Court Opinion

ID: 9468867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:25:30.880129+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:05.432253
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Based on an adequate record, the trial court held:
Accordingly, I am going to deny the motion to dismiss even though I find that the defendant has been selected for prosecution because he is an active and outspoken protestor.
Supp. Record, vol. 2, at 32 (emphasis added). In reaching this conclusion, the court referred to Defendant’s Exhibit D, a letter from the IRS to a tax protester in a situation similar to defendant’s:
Secondly, your return was selected for examination because of your past publicized activities in the illegal tax protest movement ....
The court also cited an IRS Manual Supplement, Defendant’s Exhibit G, which is captioned “Examination and Investigation of Illegal Tax Protest-type Activities.” The instructions are replete with directions to proceed against “protesters.” In its declaration of purpose, the document states, “The procedures in this Supplement are not directed towards suppressing dissent or prosecuting individuals because they are critical of, or are identified with groups critical of, the tax system or government policies.” IRS Manual Supplement, January 10, 1979, at 1. The overall tenor of the document, however, belies this statement of purpose. It makes clear that IRS activities with regard to tax protesters extend well beyond the manifestly permissible policy of using admissions of a crime against the criminal, to the suspect policy of punishing political protestors — or in other words, of punishing citizens for exercising a right which is front and center to the first amendment. Indeed, if the objective of the IRS were only to prosecute the more serious or frequent violators of the tax laws, the word “protester” would be irrelevant. As the trial court found, the object of the selectivity is to shut up the “outspoken.”
*1362The test for determining whether a prosecution is unconstitutionally selective is two-pronged. To support a selective prosecution claim a defendant bears a heavy burden of establishing, at least prima facie (1) that he has been singled out for prosecution, and (2) that the selectivity for prosecution was invidious or in bad faith, that is, based on such impermissible considerations as race, religion, or the desire to prevent or inhibit his exercise of such constitutional rights as free speech. United States v. Berrios, 501 F.2d 1207, 1211 (2d Cir. 1974). See also Oyler v. Boles, 368 U.S. 448, 454-56, 82 S.Ct. 501, 504-06, 7 L.Ed.2d 446 (1962); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886). In other words, challengers must show both selectivity and proscribed motivation.
A reading of the trial court’s findings in context makes clear that the trial court was struggling with the implementation of this test. It has not been easy for this court to give substance to the broad statement of the rules regarding selective prosecution. While it may be that in context the trial court was merely saying that defendant was in fact not singled out for prosecution, the trial court undeniably found that if defendant was singled out the motivation was that “he is an active and outspoken protestor.” The majority opinion is simply mistaken in concluding that the trial court ruled that the defendant had not satisfied the second leg of the test — •/. e., had not shown that the prosecution was motivated by the desire to inhibit his exercise of free speech.1 The trial court’s express finding is exactly to the contrary — “I find that the defendant has been selected for prosecution because he is an active and outspoken protestor.” Supp. Record, vol. 2, at 32 (emphasis added). In fact, a close reading of the trial court’s struggle with the issues indicates that its doubt arose not from the IRS’s motivation but rather from an erroneous belief that it was necessary for the defendant not only to show that he was the only one so far who had been prosecuted but also that the statute of limitations had run as to all other persons similarly situated. That test for determining selectivity is not only erroneous but an impossible test for anyone to meet. The majority is not prepared to hold that that test should in fact be applied. The net effects of the majority’s handling of this issue are (1) a contradiction of the trial court’s findings without any discussion of the insufficiency of the record to support them, and (2) the establishment of a rule which permits the government through selective prosecution to chill the exercise of a citizen’s right to be “outspoken” in protest against government policies.
The trial court’s confusion apparently arises from a failure to understand what kinds of proof can show selective prosecution. The trial court apparently believed that the only way selectivity could be shown was by circumstantial evidence — i. e., that all other possible violators had been ignored while the defendant had been prosecuted. While that is one method of showing selectivity, it is certainly not the only method. Selectivity also may be shown by direct evidence, as apparently was done, and was accepted by the trial court as being done, in this case. That is, it may be shown by what has been colloquially called the “smoking pistol” method, an outright admission. Proof adduced in this case showed that the IRS had a deliberate policy of selecting, and attempting to silence those who were “outspoken protesters” against the tax laws. If it were shown by direct evidence that such a policy had been applied to defendant — and apparently the trial court found that it had- — then the first leg of the test is satisfied without requiring defendant to conduct his own nationwide investigation of tax violations to identify all possible defendants and then to show that none of them had been prosecuted.
In the present case, the first and second legs of the test are satisfied by the same proof. Here, the IRS declared (and the trial court believed) that it intended to se*1363lect and silence outspoken tax protesters. Thus, both the fact of selectivity and its motivation — to silence the outspoken — -are proved by direct evidence. I find it impossible to believe that the majority really means what it is saying. Surely it does not mean that, even though the government declares its intent to select persons for prosecution in order to silence them, the ensuing prosecution does not violate constitutionally protected interests.
It is beyond cavil that this conviction would fall if the trial court had found:
This defendant has been selected for prosecution because he is black.
Nor would there be any doubt if the trial court had found:
This defendant has been selected for prosecution by the IRS because he is on the President’s political enemies list.
Similarly, there can be no doubt that this conviction would fall if the trial court had found:
This defendant has been selected for prosecution because he protested in writing that
there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exac-tions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.
Commissioner v. Newman, 159 F.2d 848, 850-51 (2d Cir. 1947) (Judge Learned Hand, dissenting) (approved and quoted in Atlantic Coast Line v. Phillips, 332 U.S. 168, 173, 67 S.Ct. 1584, 1587, 91 L.Ed. 1977 (1947) (Frankfurter, J., delivering the opinion of the Court)).
Whatever else the trial court may have found, its express language compels the conclusion that it found that this defendant had been selected for prosecution because ho was an “outspoken protester.” To hold that such selectivity is permissible would make the examples of selectivity I have just set out equally permissible. For first amendment purposes, nothing distinguishes an “outspoken protester” against existing tax laws from one who protests as Judge Hand and Justice Frankfurter have protested.
By definition, each and every instance of selective prosecution which reaches us on appeal involves a person who has allegedly violated some law. Nevertheless, the usual carte blanche of the prosecutor in seeking the convictions of these persons is subject to the requirement that the decision to prosecute not be motivated by factors by which the government cannot constitutionally distinguish one violator from all others. If administratively the government has not the resources to prosecute every violator, if the government therefore must pick and choose from among all violators, it may not do so based on its desire to shut the taxpayer up. However reprehensible may be citizens who object to paying the taxes which make possible an acceptable degree of civilization, the first amendment protects the right to make those objections. If not, then the constitutional guarantee of free speech is illusory.2 Where, as here, the government seeks to silence a citizen precisely because it detests or fears the citizen’s spreading of ideas relating to effective self-government, the Constitution forbids the government action unless the annunciation of those ideas amounts to such a clear and present danger to the security of the Republic that it falls outside the ambit of otherwise protected political speech.
While one could argue that the history of the American Revolution supports a finding that tax protests present a clear and present danger to the Republic, there is no argument before us that they do; no court has so held; and it is doubtful that any court is prepared so to hold. Of course *1364there is a danger that illegal tax practices will become more widespread if the government fails to strike swiftly and decisively in gagging or at least intimidating the most outspoken tax protesters. However, in a day in which even a computerized search is incapable of tabulating the fractions of a citizen’s conduct which government agents now have discretion to charge severally or cumulatively as alleged violations of the law, the necessity of subjecting that discretion to constitutional scrutiny is manifest and certain. It seems a puny enough effort to suggest that the limit on the dangers of unconstitutional discrimination be drawn at least where the hapless citizen can carry his heavy burden to show that he was singled out because (to use the trial court’s express language) “he is an active and outspoken protestor.”
It is hard to imagine a kind of political protest more consistent with the most cherished traditions of this nation than protest focusing on the laws of taxation. Certainly no form of protest is more American.3 It was, after all, protest against the Stamp Act which helped set in motion the chain of events which won for this nation its independence from a repressive King George and led to the enshrining in the first amendment of the right to protest.
Since the trial court seemed justifiably confused as to the proper application of the first prong of the test, this ease should be remanded to give the trial court an opportunity to reconsider the matter in light of this clarification of the various means by which selectivity may be proved. The possibility that the confusion may have affected the finding that selectivity was motivated by a desire to suppress outspokenness suggests that the trial court not be bound by that finding on remand but rather be permitted to reconsider whether both selectivity and illegal purpose were proved in this case. I would therefore reverse and remand for reconsideration by the trial court.

