Court Opinion

ID: 9449140
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:58:39.705482+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:43.693595
License: Public Domain

*795WISDOM, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
The majority opinion concentrates on one paragraph in the charge and focuses on two words, “careless disregard”. The complete charge on wilfulness was as follows:
“You will note that the omission or failure to act charged in the three counts of the information is alleged to have been wilfully done.
“A failure to act is ‘wilfully’ done, if done voluntarily and purposely, and with the specific intent to fail to ■do what the law requires to be done; that is to say, with bad purpose ■either to disobey or to disregard the ■law.
“You are further instructed that the word ‘wilful’ as used in this statute means with a bad purpose, •or without ground for believing that ■one’s act is lawful, or with a careless disregard whether one has the right to so act.
“You must look to the facts and circumstances in evidence surrounding the defendant’s acts or omissions to determine his knowledge, if any, intent, if any, and wilfulness, if any. In determining whether the failure ■of the defendant to file income tax returns, as charged in the information, was wilful must be determined by you from all the facts and circumstances developed on the trial of this case.” (Emphasis supplied.)
With deference, I suggest that the trial court did not offer the alternative of finding the defendant guilty of negligence by referring to “carelessness or inadvertence” as elements of wilfulness. On the contrary, the trial judge charged that there must be “the specific intent to fail to do what the law requires to be done; that is to say, with bad purpose either to disobey or to disregard the law.” The unmodified word “disregard”, as used in the paragraph from which that quotation is taken, means the conscious, deliberate flouting of the law. That is all it can mean. It carries the same meaning in the next paragraph. When modified by “careless”, the two words mean the reckless, irresponsible flouting of the law.
That is just what the evidence proved. The defendant is no young innocent. He is an industrious business man whose gross income in the years in question amounted to $77,000 in 1955, $100,000 in 1956, and $62,500 in 1957. He lived on the Government: the greater part of his income came from contracts with the United States. But, except for 1946, he filed no income tax returns from 1935 through 1960. And, in prior judicial proceedings, he admitted that he had knowledge of his legal obligation to file federal income tax returns and falsely stated that he had done so in 1953, 1954, and 1956.
Here is a man who rashly, recklessly, irresponsibly, deliberately flouted the law. He didn’t give a hoot; he couldn’t care less; he didn’t care whether school kept or not. Brash, overconfident, a man who got by with murder for over twenty years, he could afford to thumb his nose at Uncle Sam, and take his chances: he was ahead of the game. Taking the charge as a whole, I believe that is what “careless disregard” of the tax law means to jurors used to plain, if cliche, talk. The man in the street could not confuse it with “carelessness” in the sense of negligence.
I would affirm, with a vote of thanks to the jury for a job well done.