Even More on Principals, Accomplices, Causers and Pinkerton Conspirators - the Daugerdas Case (5/10/11)

I have previously written on derivative criminal liability for the enablers in the tax shelter game (lawyers, CPAs, financial wizards). See here. I have just today read the transcript for the instruction conference on 5/5/11 in the Daugerdas criminal case.  Daugerdas involved the same basic pattern as the Larson and Coplan cases (previously discussed here and here). That pattern is the prosecution of the enablers but not the taxpayers (or taxpayer advisors), with even a concession that for purposes of the submission to the jury the taxpayers are not guilty of the crime of evasion. In these cases, the prosecutors trot out several redundant or just not applicable theories of liability as if they were different than criminal liability for the underlying criminal offense of tax evasion.  They are not.

Judge Pauley, the trial judge in Daugerdas, gets it. My bullet point summary of the charging conference is: (i) the prosecutors may have abandoned 2(a) accomplice liability, (ii) Judge Pauley wants to conflate 2(b) causer liability directly into the substantive offense, and (iii) Judge Pauley is not enamored with Pinkerton liability. Judge Pauley defaults to the real issue -- either these defendants are guilty as direct principals of tax evasion or they are not guilty of tax evasion at all (regardless of what theory is used).
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