The jury in my very brief trial came back on Monday, October 26, with guilty verdicts on all counts. There were a variety of elements idiosyncratic to this trial, which played critical roles in this outcome. Each will yield grounds for appeal toward either reversal or remand.
Most importantly, the content of Cracking the Code and related materials never got presented other than in the most cursory fashion throughout the affair. In large part this was a consequence of an evasive prosecution strategy of presenting no witnesses capable of testifying about the content of any tax agency document, while still presenting the documents to the jury in the expectation that the jury would make assumptions about that content and its significance.
For instance, one witness was an IRS “Disclosure Officer”. This fellow introduced a series of IRS notices and internal records, all of which represented institutional “positions” taken by the agency of one sort or another. However, not being the one responsible for having produced or authorized any of these documents or institutional “positionings”, he couldn’t be questioned about any of them. A Michigan “Disclosure Officer” did precisely the same.
The effect of this strategy was to invite the jury to imagine a monolithic institutional resistance to my filings [implicitly] resting on some defensible legal basis, while never providing an opportunity for cross examination which would have revealed the lack of such a basis. In short, the prosecution strove to evade its obligation to prove (or even argue) the correctness of its allegations.
Unfortunately, its reliance on the jury taking the reflexive view that, “Our good and true government agencies wouldn’t resist these filings as they did without good and legally sound cause!” was apparently well-founded. This trope was fortified with references to the civil “lawsuit” against my wife and me, the nuances of which apparently were far too complicated for the jury to take in.
Instead of recognizing the inherently void and self-serving character of the “ruling” in that affair, the prosecution’s deployment of the case planted in the jurors’ minds the impressions of another expression of resistance by yet another “authority figure”, by virtue of which, it was argued, I should conclude that I must be wrong about the law. My very expression of the real character of that “ruling” was presented as reflective of “willful ignorance”.
In fact, that was the whole of the prosecution’s case: “This guy just won’t bow down and accept what all these people with fancy titles imply with their efforts to thwart his inconvenient filings, but instead insists that the law says otherwise! You good jurors have always taken the government’s word for it, so how can you believe that he sincerely doesn’t, much less that he could be right about what the law says?” This argument is richly ironic in light of the prosecution’s efforts to keep the jury from learning what those folks with fancy titles and offices really DO in response to educated filings, and even more ironic in light of its efforts to keep the jury from reading the actual words of the “income” tax statutes relevant to this case themselves...
Needless to say, I’m not happy, and my family is in serious distress. But we will proceed with steps to reverse this outcome.
You are the ones that make this possible, and I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers, your kind and heartening words, and your support throughout this ordeal so far. I hope that you will continue in every respect going forward, and especially keep up your own courage and commitment in upholding the rule of law (though I have no fears on that score).
YOUR DONATIONS CONTINUE TO BE SORELY NEEDED!!
Any amount you can afford will help. Send donations to:
Pete Hendrickson, 232 Oriole Rd., Commerce Twp., MI 48382.
Or donate online at www.LostHorizons.com
Prudence dictates that I not discuss in any detail the various grounds on which appeal will be made at this time, but they have a universal character. While my selection for this assault was plainly due to my having taken on the risks of pulling back the curtain, the government is also test-running how it can attempt to attack any educated but (in its mind) inconvenient American who dares to stand up on behalf of the rule of law in regard to the “income” tax.
Going forward will continue to require considerable resources. Many of those reading these words have generously contributed, and my gratitude is boundless.
At the same time, as some of you are aware, the government was compelled to admit to many thousands of educated filings being made over just the last few years alone (this stipulation was made in order to forestall having those filings and their consequences presented in any detail to the jury). Unfortunately, there have not been thousands of contributors to the defense against this assault.
This must change. If each of those among these many thousands of Americans would just do his or her part to contribute to this cause, it will succeed.
Appellate specialists work in an area much more technical and much less manipulable than is the case in a trial setting. They also work in the arena in which precedents are set (or undone).
Good appellate specialists are expensive, and this case deserves the very best of them. Even so, if everyone with an interest actually queues-up and contributes, this community can easily afford the very best.
Please do your part, rather than hope others will do it for you, and please circulate this message yourself to all interested persons. Understand that my newsletters DO NOT reach everyone in that community of interest. Thus, your help in this regard is also most appreciated.