It is entirely proper of them to charge you with your nonviolent but criminal conduct, assuming they have probably cause, and to convict you and jail you for it, if they have the evidence. The choice of charges in the indictment is a matter of prosecutorial discretion, and often dictated by ease of proof as well as plea bargaining considerations.
It's not unfair of the government to go after you for tax evasion, if you are a tax evader, even if their reason for prosecuting you for your real nonviolent offenses is that you're a murderer or a gang boss. You are, after all, a tax evader, and so fair game for prosecution. If you wanted to avoid prosecution for tax evasion, you should have paid your taxes on your ill-gotten gains.
This is actually pretty standard stuff. The government gets drug dealers on money-laundering charges when it can't be confident that it can prove the drug charges. Well, it's hard to dispose of the proceeds of criminal activity; making it a crime to do so is a legitimate way to deter and punish the underlying crime. What's wrong with that?
Now, is there potential for abuse? Sure. The "white collar" criminal statutes are loose, vague, and give the government a wide net to cast, they are also full of traps for the unwary, as Martha Stewart found out. They couldn't convict her for securities violations (which she probably didn't commit), but they nailed her for false statements to the government, a travesty in my view, even if she did lie to the investigators. We will see what the Court of Appeals says in that case. However, going after Capone for tax evasion seems to me to be materially different -- it was a real and serious crime that he actually committed and the legitimate prosecution had the good effect of getting a bad and violent man off the streets.
In addition to abuse by overcharging with vague, open-ended statutes, as well as the tendency of prosecutors to make them even more open-ended (and courts to agree) (I am starting research on a paper on the misuse of antiterrorism laws to prosecute ordinary hoodlums), there is also the very troubling use of relevant conduct to enhance sentences where the conduct is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In the old days the judge would just use her discretion to take into consideration whether to max out a tax evader's sentence because there was evidence that he was a murderer. Under the federal Sentencing Guidelines, this practice was systematized, regulated, formalized, and in fact required. Now that the Guidelines are advisory under US v. Booker, the judge again has the discretion to do this. I don't like it for all the reasons that Justice Stewart presents in his part of the opinion, but, as I said in a previous post, taking relevant conduct into account in sentencing is an ancient practice, and it's not going to stop, nor are the courts and Congress going to adopt Justice Stewart's and my favored resolution to the problem, that is, requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every material fact that enhances a sentence even within the statutory maximum.
--- Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> >>> still many people charged with drug crimes are
> actually
> >>> dangerous and violent criminals.
> >>
> >> Er, if they are actually a dangerous and violent
> >> criminal, they ought to have been charged with an
> >> actually dangerous and violent crime? Or are you
> >> saying you'd convict on an undangerous and
> unviolent
> >> crime just to get them off the streets? You
> know, the
> >> old Al Capone tax evasion deal?
> >
> > Tax evasion is a crime too.
>
> Yes, but not a "dangerous and violent" one.
>
> Just answer the question, okay?
>
> /jordan
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