. The principal difference between Judge Logan and me is not that we emphasize different trial court findings, but that he would affirm a criminal conviction based on conflicting findings by the trial court on the key issue. I would not. The trial court should have an opportunity to clear up its findings under proper guidelines.

. The right to protest against government policies lies at the core of first amendment values, and the debate in this area of the law is whether commercial speech and recreational speech are entitled to the same constitutional protection as protest. See, e. g., Valentine v. Chres-tensen, 316 U.S. 52, 62 S.Ct. 920, 86 L.Ed. 1262 (1942) (Constitution imposes no restraints on government restrictions of purely commercial advertising); Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 48 L.Ed.2d 346 *1364(1976) (commercial speech is within protective ambit of the first amendment); Joseph Burs-tyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 502, 72 S.Ct. 777, 780, 96 L.Ed. 1098 (1952) (line between the informing and the entertaining too elusive to be drawn, therefore as general rule “expression by means of motion pictures [must be] included within the free speech and free press guaranty of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”); Jackson & Jeffries, Commercial Speech: Economic Due Process and the First Amendment, 65 Va.L.Rev. 1 (1979) (and cases and commentaries discussed therein).

. Furthermore, tax protest is neither modem nor American in its origin. Many people venerate one who commented on the publicans who collected the taxes in his time.
And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?
But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
... Iam not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Matthew 9:11-13.