Al Capone indicted in Income Tax Case June 5 1931 Gangster Convicted 270745CQ B7

Description: Al Capone indicted in Income Tax Case June 5 1931 Gangster Convicted Tax Evasion Original St Paul's Dispatch Newspaper (36 Pages) Al Capone (left) en route to prison in 1931 Al Capone, head of the most profitable crime syndicate of the Prohibition Era and mastermind of the notorious 1929 "Valentine's Day Massacre," seemed above the law. In the end, however, Capone would be brought to justice not for murder, extortion, or bootlegging, but for failing to pay his income tax. Credit for his conviction is due less to Elliot Ness and The Untouchables than to the dogged work of Bureau of Revenue investigator Frank Wilson and a clever surprise pulled by a federal judge, James Wilkerson. Al Capone once complained about the bad reputation of his criminal enterprise: "Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. I call it a business." The lesson of The People vs. Al Capone is that a profitable businessman, no matter how he earns his income, does have to pay his taxes. The Treasury Department Launches an Investigation Treasury Agent Frank Wilson Capone in 1929 might have been worth about $30 million, but no income tax return had ever been filed in his name. Two years earlier, in United States v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination did not protect Manley Sullivan, a bootlegger convicted of failing to file a return showing the profits from his illegal businesses. With the Sullivan case in mind, President Herbert Hoover instructed Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, " I want that man Capone in jail." Secretary Mellon summoned Elmer Irey, head of Treasury's Special Intelligence Unit, and told him his office was charged with the responsibility of putting Capone behind bars. For the day-to-day job of gathering incriminating evidence for Capone's tax evasion case, Irey turned to Frank Wilson, his most aggressive and relentless investigator. The Case Over the three months that followed, Capone's attorneys met frequently with U. S. Attorney George E. Q. Johnson to discuss a possible plea bargain. With witnesses to try to keep alive and with thorny legal questions concerning the charges, Johnson was willing to listen, hoping to get a two-and-a-half year sentence out of the negotiations. With an agreement for the two-and-a-half year sentence apparently in place, Al Capone appeared on June 18, 1931 before Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson and entered a plea of guilty. Wilkerson adjourned court until July 30 to consider the plea. On the day before his expected sentencing, Capone told reporters, "I've been made an issue and I'm not complaining, but why don't they go after all those bankers who took the savings of thousands of poor people and lost them in bank failures?" The next day, Judge Wilkerson surprised nearly everyone. Addressing Capone in his pea-green suit, Wilkerson announced, "The parties to a criminal case may not stipulate as to the judgment to be entered." There would be no plea bargain. There would be a trial. Wilkerson continued: "It is time for somebody to impress upon the defendant that it is utterly impossible to bargain with a Federal Court." The Trial Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson About two weeks before the scheduled start of the Capone trial, informant Eddie O'Hare notified Wilson that Capone's organization had a complete list of prospective jurors and was already "passing out $1,000 bills," promising political jobs, giving away tickets to prize fights, and "using muscle too." Skeptical of O'Hare's claim at first, Wilson quickly came around when O'Hare produced the names and addresses of ten jurors, names 30 to 39 on the jury list. Concerned that thousands of hours of work was about to go down the drain because of a fixed jury, Wilson and U. S. Attorney Johnson related O'Hare's story to Judge Wilkerson in his chambers. Wilkerson told the men that he hadn't yet received his jury list for the Capone trial, but when he did he would call them. When the names on Wilkerson's list turned out to match exactly with the names on O'Hare's list, the judge met once again with Wilson and prosecutors. The judge seemed curiously unconcerned. "Bring your case into court as planned, gentlemen," he told the government's attorneys. "Leave the rest to me." The Trial of Alphonse Capone opened on the morning of October 5, 1931 at the federal courthouse in downtown Chicago. Capone, accompanied by his bodyguard, smiled at jurors as he strolled into court in his mustard-colored suit. Judge Wilkerson took his seat at the bench and looked out over the packed courtroom. He called the bailiff to the bench. "Judge Edwards has another trial commencing today," he told the bailiff. "Go to his courtroom and bring me his entire panel of jurors; take my entire panel to Judge Edwards." After a jury of twelve was seated, and after Assistant U. S. Attorney Dwight Green outlined the 23 charges of tax evasion against Capone in the government's opening statement, George Johnson called his first witness. Charles W. Arndt, a tax collector for the United States, told jurors that Al Capone failed to file any tax return at all during for the years 1924 through 1929. The Hawthorne Hotel and Smoke Shop in Cicero, Illinois The team of prosecution lawyers that convicted Al Capone (U.S. Attorney George E. Q. Johnson is seated) At 2:42 P.M. on October 18, the jury left the courtroom to begin its deliberations. They filed back into the courtroom eight hours later with there verdict in hand. When the clerk pronounced the word "Guilty" (on the charge of tax evasion for 1925) reporters dashed to phones to report the news. Six days later, Judge Wilkerson imposed a prison sentence of eleven years, the longest term ever handed down for tax evasion. Capone, as he was led in handcuffs to a courtroom elevator, yelled, "I'm not through fighting yet." Capone served time in federal penitentiaries in Atlanta and at Alcatraz. In November 1939, after serving less than eight years, he was released while suffering from paresis caused by untreated syphilis. On January 25, 1947, Capone died of a stroke in Palm Island, Florid

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