Opinion ID: 77674
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Jury Instruction Regarding the Defendant's Good Faith Defense

Text: 36 As a general rule, ignorance of the law or a mistake of law is no defense to criminal prosecution in the United States. Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 199, 111 S.Ct. 604, 112 L.Ed.2d 617 (1991). However, the Supreme Court has noted that there is a good faith exception under the federal criminal tax statutes. Id. at 199-202, 111 S.Ct. 604. According to this exception, if someone simply fails to understand that he has a duty to pay income taxes under the Internal Revenue Code, he cannot be guilty of willfully evading those taxes. Id. at 201-02, 111 S.Ct. 604. The term willfulness presupposes the existence of a legal duty and knowledge of that duty. Id. at 201, 111 S.Ct. 604. If, however, someone recognizes that he has a duty to pay taxes, but simply refuses to pay or to declare his income because he believes that the Code is unconstitutional, he is not acting in good faith. Id. at 204-07, 111 S.Ct. 604. 37 A person who is charged with tax evasion is entitled to have the jury hear an instruction on this good faith defense. Id. at 202, 111 S.Ct. 604. And, the district court provided one that was used in a Seventh Circuit case, United States v. Hilgeford, 7 F.3d 1340, 1343 n. 1 (7th Cir. 1993). Dean argues that the instruction misled the jury because it implied that they could reject his good faith defense if they found it to be objectively unreasonable. Dean contends that the Supreme Court rejected this sort of instruction in Cheek. 38 We find that the district court's instruction conforms quite well to the Supreme Court's holding in Cheek. The district court instructed Dean's jury that: 39 A defendant does not act willfully if he believes in good faith that he is acting within the law or that his actions comply with the law. This is so even if the defendant's belief was not objectively reasonable as long as he held the belief in food faith. Nevertheless, you may consider whether the defendant's belief about the tax statutes was actually reasonable as a factor in deciding whether he held that belief in good faith. 40 The court did not insert a caveat that a defendant's belief must be objectively reasonable to be in good faith. It simply reiterated a point that the Supreme Court made in Cheek: 41 In this case, if Cheek asserted that he truly believed that the Internal Revenue Code did not purport to treat wages as income, and the jury believed him, the Government would not have carried its burden to prove willfulness, however unreasonable a court might deem such a belief. . . . 42 Of course, the more unreasonable the asserted beliefs or misunderstandings are, the more likely the jury will consider them to be nothing more than simple disagreement with known legal duties imposed by the tax laws and will find that the Government has carried its burden of proving knowledge. 43 Id. at 202-04, 111 S.Ct. 604. Accordingly, we find that the district court's good faith instruction accurately stated the law on this issue. If we are satisfied that the district court's instruction has not misstated the law or misled the jury, we give the district court wide discretion as to the style and wording employed in the instructions. United States v. Bender, 290 F.3d 1279, 1284 (11th Cir. 2002). The district court did not abuse that discretion in this case. 44 Dean also argues that the district court erred in adding a willful blindness instruction at the end of its good faith instruction. There is no merit to this argument. A willfull blindness instruction is entirely appropriate where the evidence supports a finding that a defendant intentionally insulated himself from knowledge of his tax obligations. The record showed that Dean, much like the defendant in Cheek, had paid his taxes faithfully for a number of years before he became convinced that income taxes were unconstitutional. The record also showed that he, like the defendant in Cheek, had previously challenged the validity of the income tax requirement in court, and knew, as a result of the court's ruling that his arguments were frivolous. Yet, Dean failed to file a 2002 return although a court ruled against him on October 24, 2002 when he challenged a penalty that the IRS imposed on him for filing a frivolous return in 1997. 45 As the Supreme Court indicated in Cheek, albeit, not in so many words, the law would not countenance such blindness: 46 We do not believe that Congress contemplated that such a taxpayer, without risking criminal prosecution, could ignore the duties imposed upon him by the Internal Revenue Code and refuse to utilize the mechanisms provided by Congress to present his claims of invalidity to the courts and to abide by their decisions. There is no doubt that Cheek, from year to year, was free to pay the tax that the law purported to require, file for a refund and, if denied, present his claims of invalidity, constitutional or otherwise, to the courts. See 26 U.S.C. § 7422. Also, without paying the tax, he could have challenged claims of tax deficiencies in the Tax Court, § 6213, with the right to appeal to a higher court if unsuccessful. § 7482(a)(1). Cheek took neither course in some years, and when he did was unwilling to accept the outcome. 47 Cheek, 498 U.S. at 206, 111 S.Ct. 604. Thus, we conclude the district court did not err in adding a willfull blindness instruction. 48