Opinion ID: 670509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 26 U.S.C. Sec. 6103(h)(5) Claim

Text: 14 The first issue we address is Copple's claim that we should reverse his conviction because the requirements of Sec. 6103(h)(5) were not met. 6 Section 6103(h)(5) provides in relevant part: 15 in connection with any judicial proceeding [related to tax administration] to which the United States is a party, the Secretary shall respond to a written inquiry from ... any person (or his legal representative) who is a party to such proceeding as to whether an individual who is a prospective juror in such proceeding has or has not been the subject of any audit or other tax investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. The Secretary shall limit such response to an affirmative or negative reply to such an inquiry. 16 26 U.S.C. Sec. 6103(h)(5). 17 On July 27, 1992, about a month before jury selection, Copple moved pursuant to Sec. 6103(h)(5) for disclosure of tax background information of prospective jurors. In its response to Copple's motion, the government agreed to provide the information, but stated that it would be virtually impossible to obtain tax audit information from prior to 1986. The district court granted Copple's motion for the Sec. 6103(h)(5) investigation, but did not mention whether the IRS was to investigate the tax records of the prospective jurors for the years preceding 1986. 18 The government provided Copple with the IRS review indicating that none of the prospective jurors had been audited or investigated from 1986 to 1991, the years for which the IRS' records were computerized. At a hearing the day before commencement of trial, Copple claimed that he was entitled to the tax information without any limitation as to time period. The government responded that checking records of possible audits occurring before 1986 would require a manual search, which would take weeks, even a month, to complete. 19 Copple then claimed that he was entitled to ask on voir dire whether any of the prospective jurors had ever been audited by the IRS or whether any of the prospective jurors had ever been the subject of a civil or criminal tax investigation; he also argued that he was entitled to have the IRS verify the answers the jurors gave. The district court granted Copple's request for voir dire but declined to order the IRS to verify the jurors' answers. 20 On voir dire, the district court asked the prospective jurors: Have you or any member of your immediate family ever been audited by the Internal Revenue Service? In response to this question, Juror Number 7, Art Borczon stated that he had been audited during 1988 and 1989 (the audit for 1989 had not yet been resolved), that he had paid a deficiency, and that he had never [been] satisfied with that. He also represented, however, that he could be a fair and impartial juror. Juror Number 45, James Henderson, also stated that he had been audited about 35 years earlier, but he too testified that he could be fair and impartial. A few other jurors responded that they had not been audited personally, but that members of their families had been. 7 21 Copple did not ask that Borczon, Henderson or the other jurors be dismissed; instead he moved to have the entire panel rejected because the government had failed to comply with Sec. 6103(h)(5). He provided two bases for his motion. First, Copple argued that the investigation was inadequate because it only went back five years. Second, Copple argued that the investigation of all of the jurors was demonstrably unreliable because it had failed to disclose Borczon's audits occurring within the five year period. 22 The district court, however, denied the motion. Copple submits that this was error and that his conviction therefore should be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial. The government responds that such a ruling was not error because the district court properly found that ordering the IRS to supply such information would have unduly delayed the trial and that, even if it was error, such error was harmless and any prejudice was cured by asking the prospective jurors about their tax histories. 23 The question whether Copple is entitled to a new trial because the tax investigation was limited to the jurors' records since 1986 requires us to determine the requirements of Sec. 6103(h)(5), something we have not had occasion to do until now. Although the statute explicitly provides a defendant with a right to require that the Treasury provide an affirmative or negative response as to whether a prospective juror has been audited, 8 it is silent on the appropriate time period covered by the investigation. In addition, the statute does not specify the procedures that a district court must follow to carry out the purposes of the provision, and it is silent on the consequences, if any, for noncompliance.1. The requirements of Sec. 6103(h)(5). 24 Copple argues that the statute's lack of any limitation on the appropriate time period covered by the investigation implies that the investigation can have no time limitation and that the government violated the statute when it limited the investigation to the preceding five years. In addition to relying on the statutory language, Copple relies on a Ninth Circuit opinion. United States v. Sinigaglio, 925 F.2d 339, amended, 942 F.2d 581 (9th Cir.1991), which held that where the defendant makes a timely motion for a Sec. 6103(h)(5) investigation, the investigation must cover all of the years the prospective jurors paid taxes. Id. at 341. Copple urges this Court to adopt the Sinigaglio view of Sec. 6103(h)(5). 