(originally launched into cyberspace on 05/26/2008)
Back in history, authoritarian regimes would accuse dissidents of
crimes, and then torture them until they confessed. It was a lot
easier than trying to actually prove guilt using evidence and
reason. Plus, it was a fine way to punish trouble-makers who hadn't
actually committed any crimes, but who were making things
inconvenient for those in power.
Luckily, today we have a system of due process, rule by law, and a
fair administration of justice.
Actually, we don't. We still have a system that functions mainly by
forced confessions. Consider the fact that the vast majority of
cases are settled by "plea bargains"--most of those now in prison
never had their day in court. Whether or not the guy actually did
what he "confesses" to, a plea bargain is a coerced confession. It
is the control freaks saying, "We'll be nicer to you if you say
you're guilty, but we'll make things really bad if you make us have
to take you to trial, to actually try to PROVE your guilt." And
over 90% of the time, defendants accept the plea, and never go to
trial. Sometimes--and I know of a few cases personally--people
choose to plead guilty to something they DIDN'T do, rather than
facing the possibility of receiving a worse sentence if they go to
trial.
In my own case, the IRS only tried once to get me to plea bargain.
I think it was pretty obvious that that wasn't going to happen (the
phrase "when hell freezes over" came up). But that was not the end
of their attempts at getting a forced confession out of me. After
my conviction, at the sentencing hearing, the DOJ prosecutors were
having tantrums because I hadn't yet recanted my legal conclusions
regarding the income tax. Anyone at the trial knows that the
government produced absolutely NOTHING disputing my conclusions,
and thus didn't give me the slightest hint of a reason to doubt
those conclusions, and yet Shawn Noud (DOJ prosecutor) complained
that I was not properly "rehabilitated," because I hadn't yet
admitted that I was “wrong about any of the 861, [my] 861
position.” To his credit, Judge Baylson answered by saying that he
had never ordered me to say I was wrong, though he had "encouraged"
me to file back returns, take down my web sites, etc.
Here are the judge's own words, from what he said right after the
verdict in my case: “If you will reconsider your position, and you
will file the tax returns for the years you have not done so, and
enter into an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service for
payment of back taxes due, penalties and interest, I will take that
very much in your favor at the time of sentencing. If you refuse to
do so, that will also be a factor at the time of sentencing.” In
other words, if I would file back returns, reporting my income as
taxable (whether I believed it was or not), the punishment would be
lighter. I did. And if I hadn't done so, the punishment would have
been a lot worse, probably several YEARS worse. So I signed
returns, swearing that I thought I owed the tax, though I didn't.
In other words, those returns constituted coerced false confessions.
But it gets worse. Mr. Noud then complained that, if I wasn't
forced to say my legal conclusions were incorrect, I might later
say that I “was forced to file tax returns.” So not only did he
want a forced confession; he wanted me to be forced to NOT SAY that
it was a forced confession. Of COURSE I was coerced into filing tax
returns. Anyone with a brain cell could see that. But, like the
inquisitors of the past, the DOJ thugs wanted me to confess to
something that wasn't true, and then wanted to coerce me into
saying that I WASN'T coerced. (Incidentally, that is an essential
element of all plea bargains, too: the one being coerced to sign
the plea has to sign a thing saying he wasn't coerced into it.)
Obviously some at the DOJ have the exact same mentality as the
inquisitors during the Spanish Inquisition: You should recant your
beliefs, not because we provided any evidence of logic to counter
your beliefs (which we can't do), but because we HURT you. Think
I'm exaggerating? Try this on for size:
Floyd Miller, the lead prosecutor in my case and in Tessa's case,
openly admitted that if Tessa would do a plea bargain, he didn't
expect her to do any jail time, and wouldn't ASK for any. But when
she refused to do that--when she wouldn't plead guilty to something
she hadn't done--Mr. Miller's response was, "This is war!" So,
based on the DOJ's own comments, my wife did NOT spend a month in
prison for committing any alleged crime; she spent a month in
prison for NOT FALSELY CONFESSING.
Does anyone still think the "Department of Justice" gives a damn
about justice? Again, in my case alone (and mine was only one among
many, and not even the worst) the actual evidence demolishes all
the rhetoric about "rule of law," "due process," and systems of
"justice," and reveals the feds for what they are: lawless,
dishonest, power-happy thugs. In fact, as I've said before, the
number of ways in which the feds lied and cheated in my case alone
could fill a book--and did.
If you want your own copy of the complete story, with all the
evidence of government wrongdoing you could possibly want, you can
order my new book online from the
http://www.kickingthedragon.comweb site, or by sending $22 to the address shown below. (Orders
will be filled in the order they were received, once the books come
back from the printers, which should be in just a couple weeks.)
Larken Rose
P.O. Box 653
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
(P.S. A couple people have suggested that a few of my recent
messages were really thin-veiled attempts to get you to buy my new
book, "Kicking the Dragon (Confessions of a Tax Heretic)." I
apologize if anyone thought there was a veil. Just to make it
perfectly clear: I want you to buy my book. Furthermore, I want my
family to make some money off of it--maybe even enough to
eventually break even from our ongoing extortion by the feds.
However, I also want people to think that anything they buy from me
is well worth the price, and this book is no exception.)