Professor Paul Caron reports that a federal judge has vacated the conviction of a CPA on the grounds that his counsel was ineffective.
The Court said that counsel’s failure to hire a tax expert was unreasonable under the circumstances.
The performance of Baxter’s criminal defense counsel, Mr. Keith Spielfogel and Mr. James Montgomery, fell below the Strickland objective standard of reasonableness because they did not analyze or present the mitigating facts and arguments a tax expert’s testimony would have assisted them in doing to reduce the tax-loss figure the court used in sentencing Baxter.
The evidence also establishes that Baxter was prejudiced by her criminal defense attorneys’ constitutionally deficient performance. It undermined the court’s confidence in the fairness of the plea negotiations, the sentencing proceeding, and the sentence imposed in Baxter’s case.
The court believes that had the facts and analysis that have now been presented by Baxter’s tax expert, who was retained by her new counsel after her sentencing, been presented to the court prior to Baxter’s 2006 sentencing, the court would have imposed a lower sentence
For the full opinion see Baxter v. United States, No. 1:04-cr-00371 (N.D. Ill. June 25, 2009).
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