25 The government counters with United States v. Spine, 945 F.2d 143 (6th Cir.1991), in which the Sixth Circuit stated that Sec. 6103(h)(5) does not require an investigation extending to all of the years the prospective jurors paid taxes. Spine held that the requirements of Sec. 6103(h)(5) are met as long as the court orders an investigation and, if the IRS cannot locate all of jurors' histories from the time they began paying taxes by the time of trial, the district court obtains such information on voir dire. Id. at 148. Spine reached this result by reading a reasonableness limitation into Sec. 6103(h)(5). According to Spine, Sec. 6103(h)(5) merely requires the district court to order an investigation which would be appropriate under the circumstances, one which would take into account both the cost and inconvenience of the investigation and the ability to get the same information on voir dire. 26 The Sixth Circuit's interpretation of the statutory language is informed by practical considerations. Allowing a defendant to request an investigation of all of the potential jurors' tax information from the time they began paying taxes could take months, indeed, even as much as a year. See United States v. Johnson, 762 F.Supp. 275, 277 & n. 1 (C.D.Cal.1991), rev'd on other grounds, 991 F.2d 569 (9th Cir.1993). Scheduling criminal cases, which is already difficult enough, would be made even more difficult since a trial with a current jury pool would have to be postponed for months while the IRS completed an investigation. See Spine, 945 F.2d at 148. 9 This might also cause serious inconvenience to prospective jurors. 10 In addition, strict compliance with Sec. 6103(h)(5) would also impose substantial costs on the IRS since defendants would routinely request information requiring the IRS to conduct manual searches of noncomputerized records. 27 Interpreting Sec. 6103(h)(5) to require tax investigations stretching back twenty or thirty years would transform Sec. 6103(h)(5) into a significant practical bar to tax prosecutions. It potentially would permit a defendant in a tax case to postpone a trial indefinitely by continually requesting potential jurors' tax information. Spine, 945 F.2d at 148. Indeed, interpreting Sec. 6103(h)(5) to require such an extensive search might make tax prosecutions so expensive that the government would be reluctant to bring them. See United States v. Nielsen, 1 F.3d 855, 858 (9th Cir.1993), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1410, 128 L.Ed.2d 82 (1994). 28 We should not interpret the language of Sec. 6103(h)(5) to create such an absurd result absent a clear direction from Congress, see Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc., 458 U.S. 564, 575, 102 S.Ct. 3245, 3252, 73 L.Ed.2d 973 (1982), United States v. Schneider, 14 F.3d 876, 880 (3d Cir.1994), and there is no such clear direction in either the language or the legislative history of the provision. As has been mentioned, the language of Sec. 6103(h)(5) is silent on whether the IRS must search the tax records for all of the time the jurors began paying taxes. And the legislative history of Sec. 6103(h)(5) demonstrates that Congress' principal concern in enacting the provision was merely to ensure that the government and the defendant would have access to the same information--not that the information had such intrinsic worth that Congress meant to bring prosecutions to a standstill while the IRS conducted an investigation. 11 Spine, 945 F.2d at 147. There is simply no suggestion that Sec. 6103(h)(5) was meant to create the significant practical barrier to tax prosecutions that would result if we were to accept Copple's interpretation. See, United States v. Lussier, 929 F.2d 25, 30 (1st Cir.1991) (per curiam) (The statute itself makes no provision for such an extreme alteration of normal trial arrangements.). 29 We therefore adopt the Sixth Circuit's approach and conclude that Sec. 6103(h)(5) requires only that the investigation into the tax records of potential jurors meet the standard of reasonableness. 12 Specifically, upon timely request by the defendant, the district court must grant a reasonable period of time for the IRS to complete a search of the potential jurors' tax records for the time period requested by the defendant. If the district court only allows the defendant enough time for the IRS to conduct a search of the computerized records and not a search of the noncomputerized records, 13 the grant of time will be reasonable as long as the computer search is made, and the court elicits on voir dire information about the jurors' tax histories for the period of time not covered by the investigation. 14 We add only that Congress might be well advised to revisit the provision and specify more clearly the intent behind it and its requirements. 30 2. Did the district court comply with Sec. 6103(h)(5)? 31 Under our reading of Sec. 6103(h)(5), the district court's failure to order a complete search of the jurors' past history was not error. First, after Copple requested the Sec. 6103(h)(5) inquiry, the district court ordered the clerk to provide a list of jurors in the case along with other relevant information to the United States Attorney so that the IRS could conduct the investigation. This occurred about twelve days before the trial and it gave the IRS enough time to search the computerized records and get information about the potential jurors' tax histories for the period from 1986 to 1991. 32 Second, the district court conducted an extensive voir dire about the potential jurors' tax histories and experience with the IRS including whether they or any member of their family had been audited. The questioning covered all of the period for which the jurors had paid taxes. Moreover, the voir dire worked. It identified a juror who was outside the scope of the IRS audit (Henderson) and a juror who the IRS for some reason simply missed (Borczon). 15 Borczon, for example, indicated that he had been unhappy with the audit results but also stated that he could still be fair and impartial. Apparently, his answers were satisfactory since Copple did not even move to strike him. In a sense, then, Copple had access to more accurate information than he would otherwise have received had the inquiry been limited to a full IRS investigation. 33 For all the foregoing reasons, we hold that the district court complied with Sec. 6103(h)(5).