[net.taxes] Details on the Tax Cases Recently Mentioned

cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (02/19/86)

I received some requests for information concerning decisions involving
Fifth Amendment and First Amendment issues.  Here, in full, are the
newspaper stories on which my posting was based.

Unfortunately, I don't have the dates these stories appeared in the
San Francisco Chronicle, but both are wire service stories, and should
be readily locatable.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Court Bars Taking the 5th In IRS Cases

Washington

The Supreme Court, on an 8-to-1 vote, ruled yesterday that citizens
cannot claim the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination
to keep information from the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS had argued a lower court ruling in the case would have crippled
its ability to deal with tax evaders.

In reversing the lower court, the justices exposed a California taxpayer
to the threat of being jailed for refusing to turn over or explain the
whereabouts of tax information sought by the IRS.

An appeals court, splitting with other courts, would have permitted 
Richard Rylander Sr. of Sacramento, to escape contempt of court proceedings
and jail for not turning over the documents by claiming his right against
self-incrimination.

Reversing that ruling, Justice William Rehnquist wrote that a taxpayer
still has the burden of showing why he cannot produce tax information
sought by the IRS and cannot avoid the demand by staying silent.

"While the assertion of a Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory
self-incrimination may be a valid ground upon which a witness such as
Rylander declines to answer questions," Rehnquist wrote, "it has never
been thought to be in itself a substitute for evidence that would assist
in meeting a burden of proof."

Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented, saying, "I will join another
opinion which creates a new exception to a basic constitutional right --
the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination."

					United Press
                                        
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Law Book barred from publishing judicial opinion

New York Times Service

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has obtained a highly unusual
temporary order from a federal appeals court barring a law book company
from publishing an opinion by a federal district judge in Colorado that
was critical of the department.

Glenn L. Archer Jr., the head of the department's tax division, said 
in an interview that the prior restraint on publication was necessary
because the "slanderous" judicial opinion unfairly charged three of his
prosecutors with misconduct in a grand jury investigation in Denver into
suspected tax fraud.

Lawyers involved in the case and other legal experts said they knew of
no previous instance in which a private publisher had been barred, on
pain of contempt of court, from publishing a judicial opinion.

It is not unusual, on the other hand, for courts to designate certain
of their own opinions as having no precedential value and thus unsuited
for publication, or for law book companies to refrain voluntarily from
publishing those opinions.

James C. Goodale, a New York lawyer who has represented news organizations
in First Amendment cases, said in an interview that the order could not
"have withstood the mildest breeze from the First Amendment" and was
"frightening" in its implications.

"If legal opinions can be as easily enjoined as this, any kind of 
publication would be fair game for court injunction," Goodale said.

The brief censorship order was issued Jan. 3 by Judges William J.
Holloway Jr. and Stephanie K. Seymour of the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the 10th Circuit and Federal District Judge Luther L. Bohannon,
who was sitting specially on the appellate court.  The court has its
headquarters at Denver, but these three judges sit in Oklahoma.

The order required the West Publishing Co. of St. Paul, Minn., "to
delay temporarily" publishing the Aug. 25 opinion by Federal District
Judge Fred M. Winner of Denver in the permanent bound volumes of
West's series, Federal Supplement, pending further consideration of
the matter by the appellate court.  The order is still in effect.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Where were the protests against these abrogations of our civil liberties?
No where, because when it comes to taxes, the government seems to be 
above the Constitution.