Al capone trial verdict

Coincidentally, the Hollywood actor Edward G. Robinson, whose hit film Little Caesar , in which he played a Capone-like gang chief, was in theaters, showed up among the spectators permitted in the courtroom. Deductions from losses are permitted only for taxes owed on winning wagers. Not one of them could name a single time Capone won a bet. Alphonse Capone. Attorney Green himself.

He acknowledged that a court had sentenced Capone to serve 11 months in prison from to on a concealed weapon conviction. Wilkerson agreed with the prosecution, which did not cross-examine the witnesses. Wilkerson again rejected his plea. With that, the prosecution summed up its case to jurors. He said the defense had revealed how Capone, right after his release from prison in , did attempt to pay his income tax.

He may be everything he is said to be, but do not for that reason find him guilty of something of which he has not been proven guilty. Attorney George E. The judge excused the jury for deliberations at p. They took eight hours to reach a verdict. It was almost 11 p. Capone, in his room at the Lexington Hotel, dashed to the court, and at first received relieving news.

The jury found him guilty of a felony charge for evading taxes in , but not guilty on three misdemeanor charges. Jurors ruled the same for and — guilty of a felony on count one, not guilty on the lesser counts.

During the trial, the prosecution documented Capone's lavish spending, evidence of a colossal income. The government also submitted proof that Capone was aware of his obligation to pay federal income tax but failed to do so. Verdict in United States of America v.

Alphonse Capone , October 17, Years later, just days before Capone's release from prison, O'Hare would pay the ultimate price for the leads he provided the government over the course of their two-year investigation.

While driving on a Chicago street, he was gunned down by two men in a passing car. In , Chicago's new international airport was named in Edward's memory. The first big break in the investigation came in the summer of when Wilson stumbled across three bound ledgers seized in a raid of one of Capone's establishments.

The ledger was divided into columns with labels such as "Craps," "21," and "Roulette. Building on the ledger evidence, Wilson collected sworn testimony from persons whose participation in a citizen's raid on a Cicero gambling hall had left them convinced beyond any doubt that Capone was the proprietor of the place. An even more significant potential witness was located by comparing the handwriting in the ledger with that on deposit slips from local banks. Investigators identified the likely author of the ledger as Leslie Shumway, the same man who signed deposit slips that turned up at a small Cicero bank.

Agents tracked Shumway to Florida, where they interrupted a breakfast at his home to offer him a ride down to the Miami Federal Building to talk to agents. Threatened with a not-so-secret subpoena and well aware of what Capone might do to someone about to disclose embarrassing facts to the government, Shumway agreed to talk.

In his affidavit, Shumway described the nature of the gambling businesses and stated that "I took orders relating to the business [from] Mr. Alphonse Capone. In April , Capone's tax attorney, Lawrence Mattingly, contacted Treasury and expressed the desire to have his client meet with agents to settle his indebtedness with the government. In response to the question, "How long, Mr. Capone, have you enjoyed a large income?

As he prepared to leave the room after the interview, he inquired, "How's your wife, Wilson? Capone is willing to pay the tax on these figures. Wilson filed the letter away. A year later, the letter became the trial's most contentious piece of evidence. Wilson, not a person easily intimidated, continued to identify witnesses and amass incriminating evidence. One of the last and most important witnesses to be discovered was Fred Reis, the named payee on numerous large cashier checks that Treasury assumed found their way into Capone's coffers.

Reis decided to talk after having four solitary days to think about it in a cockroach-infested jail in Danville, Illinois. He admitted, first to agents and then in testimony before a Chicago grand jury, that his boss was Capone, and that the checks represented Capone's net profits at his Cicero gambling hall.

With Reis's statement, prosecutors decided they had enough evidence to go before a grand jury. After completing his grand jury testimony, Reis was shipped off to South America for safekeeping until trial. On March 13, two days before the statute of limitations would have run, the grand jury indicted Al Capone for evading federal income taxes in Two months later, the grand jury added counts for the years to Over the three months that followed, Capone's attorneys met frequently with U.

Johnson to discuss a possible plea bargain. With witnesses to try to keep alive and with thorny legal questions concerning the charges, Johnson was willing to listen, hoping to get a two-and-a-half year sentence out of the negotiations.

With an agreement for the two-and-a-half year sentence apparently in place, Al Capone appeared on June 18, before Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson and entered a plea of guilty. Wilkerson adjourned court until July 30 to consider the plea. On the day before his expected sentencing, Capone told reporters, "I've been made an issue and I'm not complaining, but why don't they go after all those bankers who took the savings of thousands of poor people and lost them in bank failures?

Addressing Capone in his pea-green suit, Wilkerson announced, "The parties to a criminal case may not stipulate as to the judgment to be entered. There would be a trial. Wilkerson continued: "It is time for somebody to impress upon the defendant that it is utterly impossible to bargain with a Federal Court.

Concerned that thousands of hours of work was about to go down the drain because of a fixed jury, Wilson and U. Wilkerson told the men that he hadn't yet received his jury list for the Capone trial, but when he did he would call them. When the names on Wilkerson's list turned out to match exactly with the names on O'Hare's list, the judge met once again with Wilson and prosecutors.

The judge seemed curiously unconcerned. Capone, accompanied by his bodyguard, smiled at jurors as he strolled into court in his mustard-colored suit.