A Different Conspiracy

The incident was familiar enough. A milling crowd of demonstrators, a stone thrown through a glass door, an angry scramble with authorities that led to the arrest of ten people by federal agents. The catchall charge--conspiracy, along with various related offenses --was not unprecedented either. But it was conspiracy with a difference. Far from being yippies or antiwar militants, the defendants were middleaged, middle-class white-collar citizens, and the cause of their anger was the Internal Revenue Service. In December, the San Diego Ten, as they would doubtless prefer not to be known, were duly tried and convicted for their part in a demonstration against Government policy. Last week, as they appeared for sentencing, some of them faced the theoretical prospect of 20 years in prison.

The "conspiracy" began last May, after the IRS decided that John Heck Jr., owner of the Heck Transfer and Storage Co., a small San Diego moving outfit, owed $9,500 in back taxes and penalties. Heck, 55, had been trying to come up with the lump-sum back payment. But after five months Internal Revenue grew impatient. Using their power to act without any court order, IRS agents simply seized six of Heck's trucks and some office equipment to satisfy the debt. Had Heck's company been a financially embarrassed major corporation, he might have been allowed to pay off in installments or under some other mutually agreeable settlement.

A few days after the seizure, about 80 protesters gathered outside the storage company office. It was Heck who threw the stone through his own door. The IRS had changed the lock, pending removal of the seized equipment. In the scuffle some demonstrators were shoved into the building and federal agents were jostled.

Angry at the crowd's actions, the IRS chose to bring the problematic conspiracy charges. Specifically, the ten were accused of "conspiracy to rescue seized property" and "conspiracy to assault or impede a federal officer." Conspiracy charges of late have proved tricky indeed, and the Government has been unable to make them stick in such cases as those of the Chicago Seven and the alleged Kissinger kidnap plotters. In San Diego the jury spent three days poring over the evidence before convicting the ten on varying charges.

One of those convicted, Henry Hohenstein, vice president of a successful real estate investment business, had driven an hour and a half from Redondo Beach merely to observe the protest for an anti-IRS book he was working on. Appalled by the conspiracy charges, he said he had never laid eyes on Heck before the day of the demonstration. After the verdict, he reports, contributions began coming in from all over the country for his defense. Said one sympathetic Texas woman (who sent $5): "Good luck. I've dealt with those bastards before but I always lose."

The San Diego Ten claim to be part of a grass-roots anti-IRS movement in the U.S. While it is growing more vocal, its strength is hard to gauge, in part because IRS, which is in the best position to know, prefers not to discuss it. One of the informal movement's contentions is clear enough, however: seizure without a court order violates due process of law. Hohenstein, who styles himself a fiscal conservative and strong civil libertarian, claims to be acting in the tradition of Thoreau and Paine. Says Heck, a conservative Republican who voted for Wallace last year: "Our founding fathers didn't throw out George III to have the IRS do worse."

Obviously aware of the emotional flames that would be fanned by stiff sentences, Judge Leland Nielsen last week announced, "I am not going to make martyrs out of them by sending them to jail." He reversed Hohenstein's conviction and ordered a new trial for him. Nielsen gave the others suspended sentences and probation for six to 36 months, plus fines ranging from $50 to $1,000. Meanwhile, Heck has sold his San Diego office to repay IRS and has reopened in nearby El Cajon.

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