United States v. John J. Fahey

Appellant was charged with and found guilty of the wilful failure to file income tax returns ( 26 U.S.C. § 7203 ) for the tax years 1960,1961 and 1962.

The sole issue on this appeal is the sufficiency of the evidence to establish his wilful intent. As appellant’s counsel concedes, appellant “for some seven years * * * failed to file a tax return,” although he was a practicing attorney, and although he had been warned as to the effect of such failure in several of the years subsequent to 1962 by his own attorney. He had been told of the criminal sanctions imposed for a wilful failure to file, and knew the Internal Revenue Service was investigating his failure to file the returns for the years charged.

This, urges appellant’s counsel, was “apparently a product of his emotional and psychological disturbances,” and no wilfulness was involved.

We turn to the trial court’s findings of fact 10, 11 and 12 (R.T. 33-34).

The trial judge did not place in his findings that appellant had no intent to defraud the Government, although he so stated at the trial (R.T. 138). In his memorandum opinion of March 6, 1969, he ruled the Government “had failed to establish that the defendant intended…