State v. Cain
| Decision Date | 05 February 1963 |
| Citation | 19 Wis.2d 50,119 N.W.2d 391 |
| Parties | STATE of Wisconsin, Plaintiff, v. Allan C. CAIN, Defendant. |
| Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
Rudolph P. Regez, Monroe, for plaintiff.
Allan C. Cain, Kaukauna, Henry P. Hughes, Oshkosh, for defendant.
The record shows that defendant Allan C. Cain is a lawyer, age 56. He was married in 1934; he has no children. After graduation from Marquette University and admission to the bar in 1934, he started his practice in Little Chute. In 1942 he moved to Kaukauna and has practiced there and in Appleton.
In 1957 auditors from the federal government were directed to the defendant's income tax reports because of a claimed casualty loss deduction. Subsequent auditing disclosed gross inaccuracies. In 1960 a federal grand jury indicted defendant on four counts of wilfully attempting to evade and defeat a large part of income tax due and owing, by filing a false and fraudulent joint income tax return for each of the calendar years 1953 to 1956, inclusive. Defendant was found guilty on each of the four counts and sentenced to imprisonment for one year and fined $2,000. Defendant began to serve his sentence in June, 1962, and has recently been paroled.
We find no basis for challenging the findings of the federal court and of the referee that defendant intentionally reported income at figures very substantially less than he received, for the purpose of evading lawful taxes. Defendant urged several propositions to mitigate the degree of culpability involved. Some or all of them were first offered in federal court as evidence that he intended no wrong. They are: (a) An inadequate bookkeeping system; (b) frustration due to a cancer which had been removed from his face but which he feared might crop out elsewhere in his system, and the fact that a new home which was supposed to cost $40,000 was costing him approximately $90,000; (c) lack of proficiency in handling figures; (d) ignorance of tax matters; and (e) claimed mental incompetency. These propositions were rejected by the United States district judge who tried the federal charges and were found by the referee to be 'unrealistic and unpersuasive.' We agree.
Moreover, except for the concern over recurrence of cancer which may well have been a real and substantial preoccupation of defendant's mind, the fact that in this proceeding he urged the other propositions in mitigation demonstrated that he did not yet fully appreciate the seriousness of his departure from the standard of probity which should be fulfilled by a lawyer.
Facts considered by the referee in determining that permanent disbarment is not required are as follows:
There has been no evidence of defendant's having taken...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Committee on Legal Ethics of West Virginia State Bar v. Scherr
...circumstances are taken into consideration as a rule and in some cases moral turpitude is not found to be present. State v. Cain, 19 Wis.2d 50, 119 N.W.2d 391; Baker v. Miller, 236 Ind. 20, 138 N.E.2d 145, 59 A.L.R.2d 1393. The cases are about evenly divided as to moral turpitude being invo......
- State v. Roggensack
-
Eisenberg, Matter of, 76-108-D
...past imposed a period of suspension in such circumstances. State v. MacIntyre, 41 Wis.2d 481, 164 N.W.2d 235 (1969), State v. Cain, 19 Wis.2d 50, 119 N.W.2d 391 (1963). A reading of the Court of Appeals decision in Eisenberg's appeal does not support the statement that the conviction was ba......
-
State v. MacIntyre
...defendant involved in his not permitting access to the Internal Revenue Service records. It is true that in the case of State v. Cain (1963), 19 Wis.2d 50, 119 N.W.2d 391, this court gave weight to the fact that '* * * after the federal investigation of defendant's income taxes commenced, d......