This guy is more a tax evader than a tax protester, but his trial strategy shares the brilliance of a tax protester scheme:
Ignoring appeals from family members, a judge called a Williston man one of the most "manipulative" defendants she has seen and sentenced him Monday to at least three years in prison for failing to pay and file his Vermont taxes.
Peter J. Quist, a 53-year-old human resources consultant from Williston who once drew a six-figure salary, put his head in his hands after Judge Patricia Zimmerman told him he would be going back to jail.
Quist was given a 3- to 6-year sentence during a hearing in Vermont District Court in Barre on Monday. He will also have to pay about $15,000 in state taxes that he still owes.
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Quist, who has been in jail for over a month, urged Zimmerman not to send him back to prison – a place he described as horrific. As he made a statement from the witness stand, Quist's voice broke as he recalled the experience.
"It has been a hellish one that has caused me to be depressed and suicidal," he said.
"I have witnessed unspeakable violence, drug use and hostility…," he added. "I will remember and loath that 48 days until I die."
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Zimmerman was not swayed by letters or testimony given on Quist's behalf, and she imposed the full sentence the state requested.
Zimmerman seemed to be particularly disturbed by Quist's pattern of deception both in Vermont and in Georgia, where he lived before moving here in 1996.
Zimmerman said Quist lied under oath during his trial last August.
"You committed perjury at your trial," she said to Quist.
And at the hearing Monday, Quist admitted to fabricating evidence prior to his trial last summer.
He said he sent a "conspiracy" letter to the Vermont Attorney General's office. The letter was written to look like it was sent by a rogue Vermont Department of Taxes employee who was trying to harm Quist by stealing his tax returns.
The unsigned letter was supposedly from: "An employee of the Vermont Department of Taxes and a Believer in Workers' Rights and Justice."
The "employee" withheld Quist's tax returns because Quist is a "union buster," the letter stated.
"I am strongly opposed to Mr. Quist's activities and I hope he and others like him are forced out of business," the letter states.
An investigator found Quist's fingerprints on the letter and envelope, and a surveillance camera recorded Quist going to the post office in Montpelier on the same day the letter was mailed from that location.
Last May, prior to his trial, Quist told the court that he, too, received a version of the letter. He used the "new evidence" as the basis for breaking a deal he had reached with prosecutors. The plea deal would have required him to spend 20 days in jail, which he could have served on weekends, according to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Schinnerer, who prosecuted the case.
