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Holed-Up
Tax Protester, Wife Convicted
By
PHILIP ELLIOTT (Associated Press Writer)
From
Associated Press
January
18, 2007 5:54 PM EST
CONCORD, N.H. - A man who has
holed up with armed supporters in his cement-walled house for
most of his tax evasion trial was found guilty Thursday, along
with his wife, of failing to pay federal income taxes for a
decade.
Ed Brown has said he will
defend himself against capture if necessary.
U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier
said Thursday that members of his staff continued talking by
telephone with Brown and had no plans to confront him.
Ed Brown's wife, Elaine, a
dentist who earned most of the couple's income, has been
staying with a son in
Massachusetts
and attended the trial.
The Browns, of
Plainfield
, contend the law does not require them to pay federal income
tax, while the government says the Browns owe more than
$625,000. The Browns stopped paying income taxes in 1996 and
stopped filing returns in 1998, a prosecutor said. They could
each face decades in prison.
A jury decided they employed a
scheme to hide their income and avoid taxes in part by using
postal money orders in increments just below the reporting
threshold to pay for their hilltop compound. Courts have
routinely rejected similar attempts by other taxpayers.
Marshals now have to consider
how to seize the Browns' assets. The jury was deliberating
whether the Browns should lose their home.
"We've established a good
line of communication, all of our conversations have been
amicable and friendly, and that's how we expect they will
continue," Monier said.
Ed Brown stopped attending
court midway through the trial, which began Jan. 9. His wife
remains out on bail pending the couple's April 24 sentencing;
she has said she loves her husband, but that his way of
handling the case is not hers.
A man who answered the
telephone at the Browns' house Thursday afternoon said Ed
Brown could not come to the phone, but had expected a guilty
verdict.
"He's here at the house,
and he's not leaving of his own free will," said the man,
who identified himself only as Bernie.
Ed Brown, a retired
exterminator, has said he stayed home to protest a system that
had already convicted him.
"Most Americans would
cower and cringe and raise their hands and surrender like a
good little slave," he told reporters at his home this
week.
"I won't. Under no
circumstances. I do not tolerate cowardliness, oppression,
bulliness, and I certainly don't tolerate a federal agency
that has absolutely zero jurisdiction in my state, never mind
in my county, in my town."
Copyright
2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Link: http://my.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20070118/45aefed0_3ca6_1552620070118384563893
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