Bernard Bloch v. United States

Appellant was charged in the District of Arizona in two counts with attempting to evade or defeat the payment of income taxes owing by him for the years 1947 and 1948, in violation of Section 145(b), Title 26, U.S.C.A. After trial by a jury in the District Court, appellant was acquitted on Count one (1947 taxes) and convicted on Count two (1948 taxes). He appeals, assigning three specifications of error.

The first specification of error relied on is that the District Court erred in failing to give appellant’s requested Instruction No. 2. There is no merit in this specification of error as such. In the first place, the instruction as requested is at least misleading and confusing, if not clearly erroneous. Counsel for appellant attempted to take the instruction from the ease of Gaunt v. United States, 1 Cir., 184 F.2d 284, 291 , but omitted a portion of the last sentence of the instruction on wilfulness approved in the Gaunt case, supra. In the Gaunt case the last sentence of the instruction read:

Even that language, it seems to us, may be misleading because it might be subject to the interpretation that acting without advice of a lawyer or accountant shows a complete absence of…