Survivor (Richard Hatch) Certiorari Denied

[jcolvin2]

Richard Hatch of "Survivor" fame asked the Supreme Court to review his conviction and sentence for tax evasion and filing false income tax returns. The Court declined to review the First Circuit's opinion. S. Ct. Dkt. No. 07-1478.

http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/07-1478.htm

[Evil Squirrel Overlord]

That's cool because earlier today I learned what Certiorari meant.

Who says there is no serendipity?

[Paul]

Did anyone see the Question Presented for Review in his petition for cert? With a little more education, he could be a TP:

Does the trial court violate the Sixth Amendment
when it acts as a goalie for the Government, preventing
all potential scoring of exculpatory points, by running
interference with cross examination of key prosecution
witnesses, keeping the accused from telling the jury his
or her side of the story, and refusing testimony by the
key defense witness?

Could anyone honestly believe the Court was going to be impressed by this?

[Demosthenes]

Hatch is again seeking freedom
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, March 27, 2009
By Katie Mulvaney

PROVIDENCE — He bared it all as the Survivor television series’ first million-dollar winner, and now Richard Hatch wants to get out of jail — immediately.

The man America loved to hate for his cunning antics is asking the U.S. District Court to clear him of his conviction for tax evasion and release him from federal prison. If not, he would like the court to order a retrial or hear new evidence about his arguments that he had poor legal representation from Texas lawyer Michael Minns and is, in fact, innocent.

In a 40-plus-page motion filed this week, Hatch says he was picked to compete in the reality show’s first season for his “interesting lifestyle” and because viewers would be compelled to tune in to see his controversial behavior. Federal prosecutors, he contends, exploited those characteristics, manipulating the court and the media in what amounted to misconduct. They relied on “prevailing prejudices to unjustly sacrifice the truth,” he said.

He compared them to Mike Nifong, the disgraced North Carolina district attorney who pursued the Duke University rape case that was later dropped.

Referring to himself in his motion in the third person, Hatch wrote that his media-concocted caricature as villainous and manipulative unfairly bled into legal proceedings, wielding unjust influence.

Hatch also took aim at Judge Ernest C. Torres, questioning what motivated the judge’s decision not to allow lawyers to quiz prospective jurors about their views on homosexuality. His appearance before 54 million viewers on Survivor in which he was portrayed as openly gay and “unapologetically non-superstitious” set the stage for bigotry and ignorance, Hatch said.

His tax troubles, Hatch wrote, were not unlike those of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or former Sen. Tom Daschle. In those cases, each made substantial errors in filing their taxes, despite their positions and access to the best financial services. “These people have not been prosecuted for filing false tax returns nor for tax evasion. … In contrast, however, Hatch had neither wealth nor position, nor any accounting experience or knowledge,” he wrote.

Hatch, 47, of Newport, is serving his sentence in a federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va. He won the first season of the seminal CBS show and became infamous as the calculating and openly gay contestant who competed in the nude.

In 2006, a jury in U.S. District Court, Providence, found Hatch guilty of not paying the taxes he owed on about $1.4 million, including the $1 million prize he collected for winning the first season of the reality show. He was convicted of filing false tax returns and given the maximum sentence allowed after Torres concluded that he had obstructed justice when he “willfully gave false testimony.”

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction for tax evasion and his 51-month sentence in February 2008 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Rhode Island did not return a phone call yesterday.

[LPC]

Did anyone see the Question Presented for Review in his petition for cert? With a little more education, he could be a TP:

Does the trial court violate the Sixth Amendment
when it acts as a goalie for the Government, preventing
all potential scoring of exculpatory points, by running
interference with cross examination of key prosecution
witnesses, keeping the accused from telling the jury his
or her side of the story, and refusing testimony by the
key defense witness?

Could anyone honestly believe the Court was going to be impressed by this?

The "question presented" was doomed from the start. See Dryden, Kenneth W., "Hockey Metaphors in Petitions for Certiorari: The De Facto 'Icing' Rule of The Supreme Court," 28 Canadien Law Review 1983 (2007).

[jcolvin2]

Did anyone see the Question Presented for Review in his petition for cert? With a little more education, he could be a TP:

Does the trial court violate the Sixth Amendment
when it acts as a goalie for the Government, preventing
all potential scoring of exculpatory points, by running
interference with cross examination of key prosecution
witnesses, keeping the accused from telling the jury his
or her side of the story, and refusing testimony by the
key defense witness?

Could anyone honestly believe the Court was going to be impressed by this?

The "question presented" was doomed from the start. See Dryden, Kenneth W., "Hockey Metaphors in Petitions for Certiorari: The De Facto 'Icing' Rule of The Supreme Court," 28 Canadien Law Review 1983 (2007).

Hockey metaphors resonate far better in Canada than they do in the US. If even the Canadian Supreme Court was not going to be impressed by clunky hockey references, what chance did they stand in Washington DC? DC is not known as a hockey town, though Alexander Ovechkin may be changing that.

Someone should do a study of how baseball metaphors fare in US Supreme Court jurisprudence.