caviar or whether he had a beautiful view from the penthouse he lived in had nothing to do with whether he will fully fail to pay taxes but it everything to do with appealing to class prejudice and inciting and the and resulting in an unfair trial what happened in this case was that mr photographs and the government eliciting testimony about how many times he sent his quote unquote butler to the seattle caviar company and things of that nature and the problem is if you look at the cases and these go all the way back to the united states supreme court in soko any oil the courts including this court  government's effort to introduce a picture an opening statement of mr hasan we're going to middle and it was successful and he was successful in that he did object to the one series of that were being introduced and you look at that the testimony that was alissa did not in response to any defense raised by mr hazlewood on the government's case in chief if you look at that  that there is only one purpose behind the evidence and then it is to instead of having the jury focus i'm well is actually a very close case as to whether mr hayes a very was deliberately or willfully attempting to evade payment of faxes instead what you've got is you've got naked appeals to class prejudice that's a plain error because this court's precedents very very strongly condemn that kind of conduct so well when it was back up just a little so what's the problem here that he was using his nominee accounts and placing property names of other individual they had to show that he had the money well there was no doubt your income or some he had to have the resources to pay that exact and the government and i would we did not object to any of that proof but in fact it was it was absolutely the government was the government supposed to do what the government was easy for what the government was supposed to do all the government needed to do was to prove that mr hazel reg had money he didn't  didn't pay the tax because he didn't have it in the bank accounts and his own name then they were going to have to figure out where he did have his money and part of his money was in real estate that was in the name of his children business partners and others we're not contesting that the government could prove that what i'm arguing is it was the way the government proved you would use one thing to show that mr hazel rick had a penthouse there was in his one of his children's names  some trust name or something like that that's fine the problem is when instead of focusing on they act it's a legitimate argument instead when you start showing pictures of the beautiful sunset and the stocked bar and the big screen t v that doesn't have anything to do with whether he's deliberately evading his hats it's mr hazel rick had his money in the same accounts and he had spent all that money did but there's also lots of evidence and on the other side it wasn't it wasn't a slam dunk case by any it's minister hazel rick presented evidence from a very well respected tax attorney who had represented him and through his own whether it was a shell game or not i would just say that possibly but yes he did put money in other kinds and even explanation for it mr hazlewood was a businessman he did a long series of varies ventures he testified that particularly but but it was the testimony of these witnesses that the i r s wasn't involved i think that at least one piece of testimony i recall says that it wasn't the major factor but that that implies that it was a factor  know the money either because he was an equal partner in the venture if they could say we're not arguing that there is no substantial evidence it's the argument here is that the government introduced a lot of extremely prejudicial testimony that skewed the case in tipped the balance and that's that's a that's a very different argument from saying that the government is precluded from proving its case is just pr good morning may it please the court brian warner on behalf united states evidence of a defendant's personal spending is relevant and a tax prosecution to prove motive wealth not reported on tax returns to rebut defenses and a key point that was missed by counsel it's relevant to prove affirmative acts of evasion that's one of the elements that the government has to prove that any tax case is that a defendant took affirmative steps to evade his tax obligation and he did so willfully financial transactions like that are the essence of a of a tax prosecution like that and that's what the government did here the government selected a series of financial transactions a series of personal spending to show that mr hazel rig was spending his money from nominee accounts that is bank accounts that weren't typed that weren't his name that didn't have his social security number on them and therefore the i r s couldn't levy those accounts he was buying properties and other people's names again it was not tied to him therefore the i r s lien that had been filed in king county could not attach to him he did so to hide from the i r s and the government the government introduced a series of financial transactions a series of spending checks and then and then photographs of the items that were purchased the government introduced a lot of evidence prior to mid two thousand and seven to show how mr financial transactions and then after mid two thousand and seven they say they show that he completely changed the way he conducted his financial transactions then after mid two thousand and seven and then he stopped the keep the key the mid two thousand and seven date is that that that's the time when the i r s tax collection expires so he was no longer subject to the i r s lien he was no longer a chance that the i r s would levy a bank account so he opened up a bank account in his own name he then purchased property in his own name he then listed attempted to get loans from banks in his own name so was it necessary to use the photographs to the point the photographs  were able to show the expenditures and the purchases on the photographs were to make sure there were multiple property for to take the properties for example the multiple properties in this case the photo and multiple witnesses talked about each property the photographs simply help the jury not get confused between the three properties they help the jury understand what it was the particular properties look like or the art looked like and it helped helped avoid jury confusion the jury also knew beforehand that this was a three million dollar penthouse so get at it it showed them what the what it looked like and again i think when telling a jury about a chandelier that cost two hundred thousand use photographs it all sort of helps the jury remember that many days later when they're trying to remember what were those affirmative acts of evasion what was that property that he bought what was that purchase that he bought what were those expenditures oh i recall it was the chandelier it was the t v or it was the it was this property in bellevue so there was no there were no objections accepted at the outset right and that right there was a relevant there there was also a relevancy objection to the photographs of the bellevue penthouse that's the only objection during the trial there was an objection that was sustained error there's a reason i think that the court didn't or the trial counsel didn't make objections to these pictures of these acts of spending because it was very clearly relevant again the bread and butter of a tax evasion case is to show how the defendant conducted his finances during the period in which he was he should he owed the i r s a substantial s why would it be that the government would ask the butler did mr hazel rig by caviar instead of asking the butler did mr hazel rig by ask you to buy  loaves of bread why if the government was interested in quote unquote helping the jury distinguish between residences why wouldn't be satisfied with this picture of the penthouse rather th for example this picture of the penthouse with the beautiful view are you are you really getting into very fine nuances we were never presented to the district court because there weren't specific fair objections made except for that one case of the house i don't think they're fine nuances i think if you look at the amount of very prejudicial evidence regarding spending that had nothing to do with motive and had nothing to do with any of the issues in the case but had a lot to do with making the jury think that mr hayes a rig's a really rich guy who goes around buying two hundred is instead of paying his taxes that is extremely prejudicial and that's it that's exactly what all the cases i cited in my brief say this is not some bizarre or you know far out notion this is something that many courts have condemned repeat it in a tax evasion case counsel would ever be appropriate for the government to point out they forgot the multiplier effect of but taxes versus the income that somebody had of something else ten thousand dollars and only has income of thirty thousand dollars that would seem to be that would seem to be relevant to suggest this was not this is not willful but if somebody has one hundred million dollars and only owes ten thousand dollars that  the gross disparity there is such a multiplier it's certainly true but but the but what's not true is that the government should be able to say what the person was spending his money and because then he has nothing to do with anything it