U.S. v. Kokenis

In prosecution on charge of filing false income tax return, Dist. Ct. erred in ruling that defendant could not present evidence of good faith through testimony of other witnesses unless defendant waived his 5th Amendment rights and testified at trial; Dist. Ct. erred in believing that evidence of defendant's state of mind had to come from defendant's own testimony. However, any error was harmless where defendant's proffered evidence of good faith was properly excluded because: (1) with respect to testimony of tax expert, defendant failed to offer any evidence that he actually had relied on expert's pooling capital theory to justify failure to report income; (2) proposed testimony regarding placement of certain income into drilling fund did not explain why defendant had failed to report fund as income; and (3) proposed evidence of background information as to natural gas business was irrelevant to tax issues in case.