Statism Was Alive and Well in Ian Freeman’s Appellate Hearing
Last Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, Massachusetts, held oral arguments in the case of Ian Freeman, the libertarian Bitcoin seller who the feds targeted back in 2019. In December 2022, Freeman was convicted by a jury in a U.S. District Court in New Hampshire of four types of offenses: (1) failing to register with the federal government as a Bitcoin seller and conspiring to not register with the feds as a Bitcoin seller; (2) income-tax evasion; (3) money-laundering; and (4) conspiracy to launder money.
After a verdict of guilty on all the charges, the U.S. District Judge entered what is called a judgment of acquittal notwithstanding the verdict on the money-laundering count. He entered that ruling based on the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever to justify the jury’s finding of guilt on that issue. Thus, that left the other convictions relating to registration, tax evasion, and conspiracy to launder money.
On October 2, 2023, Freeman was sentenced to 8 years in prison on the most important count — the conspiracy-to-launder-money count — and five years each on the registration counts and the tax-evasion counts. All the sentences were ordered to run concurrently — i.e., at the same time. The District Judge denied bail pending the outcome of an appeal and ordered Freeman to be taken into custody. He has been imprisoned ever since. However, he appealed his convictions to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. That’s what the oral arguments were about last Wednesday.
Last July, I wrote a series of articles analyzing these convictions:
The Unjust Conviction of an Innocent Man: The Ian Freeman Case, Part 1
The Unjust Conviction of an Innocent Man: The Ian Freeman Case, Part 2
The Unjust Conviction of an Innocent Man: The Ian Freeman Case, Part 3
How I Came to Investigate the Ian Freeman Case
In those articles, I stated my conviction that the 44-year-old Freeman is an innocent man — yes, a totally innocent man, a man who today is unjustly serving an 8-year sentence in a federal prison camp.
The oral arguments
I attended the oral arguments in the First Circuit Court of Appeals last week in Boston. Also in attendance were around 15 friends and supporters of Freeman as well as his wife Bonnie.
Each side was allowed 15 minutes to present its arguments. Freeman’s attorney went first. The government’s lawyer then presented his reply. Then Freeman’s attorney got some time for rebuttal. If you would like to listen to the oral arguments, you can do so via Youtube here.
Nothing that occurred during those oral arguments dissuaded me from my conviction that the feds have targeted, indicted, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, fined, and punished an innocent man, as well as permanently deprived him of a large amount of his savings.
In fact, based on the oral arguments presented by the government lawyers in the case, it was clear to me that the concept of statism is alive and well in the U.S. Justice Department and that the feds continue to inflict their statist wrath on Ian Freeman simply because of his fierce anti-statist views.
The conspiracy-to-launder-money count
In an appeal from a criminal conviction, the lawyer for the accused writes and files what is called an appellate brief, which sets forth the facts of the case and the points and arguments and case law as to why the conviction should be reversed. The government lawyer then files a reply brief stating why the conviction should be upheld. The defendant then has the right to file a rebuttal brief responding to the government’s reply brief.
Freeman’s appellate brief challenged his convictions relating to registration and tax evasion. However, his brief did not challenge the conspiracy conviction. In my opinion, that might well prove to be a grave mistake because it had the effect of leaving the most important conviction — the conviction with the highest prison sentence — intact.
In other words, even if Freeman succeeds on appeal in knocking out the registration convictions and the income-tax convictions, he is still saddled with the conspiracy conviction and its 8-year prison sentence because his lawyer did not challenge that conviction in Freeman’s appellate brief. Thus, even if Freeman wins on the registration and tax convictions, it’s my opinion that from a practical standpoint he has gained nothing if the conspiracy conviction and its 8-year sentence are still left standing.
From what I have been informed, the reason for not challenging the conspiracy conviction was that Freeman’s lawyer was up against a word-count limit that the Court of Appeals imposes on appellate briefs. Given such, however, it seems to me that there were other options: (1) edit and compress the arguments so that all (not just some) of the convictions are challenged within the allowable word count; (2) make sure the most important conviction — i.e., the one with the highest sentence — is challenged within the allowable word count; or (3) file a motion asking the Court of Appeals to grant permission to file an appellate brief that has more words than the rule permits.
There is still one possibility, however, of knocking out the conspiracy conviction. In his appellate brief, Freeman’s lawyer made what is called a “spillover” argument. It holds as follows: Since the jury heard all the evidence relating to the money-laundering charge that the District Judge later threw out, that evidence necessarily “spilled over” and affected the jury’s deliberations and verdict on the conspiracy charge (and the other charges). Therefore, in the interests of justice, the Court of Appeals should reverse and remand the case for a new trial, one in which the jury will not hear the evidence relating to the conviction that was thrown out — that is, the money-laundering conviction.
Moreover, the same spillover argument would apply if the Court of Appeals were to throw out the registration convictions or the income-tax convictions or both. Listening to all that “invalid” evidence that has been thrown out could easily have affected the jury’s verdict on the conspiracy count. Therefore, the case should be remanded to the District Court for an entirely new trial.
I find this argument very persuasive. In my opinion, Ian Freeman is entitled to a jury that considers only the evidence that relates to the charge or charges he is facing. This is especially true given the nature of the evidence supporting the money-laundering charge that the District Judge threw out. As I detailed in “The Unjust Conviction of an Innocent Man: The Ian Freeman Case, Part 1,” that was the evidence relating to the fraud, deceit, deception, and entrapment by the IRS agent Pavel Prilotsky against Freeman. As I pointed out in my articles cited above, there is one big reason why the feds would resort to that type of dark-side misconduct as a way to get Freeman — they knew that they had nothing else on him. After all, if they truly believed that their failing to register, income-tax, and conspiracy accusations had any merit, why would they have felt the need to resort to fraud, deceit, deception, and entrapment as a way to get him?
So, where is the fairness and justice of having the jury hear all that dark-side evidence to support a charge that the judge later rightly threw out, given its clear tendency to prejudice the jury on the other charges? Why shouldn’t Freeman (and everyone else accused of a crime) have the right to have a jury determine his guilt on a particular charge based solely on competent evidence relating to that charge rather than on invalid evidence relating to a bogus crime, especially evidence involving fraud, deceit, deception, and entrapment on the part of some IRS agent who is searching desperately for some crime to pin on Freeman?
It’s usually difficult to ascertain how the thinking of an panel of appellate judges is tending based solely on the questions the judges ask. But at one point in the hearing, one of the judges asked the government’s lawyer if he felt it would be proper to send the case back for resentencing if the Court did end up knocking out one or both charges — those relating to failure to register or the income-tax charges.
What is concerning about the judge’s question is that it refers to sending the case back for resentencing, not for a new trial. That implies that that judge isn’t accepting the spillover argument because the spillover concept holds that a new trial, not a resentencing, is in order. What t
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