 35,000 DC employees.   He pointed out that the payroll people don’t give tax advice, and assume that the information provided to them is accurate because the employees who send in the forms have signed them under penalty of perjury.

Detective Irving filed several Form W4s, declaring himself exempt from federal taxes, and D4s, claiming he was exempt from DC taxes.  At one point he filed a phony bootleg tax protest document called a W4-T along with affidavits threatening the payroll department with criminal charges if they dared to report his income to the IRS.

“I am putting you my employer on notice that you are not to file any w-2’s [sic] to the IRS on me with box 10 showing income . . I will hold you criminally responsible for such action. . .As you may not be aware that the law states if I turn in a [sic] exemption certificate you are relieved of the duty to withhold and the duty to submit any information to the IRS stating you paid my taxable income or wages . . .YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”

Threats made by a detective against his own department?  And this guy kept his job?  And gun?

On cross-examination, the defense attorney accused the witness of doing nothing but “robotically entering forms” and being negligent for not catching and reporting Irving’s fraudulent activities immediately.  Yeah, it’s all the payroll guy’s fault.

Interesting bits:

The courtroom flag has yellow fringe on it.

The defense has been fighting diligently to keep the government’s summary witnesses out of the courtroom during the trial.  This is kind of odd, considering that every criminal trial I’ve attended has allowed the summary or case agent to remain in the room and the defense attorneys never objected.

There are no press people attending the trial.  A week before the trial started, I emailed the Washington Post reporter who had covered the detective’s indictment but he never responded.

Two of the jurors appear to be napping so the judge is calling breaks at unusual times.

Topics: Michael Irving | 4 Comments »

A new tax denier criminal trial

By JJ MacNab | May 5, 2008

A federal jury is being chosen today for a new tax denier criminal trial in the Washington DC US District Court.  Opening statements are scheduled for Tuesday morning, and this case promises to be one of the most interesting trials yet.  So stay tuned for daily blogs covering the trial.

The defendant’s name is Michael Irving, and he’s one of DC’s finest — a highly decorated and respected homicide detective with the DC Police.  He and four other DC detectives all fell for a hackneyed, unsophisticated tax scam (they filed “zero” tax returns with the IRS and with the DC tax department) but only Detective Irving has been criminally indicted.  At least, so far.

So why is this case so interesting, you ask?

You get the idea.

Stay tuned here for a daily update on this case. 

Topics: Michael Irving, Tax Deniers | 2 Comments »

One year later

By JJ MacNab | April 24, 2008

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the sentencing of Edward and Elaine Brown.  As a result of their criminal tax convictions and refusal to appear in court, they each received a 63 month prison sentence which they started to serve on October 4, 2007.

Had Elaine accepted the deal she’d cut with the government and resisted the urge to return home to Plainfield in February, 2007, she’d be free about 18 months from now.  Instead, she will possibly spend the rest of her life in prison for choosing Ed’s violent path.  That’s just sad.

Meanwhile, Ed is continuing to file nasty grams with the court clerk, even though he and Elaine threw away all chances to appeal their conviction last summer.   They spent months thumbing their noses at the courts with their crazy “I am the Body of the Lord”/”the Queen of England is a head of the US and the Illuminati” talk, meanwhile missing every crucial filing deadline.  Ed’s newest filing, of course, is nothing more than his usual pseudo-legal babble.

Topics: Ed Brown, Elaine Brown | 38 Comments »

Reno’s new trial

By JJ MacNab | April 17, 2008

Earlier this month, the jury in New Hampshire found Reno guilty on two counts, but could not reach an agreement on two other counts, resulting in a mistrial on those two undecided charges.

The government will retry those two unresolved counts on June 23, 2008, according to a recent filing in the Bob Wollfe’s docket.  The prosecutors have asked the judge to delay Wolffe’s sentencing until Reno’s trial is over, because Wolffe is expected to testify against Reno as a condition of his plea agreement. 

Topics: Cirino Gonzalez | 164 Comments »

Sentencing will be 8/1/2008

By JJ MacNab | April 14, 2008

The judge has scheduled a pre-sentencing hearing for July 14th, 2008 and the sentencing hearing for August 1, 2008.

For those of you unfamiliar with federal criminal cases, several things have to happen between the jury verdict (last week) and the sentencing (August 1st.) 

1) The probation officer assigned to the case will prepare a pre-sentencing report (PSR) for the court which will not be in the public record.  This report will take into account a number of factors such as the verdict, the criminal history of the defendant, the nature of the charges, and so on, and will apply a preset formula to establish a range of prison terms for the defendants.  This formula is usually called the federal sentencing guidelines.   The probation office usually has up to 75 days to prepare this report.

2) With some notable exceptions, the judge can sentence the defendants to a prison term which is either greater than or less than the PSR recommendations.  Once the defendants and their attorneys receive the PSR, they have ten days to file a response.  Usually, the defendants present arguments as to why the judge should sentence them to something less than the guidelines (this is called a “downward departure”), while the prosecutors may agree with the guidelines, or ask for either an upward departure or downward departure depending on the case.

3) The judge will take these factors into account at the time of sentencing, and he will make the final decision. 

4) Once sentencing has taken place, the defendants are then given an opportunity to appeal their convictions.  Ed and Elaine Brown never took this step in the process.

What Danny, Reno, and Jason do between their verdicts and their sentencing is crucial.  If they continue to post belligerent or threatening comments through their MySpace blogs, telephone calls, or letters, they can expect much tougher sentences.  If they show remorse, the judge may choose to be lenient.

Topics: Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

The official verdicts

By JJ MacNab | April 11, 2008

Some  updated court documents:

Reno Gonzalez verdict

Jason Gerhard verdict

Daniel Riley verdict

Topics: Uncategorized | 19 Comments »

Reno’s verdict

By JJ MacNab | April 10, 2008

The jury found Reno guilty on couts two and three, and the judge declared a mistrial on the remaining two counts.

Furthermore, the defendants and their lawyers are prohibited from communicating with any member of the jury. The judge has done a very good job protecting the jurors throughout the trial.

If any jurors are now reading the blog and would like to comment on their experience, please feel free but I urge you not to post under your own name.

Topics: Cirino Gonzalez | 80 Comments »

Outbursts in the courtroom

By JJ MacNab | April 10, 2008

An excerpt of yesterday’s event from the Concond Monitor. 

Gonzalez’s outburst

Lawyers for Gonzalez and the government met in a room adjoining the courtroom for more than half an hour following the reading of the verdicts. After their conference, they met with Singal in his chambers. The judge later instructed the jury to keep deliberating.

Just before the jury left the room, Gonzalez yelled a message to them.

“Jury nullification is your right,” he said. A second statement was difficult to hear.

Singal called the parties back into his chambers after the outburst.

To read the rest of the story, go here.

Topics: Cirino Gonzalez, Daniel Riley, Jason Gerhard | 17 Comments »

The verdict is in

By JJ MacNab | April 9, 2008

The jury found Danny Riley guilty on all counts.

Jason Gerhard was found guilty on everything but the explosives counts.

The jury is apparently hung on Reno’s counts but will continue deliberating tomorrow morning.

 More soon.

Topics: Cirino Gonzalez, Daniel Riley, Jason Gerhard | 12 Comments »

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