Court Opinion

ID: 9461498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:16:04.361688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:05.748372
License: Public Domain

CASTLE, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The trial court properly limited the cross-examination of the Internal Revenue Service agents to exclude from evidence certain self-serving statements made by the defendant, McCorkle, to the agents. Such statements were inadmissible hearsay unprotected by any exception to that evidentiary rule (unlike McCorkle’s admissions to which the agents testified on direct examination). The doctrine of verbal completeness does not have currency in this application, where the self-serving statements are clearly unrelated to the admissions so that it is highly unlikely that the former was ever intended to qualify or to explain the latter. Cf., United States v. Lehman, 468 F.2d 93 (7th Cir. 1972). Moreover, the testimony sought to be elicited was irrelevant to a showing of McCorkle’s state of mind at the time he chose not to file his tax returns. It is most doubtful that a suspect’s subsequent statements to government agents would accurately reflect an innocent state of mind at a prior time. It seems more probable to expect that such statements would reflect a self-serving, exculpatory purpose.
Moreover, I cannot agree that the trial court erroneously instructed the jury on the meaning of wilfulness as expressed in 26 U.S.C. § 7203. Wilfulness is satisfied only by a finding that the taxpayer committed “a voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty.” United States v. Bishop, 412 U.S. 346, 360, 93 S.Ct. 2008, 2017, 36 L.Ed.2d 941 (1973). The Supreme Court explicitly established in Bishop a standard of scienter for conviction under the statute, as the majority pointed out. The instructions of the trial court fully comported with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the statute. The trial court stated to the jury:
“the word ‘wilful’ means voluntary, purposeful, deliberate and intentional, as distinguished from accidental, inadvertent or negligent.”
The court further emphasized that the scienter requirement could only be met by a finding of a deliberate intention not to file tax returns. The trial court thus properly focused on the pertinent legal duty involved in this case in defining “bad purpose.” As the court correctly noted, an intent to evade tax or to defraud the government is legally irrelevant to a finding of the intentional violation present in this case, as is a justification based on either inability to pay taxes or an intention to report and pay taxes some time in the future.
Respectfully, I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.