On October 17, 1931, Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion and eventually sentenced to eleven years in prison, ending his reign as the king of Chicago’s underworld. While Capone doubtlessly violated hundreds of laws during his 1920’s crime spree, only a handful of them led to arrests, and even fewer made it to trial. It was notoriously difficult to convict crime bosses, especially one of Capone’s stature, as most people were too afraid to testify against these extremely violent and dangerous people. The notion of pursuing these rampant criminals with income tax evasion charges, while it may seem routine today, was a novel concept that had only recently been developed specifically for the purpose of convicting these notorious lawbreakers.
It was pioneered by Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the Assistant U.S. Attorney General during the Harding administration of the 1920’s. Willebrandt, originally from Arizona, had made her name as a lawyer voluntarily defending prostitutes as a public defender in Southern California. As Assistant Attorney General, her purview was enforcing all prohibition laws, as well as income tax violations. For the reasons mentioned above, she found it challenging to convict rum-runners and bootleggers for their obvious crimes in violation of prohibition. Forced to think outside the box, Willebrandt came up with the idea of prosecuting these criminals for not paying income taxes on the money earned from illegal alcohol sales.
It was not an immediate hit in the legal community. Scholars argued that by demanding taxes on ill-gotten income, the government would be indirectly profiting from the violation of its own laws. Additionally, as the fifth amendment protected citizens from self-incrimination, criminals could not file tax returns indicating illegal income without incriminating themselves. Willebrandt ignored the noise and took the case to court. In prosecuting a bootlegger named Sullivan, Willebrandt used income tax as an attacking point, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was decided in Willebrandt’s favor. United States vs. Sullivan established the legal precedent that ill-gotten gains are subject to taxation and must be declared on income tax returns.
This winning case changed the course of law enforcement in the 1920’s and throughout the century. Capone was soon arrested on income tax evasion charges, and when he couldn’t get his story straight on just how much he had earned, it was enough proof to throw him in jail. The same technique is still employed to put away organized criminals and has even put a number of politicians behind bars when they took bribes and evaded taxes to avoid disclosing them to the public. While many of these offenders aren’t ending up in prison for their worst crimes, Willebrandt’s elegant solution ensures that they are at least taken off the streets and prevents them from continuing to build up their rap sheets.
