Court Opinion

ID: 9473043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:17:49.54692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:17.308787
License: Public Domain

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The ingenious “tax protestors” and their advisors continue to create outlandish claims and devices to try to avoid paying their fair share of the costs of supporting the nation of which they are citizens. I must dissent from the opinion of the majority setting aside the conviction of protestor Reeves in this case. His action in filing a quarter million dollar lien on the residence of the IRS agent who was handling his case is as clear and blatant a corrupt action designed to impede the collection of taxes as one could imagine. Yet, because the majority of the Court felt that the district court, upon bench trial, too broadly stated the definition of the word “corrupt”, it concludes that the conviction has to be reversed.
I dissent because Section 7212(a) was correctly applied to the facts of this case. But even if it was not correct, the error was harmless. I recognize that my brother Jolly’s opinion is carefully reasoned, and undoubtedly leaves broad strength in the statute in question. I dissent only because it does not leave quite the breadth of strength in the statute that the statute rightly demands, and under the statute as correctly applied this conviction should stand.
As a starting point, I cannot accept the restrictive way that the majority opinion undertakes to report on the interpretation of the word “corrupt” in Sections 1503 and 1505. While it is true that the holdings are not crisp and with complete firmness, the district court properly could conclude as adequately established that under those two sections the word “corrupt” means “with improper motive or bad or evil purpose”. Pragmatically, this interpretation under those sections is established by United States v. Partin, 552 F.2d 621, 642 (5th Cir.1977); United States v. Ryan, 455 F.2d 728, 734 (9th Cir.1972); and United States v. Abrams, 427 F.2d 86, 90 (2d Cir.) cert. denied, 400 U.S. 832, 91 S.Ct. 64, 27 *1003L.Ed.2d 63 (1970). Once such an interpretation is established under a part of the Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1505, it is more reasonable to interpret the same word to have the same meaning elsewhere in laws establishing criminal offenses. The meticulous parsing of the statutory provisions found in the majority opinion does not change the fact that the word is the same and is used in similar contexts. I would conclude, therefore, that appellant was properly convicted under the stated interpretation of the district court that “corruptly” in Section 7212(a) means “with improper motive or bad or wicked purpose.”
The essential thrust of the majority opinion, as reinforced by Judge Gee’s specially concurring opinion, is that this interpretation of the word “corruptly” in Section 7212(a) is overbroad or is too vague to justify application under a statute which is limited to impeding Internal Revenue Service employees or impeding in other ways the due administration of the Internal Revenue Code. It is my firm conviction that this is not so as applied to the facts of this case. And the facts of this case are what is important to the analysis.
The possibility that this statutory provision could be applied to someone who in exasperation physically assaults an IRS officer is not relevant to this case. In this case a wholly false, dishonest, and frivolous lien was put on the residence of the IRS agent. It caused him a great deal of difficulty, including monetary loss. Even if the basic motive for filing the lien was spite, it was up to the finder of fact to decide if the action was obstructing the due administration of the IRS, and that it was done with criminal intent, and the finder of fact did so.
It is well established law under the companion doctrines of overbreadth and void for vagueness that we do not demand statutes be drafted with such certainty that they eliminate any possibility of the wording conceivably being broad enough to cover non-criminal acts. Such a requirement demands too much, as Chief Justice Warren said in United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617, 74 S.Ct. 808, 812, 98 L.Ed. 989 (1954):
The constitutional requirement of definiteness is violated by a criminal statute that fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute. The underlying principle is that no man shall be held criminally responsible for conduct which he could not reasonably understand to be proscribed.
On the other hand, if the general class of offenses to which the statute is directed is plainly within its terms, the statute will not be struck down as vague even though marginal cases could be put where doubts might arise. (Emphasis added to stress the fact that it is the accused’s situation which controls, not someone else’s.)
See also United States Civil Service Commission v. National Ass’n of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548, 578, 93 S.Ct. 2880, -2897, 37 L.Ed.2d 796 (1973).
Professor Tribe in his treatise, AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, states the principle most clearly on p. 718: “The conclusion that a statute is too vague and therefore void as a matter of due process is thus unlikely to be triggered without two findings: that the individual challenging the statute is indeed one of the entrapped innocent, and that it would have been practical for the legislature to draft more precisely.”
Without considering other extreme situations that might or might not fall under the statute, this convicted person as a person of ordinary intelligence would know that placing the false lien on the property of the Internal Revenue agent was “corrupt”. It was “with improper motive or bad or wicked purpose” and other adjectives obviously could be applied to it — adjectives such as dishonest, malicious, and the like. This accused was adequately warned. He did not suffer from whatever vagueness or undue breadth there may be in the statute. Therefore, he is not in a position to claim that the statute cannot be applied to him on these facts.
*1004The only departure from the general rules set out above has to do with those cases involving specific constitutional liberties, such as free speech, where the over-breadth or vagueness of the statute discourages constitutionally protected conduct. E.g., Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 614, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 1688, 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971). That consideration is not present to the least degree in this case. It is true that appellant undertook to claim that his filing of the lien was part of his “right to petition” the government under the First Amendment. The claim is obviously specious, as the district court held. It cannot by any stretch of the imagination fall under our decision in United States v. Hylton, 710 F.2d 1106 (5th Cir.1983), in which we upheld the right of tax protestors to refuse to allow IRS agents to trespass on their property even though their motive was to obstruct the IRS in the administration of its statutory functions. In that case we found the filing of criminal trespass complaints against the IRS agents non-fraudulent. In this case the action of the appellant was properly found to be fraudulent.
Finally, even if the district court did interpret the word “corruptly” too broadly in reaching its conclusion in this case, the error clearly was harmless. This was not a trial to a jury. The critical words were not contained in instructions to a jury. The judge himself made the decision as to guilt or innocence. Assuming that the court’s interpretation of the word “corruptly” was too broad to be a proper jury instruction, the issue before the court was whether the action of this accused in placing this false and fraudulent lien on the property of the IRS agent was corrupt. By any definition of the word it was. Once the district court decided that the lien was false and fraudulent, as it clearly had to do to find accused guilty, there was no question but that the statute covered it. Nothing more needed to be shown. So if the court’s statement of the breadth of the interpretation of the word “corruptly” is “too broad”, it is harmless error in this case under these facts.
In evaluating harmless error, the rule is as stated by the Supreme Court in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1248, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946), “If when all is said and done the conviction is sure that the error did not influence the jury or had but a very slight effect, the verdict and judgment should stand____” We quoted this rule in United States v. Jennings, 527 F.2d 862, 868 (5th Cir.1976). Also in Jennings, we pointed out that it is well established that an error which might be prejudicial in a close case does not require reversal when the evidence of guilt is strong. Id. at 868. In this case the evidence is strong on these facts, and there is also far less chance of prejudice in this bench trial than with an erroneous instruction to a jury.
It follows that this case should not be reversed for a new trial after this tax protestor has been found guilty of a corrupt action to impede the work of the IRS by filing a quarter million dollar false and fraudulent tax lien on the property of the agent who was handling his case. Under no conceivable circumstances was this accused not given a fair trial under a statutory application that rightfully covered his conduct. Being firmly convinced of this, I must dissent.