Court Opinion

ID: 9481970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:36:41.72573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:41.376085
License: Public Domain

EBEL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Although in all other respects I join the majority opinion in this case, I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusions in Section III&emdash;EXCLUSION OF *1401EXHIBITS. My disagreement with the majority is not so much with the general legal principles which are set forth there with admirable clarity as it is with the application of the law to these facts. However, because I believe the district court erred in excluding many of the exhibits tendered by the defendant, and because I further believe that the government has not established that such error was harmless, I would reverse the judgment below and remand for a new trial.
The excluded documents consist of copies of the Constitution, session laws, legislative history, and Indian treaties, as well as letters from defendant to the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice which apparently pre-dated the criminal prosecution and in which the defendant set forth his understanding of his tax obligations. The documents seem to be directed toward three themes: 1) paper money is not legal tender, 2) private wages are not taxable income, and 3) Indians (such as defendant) are not taxed. However, defendant tendered the exhibits only in support of his argument that Indians are not taxed. Exhibits A, B, E, G, H, J, and M are documents he apparently reviewed and relied upon in reaching his conclusion that as an Indian he is not subject to taxation.1 To the extent that these particular documents could be interpreted (albeit erroneously) as support for his views, it seems to me that they tend to corroborate the sincerity of his beliefs. The defendant’s three letters to the Treasury Department and Justice Department (Exhibits N, O, and Q) tend to corroborate the sincerity of his beliefs because he relied upon the argument that he could not be taxed as an Indian in his communications with the enforcement authorities before the criminal prosecution ever began.
In Cheek v. United States, — U.S.-, 111 S.Ct. 604, 112 L.Ed.2d 617 (1990), the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant cannot be convicted of willfully failing to file a tax return under 26 U.S.C. § 7203 except upon proof that (1) the defendant knew of his duty to file a return covering the income in question and (2) he voluntarily and intentionally violated that duty. Id. Ill S.Ct. at 611. The Court stressed the subjective nature of the test when it concluded:
[I]f [defendant] 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.

Id.

