United States First Circuit

On consolidated appeals of a husband and wife convicted of various offenses stemming from their refusal to surrender after conviction on tax-evasion charges, their convictions are affirmed, where: 1) there was no reasonable cause to believe that the husband was mentally incompetent, and therefore the district court was not required to sua sponte order a formal competency hearing and evaluation; 2) evidence of the husband's beliefs that his previous tax trial was a sham and that tax laws are unconstitutional was properly disallowed, and thus his constitutional right to present a defense was not impaired; 3) the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding evidence alleged to be hearsay; 4) there was no merit in any of the wife's assertions of evidentiary error, and thus her trial was not tainted by cumulative error; 5) there was no reversible error in the jury instructions or the verdict form in articulating the offense at 18 USC section 924(c); 6) the trial judge's decision to question jurors in chambers did not violate the wife's constitutional right to be present at trial or her right to a public trial.

Appellate Information

• Decided 01/19/2012
• Published 01/19/2012

Judges

• Thompson

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Leslie Feldman-Rumpler, Seth R. Aframe