Court Opinion

ID: 9650955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:57:35.05727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:55.548395
License: Public Domain

BRATTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Section 145(b) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C.A. § 145(b), provides in presently material part that any person who wilfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by the chapter or the payment thereof shall be punished as therein specified. The word “wilfully” as therein used means done with wrongful intent or bad purpose as distinguished from mere inadvertence, oversight, or accident. United States v. Murdock, 290 U.S. 389, 54 S.Ct. 223, 78 L.Ed. 381; Hargrove v. United States, 5 Cir., 67 F.2d 820, 90 A.L.R. 1276. Therefore a wilful intent to evade or defeat payment of income tax was one of the essential elements of the offense laid in the indictment which the government was required to prove in order to warrant a conviction of the defendant. United States v. Skidmore, 7 Cir., 123 F.2d 604, certiorari denied 315 U.S. 800, 62 S. Ct. 626, 86 L.Ed. 1201.
In adition to offering evidence relating to the income of the defendant during the year 1941, the government offered evidence tending to show that he evaded income taxes for the year 1939. That evidence was offered for the purpose of establishing intent or wilfulness in the effort to evade the taxes for the year 1941. The defendant had the right to offer admissible evidence tending to show that he acted without wrongful intent -or wilfulness in connection with his income tax return for 1941. Some of the excluded testimony relating to his intent was admissible. But a critical exam-' mination of the record as a whole indicates clearly that at other stages of the trial virtually all of the evidence bearing upon the question was admitted. All of the evidence relating to the sale of the -aged sheep, all of that relating to the deposit of the-funds in the bank at Manzanola, all of that relating to the use of about $14,000 of such funds for the purchase of young sheep, all of that relating to the oversight of the defendant of the balance -of $5000 still in the bank at the time of the making of the return, all of that relating to the disclosure of the facts to the expert who prepared the return, and all of that relating to the understanding that a supplemental return would be made, was -admitted. The defendant testified to those facts himself, and he was permitted to prove on cross examination of two representatives of the Collector of Internal Revenue that he stated all of such facts to them in the course of interviews relating to his return for the year in qtrestion. In addition, the defendant testified that he told the representatives -of the collector that he thought he was right in transferring from a bunch of aged ewes to a bunch of young ones; that if he had traded sheep it would have been all right; and that the way the matter was handled was just the same as a trade. And he further testified in sweeping language respecting all of the transactions involved that it never entered his mind to keep them out of his income tax return for the purpose of evading the payment of income tax. While the court may have im-providently sustained objections to questions which were properly asked as having a bearing upon the question of intent, at other stages of the trial the testimony was admitted and went to the jury, and therefore the action of the court in sustaining the objections to *990which defendant points did not constitute prejudicial error.
From time to time in the course of •discussion between the court and counsel,the court made some statements or comments with respect to the intent of the •defendant as a defense to the charge laid in the indictment which I think were not •entirely accurate statements of law. But -in the formal instructions given to the jury, the court made it abundantly clear that a wilful intent to evade income taxes was an ■essential element of the crime charged, -and that unless such element had been established the defendant should be acquitted. In view of the emphasis laid in the formal instructions upon wilful intent being an essential element of the offense which must be established beyond a reasonable doubt, I think there is no tenable basis for -the contention that the statements. of the «court from time to time during the course of the introduction of evidence constituted prejudicial error.
I would affirm the judgment.