Of course, subjective intent is rarely proved by direct evidence. Rather, it must almost always be established by indirect or circumstantial evidence. Thus, in attempting to discern the defendant’s subjective intent, a fact-finder will often be required to look to the following: (1) the consistency of defendant’s past conduct and positions taken, (United States v. Harrold, 796 F.2d 1275, 1284 (10th Cir.1986)); (2) the research and information upon which the defendant has predicated his opinion, (United States v. Conforte, 624 F.2d 869, 876 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1012, 101 S.Ct. 568, 66 L.Ed.2d 470 (1980) (“reliance on advice of counsel in tax evasion cases is not a complete defense, but only a circumstance indicating good faith which the trier of fact is allowed to consider on the issue of willfulness”)); and (3) the objective reasonableness of defendant’s beliefs (United States v. Collins, 920 F.2d 619, 622 (10th Cir.1990)) (quoting United States v. Mann, 884 F.2d 532, 537 n. 3 (10th Cir.1989) (“Although not itself the standard by which to evaluate good faith, the reasonableness of a good-faith defense is a factor which the jury may properly consider in determining whether a defendant’s asserted beliefs are genuinely held.”)).
*1402In this case, the government asserted the lack of consistency on the defendant’s part as proof of his lack of sincerity in believing the tax laws do not apply to him. Specifically, the government argued that defendant’s previous filing of tax returns and numerous bogus exemptions tended to disprove defendant’s claim that he believed the tax laws did not apply to him. The corollary, it seems to me, should be equally valid. To the extent that the defendant has previously asserted to the taxing authorities that the tax laws do not apply to him and has advanced the same arguments he is now relying upon, that prior public profession of his belief is evidence of the sincerity of that point of view. Thus, his three letters to the Justice Department and Treasury Department seem to me to be relevant evidence.
Similarly, the government introduced evidence that it had previously advised Willie of his filing obligations as the government has construed the law. Once again, the corollary, it seems to me, is that if there is evidence in the Constitution, statutes, legislative history, or the like, of which this defendant was historically aware and upon which he claims to have relied in formulating his tax views, such material would also seem relevant to the sincerity of defendant’s views. Although many of the exhibits tendered are of dubious support for defendant's views, I can see a nexus, and defendant should have been allowed the opportunity to establish that nexus with the jury.
Finally, as the Court noted in Cheek, the government was free to present to the jury evidence of “relevant provisions of the Code or regulations, of court decisions rejecting [a defendant’s] interpretations of the tax law, of authoritative rulings of the Internal Revenue Service, or of any contents of the personal income tax return forms and accompanying instructions” to establish the unreasonableness of the defendant’s asserted beliefs as a basis for evaluating the defendant’s subjective beliefs. Cheek, 111 S.Ct. at 611-12. It therefore seems clear that the defendant should be able to introduce evidence of statutory provisions, legislative history, and similar official documents to support the objective reasonableness of his beliefs as evidence that such beliefs are sincerely held. It hardly seems to comport with due process and square-corner turning to allow the government to introduce such legal documents when it aids in securing a conviction but to deny the defendant use of similar documents when they might be helpful to the defense. See Collins, 920 F.2d at 622; Mann, 884 F.2d at 537 n. 3.
The government advances several cases for the proposition that the trial court does not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit treatises, tracts, briefs and opinions of layment regarding matters of law. United States v. Afflerbach, 547 F.2d 522, 524 (10th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1098, 97 S.Ct. 1118, 51 L.Ed.2d 546 (1977); Cooley v. United States, 501 F.2d 1249, 1253-54 (9th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1123, 95 S.Ct. 809, 42 L.Ed.2d 824 (1975). See also United States v. Hairston, 819 F.2d 971, 973 (10th Cir.1987); United States v. Harrold, 796 F.2d 1275, 1284 (10th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1037, 107 S.Ct. 892, 93 L.Ed.2d 844 (1987). Aside from the fact that that proposition is not applicable to most of the exhibits excluded,2 in my opinion, none of those cases stand for that absolute proposition. In Afflerbach and Cooley, the prevailing law at the time did not require the government to prove that the defendant had a subjective intent to violate the law. Thus, it was much less important in those cases that the *1403jury consider legal documents upon which the defendant purported to base his subjective opinion of the law. In Hairston, the court approved the exclusion of the tendered documents because extensive oral testimony about those documents was sufficient. In Harrold, the Tenth Circuit actually found that it was error to exclude letters the defendant had previously written to the taxing authorities, but it affirmed the conviction on the ground of harmless error.
Here I do not think the government has carried its burden of establishing that any error in excluding these documents should be regarded as harmless error. Contrary to the situation in Hairston, this is not a case where the defendant was able to get in through his own testimony the substance of all the excluded documents. The defendant took the stand and began to testify about his evolving belief that he is not subject to tax because he is an Indian. He indicated that he had begun by researching early Congressional and Constitutional records, and at that point he began to turn to his various tendered exhibits to show what it was that he reviewed and to establish how that research reaffirmed his beliefs.3 When he attempted to introduce Exhibit A as the first of those documents, the court rejected that Exhibit on the ground of relevancy. The defendant then apparently attempted to resort to narrative testimony to explain the content of his research, but the court cut him off from that effort as well. The court stated:
Mr. Willie, I am not going to permit you to persist in this type of narrative. As I said, I am the judge of the law, and what apparently you’re trying to suggest, or trying to tell the jury, is that you found some law that is going to be different than what I later will announce to them.
So you go on and testify about any matter you wish, but you’re not going to be able to testify that you found some sort of document to support your position.
The fair reading of the court’s ruling is that the court was not going to allow the defendant to engage in any discussions pertaining to the Constitution or the actual laws or legislative history upon which he relied. See R.Vol. Ill at 268, 270-271. This is confirmed by the court’s ruling, immediately thereafter, that none of the exhibits could be introduced because they were irrelevant. Thus, this case should be contrasted with Harrold and Mann, where the defendant was able to testify about the substance of the excluded exhibits.
The government has the burden of proving that error is harmless. United States v. Rivera, 900 F.2d 1462, 1469 n. 4 (10th Cir.1990) (“Except possibly for minor tech*1404nical errors for which there is no reasonable possibility that the verdict could have been affected, the government ordinarily has the burden of proving that a non-constitutional error was harmless.”)- See also United States v. Jefferson, 925 F.2d 1242, 1255 n. 15 (10th Cir.1991). Here, the nature of the defendant’s subjective intent was hotly contested; indeed, it was about the only contested factual issue in the case. When the defendant sought to bolster the sincerity of his asserted subjective beliefs by showing that he had previously and publicly asserted those views to the taxing authorities and by showing the objective research and historic legal authorities upon which he had relied in formulating his subjective views, the court rejected that evidence.4 Thus, the defendant was left with little more than his naked and conclusory statements that he had researched the law and that research had lead him to a belief that he was not subject to the tax laws of the United States because he was an Indian. Generalities are seldom a match for specifics, and thus I cannot conclude that it was harmless error to deny the jury access to the specific evidence tendered by the defendant to corroborate the sincerity of his views.
Although the defendant is, in fact, wrong in his view that Indians are exempt from all federal income taxes, it is far from clear on this record that he did not hold his beliefs sincerly. On this record, I cannot conclude that the jury would not have come out differently if it had been able to consider these exhibits to corroborate the sincerity of the defendant’s proffered views.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. Exhibit K appears to relate only to Cherokee Indians, and it was properly excluded on grounds of irrelevancy. Exhibit L is an unidentified document, and it was properly excluded for lack of identification and foundation. Exhibits C, F, and I appear not to relate to his argument that Indians are not taxed, and consequently they were also properly excluded as irrelevant.

