Criminal law

[LdiJ]

“The law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
- Sir William Blackstone

This 1769 doctrine was reworded by the US Supreme Court to say,” It is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent.

It’s true that prisons are largely populated by those rightly convicted of crimes. The impact of people wrongly convicted of crimes is not diminished with this knowledge, however.

Or even people coerced into a plea bargain because they were terrified of being convicted for something far worse, when they were not guilty at all. That does happen. I know of more than one case out there in the real world.

 

[quincy]

Or even people coerced into a plea bargain because they were terrified of being convicted for something far worse, when they were not guilty at all. That does happen. I know of more than one case out there in the real world.

Yes. It’s unfortunately not rare - especially (I would hazard a guess) when the person arrested is indigent, is not White, and/or does not speak or understand English. False confessions, like wrongful arrests and convictions, continue to be a problem.

 

[Taxing Matters]

This 1769 doctrine was reworded by the US Supreme Court to say, “It is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent.”

That's an admirable goal for the legal system to strive for. Being imperfect humans, I doubt we will ever completely eliminate convictions of the innocent. But the process we use should have that as one of the key pillars in the design of the criminal justice system.

 

[quincy]

That's an admirable goal for the legal system to strive for. Being imperfect humans, I doubt we will ever completely eliminate convictions of the innocent. But the process we use should have that as one of the key pillars in the design of the criminal justice system.

Absolutely.

 

[not2cleverRed]

And he has helped me get closer to God. It’s not an act, he knows the Bible and lives it, in books, podcasts and has helped his family too.

I suggest you read "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens, paying particular attention to the character Uriah Heep.

 

[quincy]

I suggest you read "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens, paying particular attention to the character Uriah Heep.

The other side of the “wrongly convicted” coin.

 

[davew9128]

There is a reason why the term "artistic license" exists. Most human events are not thrilling to watch, including many trials. So the author/screenwriter has to take some liberties (sometimes a lot of liberties) with the facts to spice things up to create an interesting story. A writer would have to change things quite a bit to make a Tax Court case dramatic because the rules of the Tax Court and the technical nature of tax cases pretty much ensure there won't be any drama at the trial.

When I first studied to take the Tax Court entrance exam, it was stressed that I would almost certainly never see any "Perry Mason moments" in a Tax Court trial.

That being said, while attending a trial session locally, I recall one petitioner (a doctor caught up in a bogus tax shelter scheme) have a complete meltdown during direct examination about how he his home and computers were secretly bugged by the IRS and how revenue agents were seen jumping over his backyard fences trying to gather information on him.

 

[quincy]

When I first studied to take the Tax Court entrance exam, it was stressed that I would almost certainly never see any "Perry Mason moments" in a Tax Court trial.

That being said, while attending a trial session locally, I recall one petitioner (a doctor caught up in a bogus tax shelter scheme) have a complete meltdown during direct examination about how he his home and computers were secretly bugged by the IRS and how revenue agents were seen jumping over his backyard fences trying to gather information on him.

The good doctor must have missed the IRS’s black helicopters hovering overhead.

 

[Taxing Matters]

When I first studied to take the Tax Court entrance exam, it was stressed that I would almost certainly never see any "Perry Mason moments" in a Tax Court trial.

There can be drama in trials about tax matters, though few are up to the level of a well written Perry Mason script (or any of the more realistic lawyer shows we get today). But as you saw, there are some cases that do involve some drama that makes things more interesting than the usual tax cases. I had one case while a lawyer at Chief Counsel involving a tax protestor who got sucked into an off shore tax avoidance that he had paid around $800,000 for the advice and for the work needed to put the plan in motion. There is way too much to it to go through the facts in detail, though they are interesting. But the bottom line was that the promoters he hired for his scheme ripped him off to the tune of about $800,000 in fees for what was a tax evasion set up. I provided the argument (among the several that Counsel put into the Tax Court case) that the court found convincing and upheld the assessment. For the tax evasion, he ended up getting convicted, which cost him a whole lot of legal fees and costs, both in the trial court and in an appeal. The appeal was never heard because while in prison he contracted a deadly disease and died.

The worst part of all this was that instead of the $15 million they would have had after tax if he had just paid the capital gain on the sale of his business in the first place was instead eaten up in lawyer fees, witness fees, court and other costs, and the costs of the scheme itself. That didn't hurt him much because he died before going in the poor house, but I felt badly for his wife who would have a comfortable retirement on the $15 milion they would have if he'd just prepared an accurate return and paid the capital gain.

Instead the money was all used up in the civil and criminal court battles, the promoter fees, and other related expenses leaving her practically in the poor house and with a large tax debt still unpaid (the returns were joint, of course). I did recommend to the revenue officer collecting it that he inform her of innocent spouse relief/separation of liability and about OICs to ease the burden on her. It just wasn't right that she had to suffer for her husband's foolishness. As I understand it, she was able to get relief from the tax and was able to retire on the bit of assets that that were still left and her Social Security. But it wasn't the standard of living she had hoped for.

This case was one of the clearest cases I'd seen of the kind of trouble people can get into when buying into off shore investment and/or tax schemes they don't fully understand. I warn clients who show an interest in those deals to be very careful, those promoters will make their plan sound good and the client likely won't know the good from the bad without getting good independent legal and financial advice. Greed has a way of blinding people to the perils of schemes that sound almost too good to be true.