Chip Taylor

There's a lot I don't know about lawyering

Take this, for instance:

The law licenses of two former Internal Revenue Service lawyers have been suspended for two years after a federal court ruling last year that they defrauded the courts so that the I.R.S. could win 1,300 tax shelter cases.

..

The suspensions followed complaints brought by Michael Louis Minns, a Houston lawyer who represented 124 of the tax shelter buyers, most of them airline pilots. One buyer is seeking a $6 million refund.

The Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco found in January 2003 that the lawyers had defrauded the court by making a corrupt deal with a few of the pilots who bought tax shelters in the 1970's and 1980's. Under the deal, no tax-collection actions in regard to the shelters would be taken against these pilots in return for testimony that would hurt the others.

The court called this "extreme misconduct" and asked why the I.R.S. had not disciplined the lawyers, each of whom was paid a $1,000 bonus for his work on the cases.

How was that different from what nearly every prosecutor in the country does nearly every day? They let criminals off in return for testimony against other criminals. Much worse criminals than tax evaders.

Of course, I'm not saying we should let these lawyers off the hook; I'm for suspending some prosecutors.