. Only exhibit L appears to be a legal tract, brief or treatise, and I would affirm the exclusion of that exhibit on grounds of lack of foundation. The other "legal" documents are statutes, constitutional provisions, treaties, legislative history and similar legal documents of historic or official significance. I would draw a distinction between argumentative legal tracts and material advocating a particular legal point of view, which may be little more than legal briefs that would not ordinarily be submitted to a jury, and documents with official, historic, or prece-dential status such as constitutional provisions, statutes, and legislative histories. Compare the exhibits that the district court received with those rejected in United States v. Fingado, 934 F.2d 1163 (10th Cir.1991).

. In his opening statement, defendant stated:
All these years I’ve been trying to find out [whether Indians are taxed], I did not hide from the Internal Revenue Service. I wrote letters to them, I appeared at their offices.... And further, because I wasn’t getting answers from them, I went to the Justice Department.
R.Vol. II at 40-41. Similarly, on direct examination defendant set about presenting "how I came to believe that I am not one required to file.” R.Vol. Ill at 261. Referring to the exhibits cited above, defendant stated:
So, I have some documents here that during my research I came upon, that re-establish, reaffirm those convictions that I had on my being an Indian not taxed.
R.Vol. Ill, p. 273. In introducing his exhibits to the trial court, defendant stated: "I'm going to submit these. This is my understanding of myself as an Indian not taxed_” R.Vol. Ill at
271. In his closing argument, defendant again asserted his good-faith defense:
So I started researching, and all that research has been denied into evidence, so now all I have is just the small testimony that I gave you ... saying that I am an Indian not taxed.... It’s not just something I dreamed up or anything. I went through it, I went behind what the intent of those documents were.... So that’s why in those statutes you’ll see the words, "Indians not taxed.” Now, that’s where I fit, my status, and that’s all I have to show you.
R.Vol. Ill at 297. Defendant’s proposed jury instruction, which was rejected by the court, also demonstrated defendant’s assertion of the good-faith defense:
You are instructed that if you find from all the evidence the defendant acted in good faith and believed that he was not required to file returns ... because of his belief that he is an Indian not taxed pursuant to the Constitution of the United States ... [you must find defendant not guilty.]
R.Vol. Ill at 281.

. To the extent that the district court worried that the documents might confuse the jury about the law, that problem seems overstated and, in any event, easily cured. The government made it abundantly clear that it interprets those legal authorities differently from the defendant and that it would therefore be up to the court to instruct the jury as to how the law should, in fact, be interpreted. In any event, it would have been relatively simple for the judge to instruct the jury that these exhibits could be considered only on the issue of sincerity and genuineness of defendant’s subjective beliefs and not as accurate statements of the law.