Ripperger v. United States, 7448.
| Decision Date | 21 October 1957 |
| Docket Number | No. 7448.,7448. |
| Citation | 248 F.2d 944 |
| Parties | Arold H. RIPPERGER, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
R. Carleton Sharretts, Jr., Baltimore, Md., for appellant.
Leon H. A. Pierson, U. S. Atty., Baltimore, Md., for appellee.
Before PARKER, Chief Judge, HAYNSWORTH, Circuit Judge, and THOMPSON, District Judge.
This is an appeal from a conviction and sentence for failure to file income tax returns for the years 1953 and 1954. Appellant is a lawyer who had filed returns for other persons and for himself for certain years prior to the years in question. His defense is that he did not have the money to pay the income taxes due for these years and thought that he was not required to file returns when he did not have the money to pay the taxes due by him. The case was heard without a jury by the District Judge, who found that the failure of appellant to file the returns was "voluntary, purposeful deliberate and intentional, and not accidental, inadvertent or negligent." He further found that appellant "knew that the returns ought to have been filed and that he deliberately failed to file them so that the government would not know the extent of his income and of his tax liability." With respect to intent to evade the payment of taxes, the judge made the following finding:
The evidence amply sustained these findings by the judge. Appellant had a gross income of more than $7500 for the year 1953 and of more than $8000 for the year 1954. His tax liability on income not reported as a result of failure to file returns was $932.42 for 1953 and $862.48 for 1954.1 He was a lawyer 35 years of age who had been filing tax returns for others and must have known of the duty resting upon those with an income such as his to file tax returns. His explanation that he did not know that the law required the filing of returns when he did not have the money to pay the tax is so unreasonable that the judge was thoroughly justified in not accepting it. As we pointed out in the case...
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Edwards v. United States
...356 U.S. 949, 78 S.Ct. 914, 2 L.Ed. 2d 843 (1958) ("`willfulness' requires knowledge of the legal obligation"); Ripperger v. United States, 248 F.2d 944 (4th Cir. 1957), cert. denied, 355 U.S. 940, 78 S.Ct. 428, 2 L.Ed.2d 421 (1958); United States v. Litman, 246 F.2d 206 (3d Cir.), cert. de......
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Abdul v. United States, 15523.
...point up that difference. Instructions similar to the one under consideration in the instant case have been upheld in Ripperger v. United States, 4 Cir., 1957, 248 F.2d 944, certiorari denied 1958, 355 U.S. 940, 78 S.Ct. 428, 2 L.Ed.2d 421, and in Yarborough v. United States, 4 Cir., 1956, ......
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United States v. Fahey, 23210.
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Barrett v. United States
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