A court has reinstated a verdict against an IRS employee who threatened her arresting officers with audits, even though she had no authority or ability to carry out the threats.
The IRS employee, Eva Temple, was arrested on March 5, 2003, by two New York Police Department detectives for a prior incident of aggravated harassment against the employees of her landlord’s management company. She became belligerent, shouting obscenities and was restrained. In the police car, she assaulted one of the detectives and threatened investigations and audits into their tax histories.
She was initially convicted but the first count was dropped in federal court with the judge finding that Temple did not have the ability or authority to carry out her threats. That conviction was reversed in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who found that the detectives could not have known that Temple was unable to carry out her threats.
The full opinion is cited at United States v. Temple, 05-0165-cr.
