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The defendants were charged with willfully
filing false returns. The defendants were convicted in a jury trial, but the Court of Appeals
reversed and remanded the case back to the District Court on the grounds that the jury was provided
inadequate instructions in accordance with United States v. Bishop,
412 U.S. 346 (1973).
The Supreme Court disagreed, believing the instructions adequate, and reversed the Appeals Court
decision.
The respondents were charged with falsifying tax returns in two principal ways: (1) they allegedly
caused corporations they controlled to report payments to them as loans, when they knew the payments
were really taxable dividends; and (2) they allegedly claimed partnership losses as deductions knowing
that the losses were properly attributable to a corporation. Their defense was that these transactions
were correctly reported, or at least that they thought so at the time.
The jury was instructed that respondents were not guilty of violating 7206 (1) unless they had signed
the tax returns knowing them to be false, and had done so willfully. A willful act was defined in the
instructions as one done “voluntarily and intentionally and with the specific intent to do something
which the law forbids, that is to say with [the] bad purpose either to disobey or to disregard the law.”
Full Text: United States v.
Pomponio, 429 U.S. 10 (1976) |