Saturday, December 27, 2008

DOJ Tax 75th Anniversary Party 1/7/09

DOJ Tax Division 75th Anniversary Party

Date: 1/7/2009

Time: 2:00pm AAG Kevin J. O'Connor delivers the Inaugural Robert H. Jackson Keynote Address

3:00pm Reception

Place: Great Hall, Main Justice (RFK)

R.S.V.P. to Jacqueline Jenkins at (202) 514-2901 or jacqueline.d.jenkins@usdoj.gov.

Checks: $25 made payable to "Tax Division Fund" and mailed to Department of Justice, Tax Division, Room 4141, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20530.

Provide: Date of Birth and Social Security Number for clearance.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Harlow Huckabee Death - 12/15/2008

The Washington Post reports that Harlow Huckabee, a DOJ Tax CES Alumnus, died on December 15, 2008. The WaPo Obituary is quite a good read. I have cut and pasted it below the URL.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/24/AR2008122402398.html

Obituaries Harlow Huckabee, 90; Justice Dept. Lawyer

Harlow M. Huckabee was a lawyer for the Justice Department's Tax Division and the IRS and became an expert on the insanity defense.
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 25, 2008; Page B06

Harlow M. Huckabee, 90, a retired Justice Department lawyer who was involved in several high-profile cases and who became an expert on the insanity defense, died Dec. 15 of pneumonia at his home in Alexandria.

Mr. Huckabee worked with the Federal Housing Administration before joining the Justice Department in 1956 as a trial lawyer in the criminal section of the Tax Division. He was a lawyer with the Internal Revenue Service from 1963 to 1967 and then returned to the Justice Department, where he remained until his retirement in 1980.

Along with Justice Department lawyer Lawrence Bailey, he prosecuted Elmer F. "Bones" Remmer, once one of the San Francisco Bay area's flashiest and most successful gambling czars, on charges of tax evasion. Remmer, who operated a lodge at Lake Tahoe, was in the public eye for tangling with Hollywood's "it" girl, Clara Bow, who lost $13,900 at his blackjack tables and later stopped payment on her check.

The Justice Department won its case against Remmer in 1951, but the verdict was overturned on appeal. A 1958 conviction stuck.

In 1960, Mr. Huckabee -- along with then-U.S. Attorney Elliot L. Richardson -- participated in the mental competency hearing of Boston textile magnate Bernard Goldfine, who in the late 1950s admitted to having given Sherman Adams, chief of staff in the Eisenhower White House, a vicuña coat, an Oriental rug and other gifts, allegedly in exchange for help with government regulatory agencies.

Goldfine, who was defended by prominent Washington attorney Edward Bennett Williams, was convicted of tax evasion and served eight months in prison.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Huckabee prosecuted U.S. Rep. Cornelius E. Gallagher, a New Jersey Democrat who left Congress in 1973 after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

Harlan Maxwell Huckabee was born Jan. 22, 1918, in Wichita Falls, Tex. At age 16, in the midst of the Depression, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and was set to work clearing timber in Oregon's Rogue River National Forest. Afterward, he worked full time for a Boston life insurance company while finishing high school at night.

He enlisted in the Army in 1940 and served in the 2nd Armored Division. He participated in campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, the Rhineland, the Ardennes and central Europe and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

He talked his way into Harvard after the war, convincing a dean that a high school dropout who got his diploma in night school could compete, because of his war experience, with the sons of the elite. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in three years.

Reentering the Army, he simultaneously attended Georgetown University law school, receiving his law degree in 1951. Assigned to the Army's Judge Advocate General Corps, he was stationed in Korea and Japan from 1952 to 1955.

He was lead defense counsel for Army Master Sgt. Maurice L. Schick, who was charged with murder in the 1953 strangulation of the 9-year-old daughter of an Army colonel serving in Zama, Japan. Mr. Huckabee relied on an insanity defense in the trial.

Schick was convicted and sentenced to death. Mr. Huckabee and his fellow defense attorneys appealed the conviction on grounds that their client was denied transportation and funds to be evaluated by psychiatrists in the United States. Although the appeals failed, Mr. Huckabee pressed President Dwight D. Eisenhower to commute the death sentence to life in prison. Eisenhower did so in 1960, with a proviso that Schick never be paroled.

The case led to Mr. Huckabee's career-long interest in the relationship between law and psychiatry. In retirement, he wrote two books and several law review articles on the topic and maintained a Web site, http://www.diminishedcapacity.com.

Mr. Huckabee's wife, Gloria C. Huckabee, died in 1997.

Survivors include three children, Bonney H. Sheahan and David C. Huckabee, both of Arlington County, and Stephen M. Huckabee of Culpeper; a brother; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.