Wesley Snipes Gets Jail Time

Actor Wesley Snipes has been sentenced to serve three years in Federal prison, one year for each tax return he willfully failed to file. He also will have to pay as much as $17 million in back taxes, plus penalties and interest.

Prosecutors pressed hard to get a sentence with some meat on it because they felt that Mr. Snipes had acted with a lot more than reckless regard for tax laws. The government claimed that he obtained $11 million dollars in bogus tax refunds, and transferred millions of dollars to foreign bank accounts. According to the government's case, he also threatened investigators and instructed his employees not to pay any taxes. While none of that was enough to convince a jury that he had engaged in felony fraud and conspiracy, he was still convicted of failing to file his returns for 1999, 2000 and 2001. The government contended that he made approximately $13 million and should have paid some $2 million in taxes.

Prosecutors also felt that the action star had emerged victorious to some extent from his February trial, and claimed he was already being held up as a hero to those in the fringe tax protest movement as proof that Americans don't have to pay income taxes. "This case cries out for the statutory maximum term of imprisonment, as well as a substantial fine, because of the seriousness of defendant Snipes' crimes and because of the singular opportunity this case presents to deter tax crimes nationwide," prosecutors wrote in a pre-sentencing memorandum to U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges.

The two sides wrangled in court most of the day, with Snipes' team presenting character references from friends and family as well as celebrities, such as Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington. But, in the end, U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges said that he felt Snipes exhibited a "history of contempt over a period of time" for U.S. tax laws, and granted prosecutors the three-year sentence they requested. "In my mind these are serious crimes, albeit misdemeanors," Hodges said.