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Irwin Schiff isn't going anywhere

June 15, 2010

Irwin Schiff has been to court again. Not surprisingly, he lost again.

Mr. Schiff was a pied piper for the "Tax Honesty" movement, using various arguments to make the (hopeless) case that there really isn't an income tax, at least not for most of us. He is currently serving a 13-year sentence for "conspiracy to defraud the government for the purpose of impeding and impairing the Internal Revenue Service, assisting in the preparation of false income tax returns, tax evasion, and filing false income tax returns."

He went back to court to argue that he should have been forbidden from acting as his own attorney on the case that resulted in his current prison stay. The appeals court held otherwise:

Although Schiff suffers from bipolar disorder and possibly a delusional disorder, his afflictions did not prevent him from adequately conducting his own defense. Schiff had a coherent trial strategy, offered rational defenses, conducted cross-examinations, direct examinations, and made a closing argument.

It presents a dilemma for those who still hold to his arguments. Either they sympathize with him and agree that he was crazy and shouldn't have been his own attorney -- with all that implies about his opinions on the tax law -- or they say that he isn't telling the truth about being incompetent, but was telling the truth about the tax law.

Cite: United States v. Irwin Schiff, CA-9, No. 08-10408