Wesley Snipes Seeks Supreme Court Review of His Tax Convictions

Although he's currently serving a three-year sentence in prison for willful failure to file his tax returns, Wesley Snipes has filed a certified petition with the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the TaxProf Blog the petition raises two issues:

Is an accused person deprived of the right under Article III and the Sixth Amendment to be tried only by a jury of the community where venue is proper, when factual questions determinative of whether venue has been correctly laid are determined solely by a jury selected in the place challenged by the defendant as incorrect?

Where venue is a contested factual issue in a criminal trial, does the government bear a burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt or only by a preponderance of the evidence?

I don’t think the Court will be terribly anxious to hear the case…

Source: TaxProf

Snipes on Larry King Live

Actor Wesley Snipes appeared on Larry King Live earlier in the week making one final attempt to avoid jail time. He has been ordered to surrender to prison officials no later than today, but is insisting that the media has misreported facts about his case. Perhaps Mr. Snipes forgets, the media didn’t convict him, nor do they have the power to keep him out of jail.

Hat tip: Tax Prof Blog

Judge to Snipes: Check into Pennsylvania Prison by Next Week

Yesterday TMZ reported that actor Wesley Snipes was ordered to report to prison by next week. Snipes was warned that failure to report by December 9th, would result in "additional criminal charges."

Snipes was convicted in 2008 and has appealed several times, but it looks like he will finally have to serve his sentence. He is due to check into a prison located in Pennsylvania. Let’s hope the makers of “Master Daddy” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1757808/ ) can find a replacement, since Snipes apparently won’t be available.

Wesley Snipes Ordered To Surrender For 3-Year Prison Sentence

It looks like Wesley Snipes has reached the end of the road in his tax evasion case. The Judge just rejected his last appeal request and has ordered him to start serving his three year prison sentence. Reports are rolling in that Snipes surrendered to authorities on Friday and is in lockup as I write.

"The defendant Snipes had a fair trial; he has had a full, fair and thorough review of his conviction and sentence. ... The time has come for the judgment to be enforced," the judge wrote in his 16-page decision.

The 48-year-old star of the "Blade" trilogy and Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" was convicted in 2008 on three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file his income tax returns. He was acquitted of two more serious felony charges.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons would not say where Snipes was to surrender until he was in custody, though inmates generally are placed within 500 miles of their residence, said spokesman Edmond Ross.

Continue reading at Huffington Post.com...

Wesley Snipes Loses Appeal in Tax Case

Last Friday it was reported that Actor Wesley Snipes would indeed have to serve jail time for tax evasion, after he lost his appeal. For those of you who might have forgotten, Snipes was sentenced to serve three years in prison for failing to file tax returns for 1999 through 2001.

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the 47-year-old actor's 2008 conviction in an Ocala, Florida, court for three misdemeanors stemming from felony tax charges.

At his sentencing in April 2008, prosecutors said Snipes, a Florida native who has a residence in Windermere, had earned more than $38 million since 1999, but had filed no tax returns or paid any taxes.

Wesley Snipes' Lawyers want to Adjust Appeal Request After Adviser's Arrest

From SF Gate.com:

Wesley Snipes' attorneys are requesting that judicial officials in Georgia dismiss their petition appealing the actor's tax evasion conviction following the arrest of his former financial adviser.

The "Blade" star was convicted of three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file his income tax return in 2008. He is currently free pending an appeal to reduce a three-year prison sentence on U.S. federal tax charges.

Meanwhile, Snipes' one-time accountant, celebrity investor Kenneth Starr, was busted in May and accused of embezzling a massive $30 million from stars including the action star, Uma Thurman and Martin Scorsese.

Starr has been charged with wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering amid claims he used the stolen cash to buy a luxurious Manhattan apartment.

Snipes' lawyers are hoping Starr's arrest will help the actor's own case, and they filed papers in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Wednesday, asking for judges to ignore their petition for an appeal.

Instead, Snipes' attorneys want to lodge a new petition asking to have the star's conviction dismissed, or set up a new trial on the grounds that the actor was the victim of a "miscarriage of justice."

Wesley Snipes Allowed to Travel

According to the BBC, Wesley Snipes, who was recently sentenced to three years in prison for tax fraud, was granted permission to travel abroad to work. Below is a snippet from the article.

