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Injustice a 'loose end' for Jim Guy Thursday, Mar 23, 2006 By John Brummett The Little Rock newspaper said the U.S. Supreme Court was merely "tying up the last loose ends" of the Whitewater saga Monday when it declined to accept Jim Guy Tucker's appeal of the income tax half of his case. This "loose end" was a little matter of egregious abuse and injustice. That's how it goes. The Supreme Court exists to settle big questions, like whether you can sue the president. (You can.) The court does not redress every-day injustice percolating from the district and appellate courts. As a rule, the lower courts are trusted to be better than that. None of this is to defend Tucker on his other conviction having to do with business dealings with Jim and Susan McDougal. I could mount such a defense if I felt the urge, but I don't. I've got a bad hankering, though, to defend him on the income tax business, which is positively galling. In 1998, Tucker already had been convicted in the McDougal matter and had resigned as governor. He was on home detention. He'd had a liver transplant. His health was iffy and he was under strong medication. He faced a second grand jury indictment secured by Ken Starr that accused him of conspiring through a supposedly sham bankruptcy to evade income taxes on part of his extensive cable television operation in 1988. Jim Guy's lawyers asked what part of the federal code he was accused of violating. Starr's office said it didn't have to say, because the crime was general conspiracy. The Justice Department had a policy requiring that tax conspiracy charges specify the sections of the code allegedly violated. Starr argued that he was a special prosecutor, emphasizing "special," and needn't accede to such policy or courtesy. The late judge, Stephen Reasoner, agreed with Starr, as always. Tucker could have fought the charge at trial. His financial maneuvering in 1988 had been thoroughly lawyered, and, in fact, he'd been audited by the IRS. He did not believe he had conspired to do anything wrong. But that would have been risky. First, the tax esoterica would have been difficult to convey to a jury. Second, Starr was offering lenient probation for a guilty plea. Had Tucker gone to trial and lost, he'd have gone to jail. He was in no mood to go to jail. More to the point, he was in no physical condition. He agreed to plead guilty. Procedurally, he was required to explain in court what he was pleading guilty to having done. He said he was pleading guilty based on "the law as it has been explained to me," and that, on that basis, he should have told the bankruptcy judge something he didn't tell him. He got ordered to pay $3.5 million in taxes. He appealed to the 8th Circuit at St. Louis, in part because he'd found out that Starr had brought the indictment on a section of the IRS code not in effect at the time. The 8th Circuit said it couldn't be sure, and sent the case back to the district court. The IRS eventually said that Tucker was right that the section used against him by Starr was out of date. Reasoner merely reduced Tucker's restitution from $3.5 million to $112,000. Tucker appealed again to 8th Circuit, arguing that he could not possibly be guilty in the first place because you can't be found guilty of violating a law that didn't exist. The 8th Circuit said that didn't matter. It said Tucker had pled guilty to conspiracy, and that the underlying law was invalid. So, Tucker asked the Supreme Court to take the case and settle a point of law: Can a conspiracy charge be valid even if the laws on which it's based don't exist? The Supreme Court declined Monday to be bothered with this "loose end." It's all a sad chapter, for Tucker and all of us. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
