DOJ: Wesley Snipes Deserves Three Years for Tax Evasion

The Justice Department today released a 37-page sentencing memorandum arguing that actor Wesley Snipes should be sentenced to three years in prison for failing to file income tax returns. A Florida jury in February spared Snipes a longer sentence when it acquitted him of the more serious charges of conspiracy and fraud.

"This case cries out for the statutory maximum term of imprisonment, as well as a substantial fine, because of the seriousness of defendant Snipes’ crimes and because of the singular opportunity this case presents to deter tax crime nationwide," writes U.S. Attorney Robert O'Neill and Assistant U.S. Attorney M. Scotland Morris, both of the Middle District of Florida, along with Jeffrey McLellan, a trial attorney with the Justice Department's Tax Division.

Calling him a "truly notorious offender," the Justice Department attorneys point out that Snipes was successful in evading more than $15 million in federal income tax and deserves a year for each year he failed to file returns.

"In the defendant Wesley Snipes, the court is presented with a wealthy, famous, and inveterate tax scofflaw," the legal document concludes. "If ever a tax offender was deserving of being held accountable to the maximum extent for his criminal wrongdoing, Snipes is that defendant."

Daniel Meachum, an Atlanta-based defense attorney for Snipes, declined to comment on the Justice Department's filing but said his client's response — in the form of a sentencing memo — is forthcoming.

Snipes will be sentenced April 24 along with two co-defendants: Florida tax preparer Douglas Rosile, 59, and Eddie Ray Kahn, 64, founder of American Rights Litigators and the Guiding Light of God Ministries, which are both Florida-based tax-protest groups that Snipes associated with.

Comments

[Benson]

Why Wesley Snipes Was Wrong:
http://resipsablog.com/2008/04/25/breaking-news-celebrity-tax-protestor-wesley-snipes-sentenced-to-36-months-imprisonment/

[Joe]

We are victims of the IRS, as Wesley Snipes is.

The Fed attorney should be in jail for prosecuting so called "tax crimes" comitted by productive Americans trying to keep their own hard earned $$.

[Phil Ghee]

Whose Law, Whose Justice?
Given the currently disparity in racial sentencing it does not suprise me what the feds are asking that W.Snipes afforded. I wonder how they view the following story:

Dear Reporter,

In my native state my sister fell prey to the mandatory crack sentences laws. By assisting her friend, a low level local apartment complex dealer,in his attempt to stash and flush his dope before the cops busted the door down; she received a mandatory ten year crack cocaine possession sentence of which she did eight years. Eight years that her young son (then only three) had to grow up with grandma instead of with his own mother.

Now I am sure the couple involved in the article below didn't have the type of money and access that OJ had to buy himself off. So what do you (good folks out there who think everything in 2008 is now so fair and just and just rosy) think must have contributed to such light sentencing FOR THEM?

comment can be addressed to pghee@hotmail.com
AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Tucson Region
Man gets probation for dumping body in shaft
By Kim Smith
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.01.2008
advertisement

A former Arivaca resident was sentenced to three years' probation Monday for dumping his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend down a mine shaft after she shot him to death with an AK-47.
Tommie Joe Holliday, 54, pleaded guilty to attempted concealment or abandonment of a human body in the November 2005 death of Bobby Lee Gatlin, 46.
Holliday could have been sentenced to a maximum of two years in prison, but Pima County Superior Court Judge Hector Campoy placed him on probation.
Pima County Sheriff's deputies began hearing rumors in October 2006 that Gatlin had been murdered in November 2005 and thrown down a mine shaft, according to court documents.
On June 1, 2007, detectives found Gatlin's body 15 feet underground, wrapped in a tarp, blankets and sleeping bag. An autopsy showed he'd been shot several times.
Stephanie Lynn Bartlett, 41, Holliday and Stacey Leigh Sharp were arrested when Bartlett and Sharp made incriminating statements.
Court documents indicate Bartlett was involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with Gatlin. For several years, they had been living in makeshift camps outside Arivaca with Bartlett's three teenage sons and other homeless people.
Bartlett told authorities she killed Gatlin after he came after her with an ax and threatened to kill her and her children.
Holliday and Sharp, who is Bartlett's sister, helped dump Gatlin's body in the mine shaft the next day.
Bartlett was sentenced to five years' probation and 365 days in jail in February after pleading guilty to manslaughter. She was given 248 days credit for the time she'd already served.
On Monday, Campoy told Holliday he is not to have contact with Bartlett once she is released without first getting permission from probation officers.
Sharp also pleaded guilty to attempted concealment or abandonment of a human body and is awaiting sentencing.
œ Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241 or kimsmith@azstarnet.com