“He will be allowed to visit the UK and Thailand for filming and editing on forthcoming movies. A travel ban request had been made on the grounds he might not return.

Federal judge William Terrell Hodges approved Snipes' request to visit London for three days to put the finishing touches to Gallowwalker.

He will go to Thailand for eight weeks to film Chasing The Dragon. The 45-year-old, whose screen credits include White Men Can't Jump and Jungle Fever, was accused by prosecutors of failing to pay tax or file tax returns on earnings of $38m (£19.2m) since 1999.”

Top 10 Reasons Wesley Snipes Was Acquitted

Last Friday, a jury acquitted actor Wesley Snipes of all the charges of felony tax fraud. He was however found guilty of three misdemeanor charges of failing to file tax returns and will still have to pay millions to the IRS. The maximum sentence carries up to three years in prison, but he is expected to get a much lighter sentence. Although he was found guilty for the lighter charges his felony tax fraud had carried a maximum of up to sixteen years in prison.

Essentially the jury determined that Snipes had no intention to defraud the government, but the more I thought about this case the more I realized there were probably dozens of other reasons the jury decided to acquit Snipes. Below is a list of the top 10 reasons why Snipes was actually acquitted.

10) Wesley Snipes is an international celebrity, and everyone knows that famous people automatically get one "get out of jail free" card. It is the American way.

9) At his trial, Snipes was frequently attired in a very "Matrix-y" look of a solid black suit, dress shirt, and tie, and sunglasses. The jurors were probably fooled into thinking Snipes was from the future and that the statute of limitations for his crimes had already expired.

8) Snipes said under oath that he did not intend to defraud the government, although he had never paid taxes on tens of millions of dollars he earned. The jury probably just assumed that since he was under oath, he must have been telling the truth.

7) In the Blade films, Snipes played a vampire hunter who devoted his life to saving the lives dozens of innocent people. How could the jury possible be expected to put a Vampire-hunter in prison? What if we come under attack from Transylvania?

6) In 2001 Snipes was nominated for Best Actor in a Network/Cable Movie for his work in HBO’s made for TV movie, "Disappearing Act." Unfortunately he got beat out by T. K. Carter, who famously played Milo Williams in "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" a/k/a "Saved by the Bell, the Junior High Years". The jury probably figured it was punishment enough to go from being an international movie star to losing a network/cable movie award to Milo Williams.

5) Before his trial, Snipes spent a few months in the African country Namibia, the same place Angelina Jolie chose to give birth in. Jurors probably assumed Snipes was doing charity work with Brad and Angelina and therefore felt he deserved a lighter sentence.

4) Over the past few years, IRS has successfully charged numerous high profile individuals for criminal evasion including Edward and Elaine Brown and Richard Hatch. The jury probably just figured since the New England Patriots could not go undefeated, neither should the IRS.

3) In the movie, "White Men Can’t Jump," Snipes’s character famously uttered the phrase, "you can put a cat in an oven, but that don't make it a biscuit." At trial, his attorneys successfully confused the jury by repeatedly citing this phrase when objecting to any evidence the IRS presented of Snipes’s tax fraud.

2) One spectator reportedly filmed the entire trial. Another repeatedly yelled, "Action" and "Cut" at the beginning and end of each session of the trial. This confused the jury into thinking they were in fact cast into a movie – a courtroom drama, starring Wesley Snipes. It probably also helped that the judge in the case looked like actor Tom Wilkinson, and that Snipes’s list of potential witnesses included Sylvester Stallone, Muhammad Ali, Spike Lee, and Tom Brokaw. When the prosecutor failed to get Snipes to say, "You can’t handle the truth," the jury figured they had to acquit.

1) "Blade: Trinity," Snipe’s 2004 episode of the Blade franchise was poorly received by critics and took in substantially less money then the previous films at the box office. Five of Snipe’s latest six movies went directly to DVD and were not released in theaters. Snipes has not had a multi million dollar pay check in nearly five years and it is unlikely Snipes will ever be featured in a large budget film again. It is even more unlikely that Snipes saved enough of his money to fully re-pay his tax liabilities. The jury figured, "hey, why beat a dead horse?"