Contact: Red Hen Resources
Attn: Virginia L. Cropsey, J.D.
520 West Fourteen Mile #117
Troy, MI 48083 810/578-5899
e-mail: Virginia Cropsey

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Reports indicate an employee of a Boston Internet consulting firm shot and killed seven co-workers who apparently participated in plans to honor warrantless government searches for and seizures of the employee’s earnings, accrued and future.

The law, constitutional and statutory, requires a Fourth Amendment warrant, executive or judicial, for tax searches and seizures, but the IRS has routinely operated without them, provoking an outcry, producing litigation, and fomenting office stress that has now resulted in violence. "Without a valid warrant, no legally valid proof of a tax debt exists," said Virginia L. Cropsey, J.D., a graduate of Wayne State University School of Law and the University of Michigan, and author of an Internet newsletter and new website, http://www.getawarrant.com, that expose the legal insufficiency of IRS notices of levy.

"The Fourth Amendment accords protection to a person’s "effects," Cropsey says, "and that includes a person’s accounts receivable." The Fourth Amendment was inspired by the 1761 speech in Boston against the writs of assistance by James Otis, an attorney engaged by the merchants of Boston. British issuance of the writs of assistance, which are similar to the current IRS "process" led to the Revolutionary War. A young John Adams, later second President of the United States, heard the Otis speech and was inspired to draft a provision, Article XIV, for the 1780 Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which later became the basic language for the Fourth Amendment, Cropsey says. At the time of the construction of the Bill of Rights, Richard Henry Lee, Senator from Virginia, and an ancestor of Robert E. Lee, saw to it the word "effects" rather than "possessions" was used in the Fourth Amendment, so that accounts receivable, which would include the apparent shooter, Michael McDermott’s earnings, have Fourth Amendment protection. This means, and the 4^th and 5^th Amendment pre-judgment seizure case law shows, that a warrant is required, according to Cropsey. Additionally, wages are special property for purposes of pre-judgment seizure under the Supreme Court decision in Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp. You can’t seize property for taxes in this country pre-judgment without a sworn statement, says Cropsey. "Certainly the government should have to swear the debt is owed and demonstrate probable cause for these searches and seizures. The IRS has no business writing your employer about you and interfering with your employment relations without proper authorization."

Recently Cropsey showed that the Fourth Amendment’s "no warrants" clause was intended by the Framers to require at a minimum, an executive branch warrant for tax seizures. “I call it ‘all about adjectives,’” said Cropsey. “I read the case law more carefully than most attorneys, and noted that the Supreme Court said in its 1977 opinion in GM Leasing that a judicial warrant was necessary for entry into private premises for tax seizures. I knew from the plain language of the Fourth Amendment, and from research I did on the 1762 case of Entick v. Carrington & Three Other King’s Messengers, a British sedition case, and from other research, that at least an executive branch warrant was necessary for other tax seizures. I’m a bit like the kid in “6^th Sense” – I don’t see dead people, but I see something the others didn’t due to my careful reading of the Fourth Amendment’s 'no warrants' clause – I see executive branch warrants."

These executive branch warrants were held to be required for federal tax seizures. Pre-1954 case law exposed in a 1998 opinion in Williams v. Boulder Dam Credit Union by Clark County Nevada Magistrate Victor Miller held the executive branch warrant is required, Cropsey says. Cases concerning the issue of the warrant requirement are just beginning to make their way through the courts, she says. In order to avoid a Fourth Amendment test, the government does not cross the line and technically seize the property; it has not been using the language obfuscated case law says is required for seizure – "is seized and levied upon," according to Cropsey, who says she spent over 1000 hours researching the issue and who has 60 pages briefed on the subject in the Michigan Court of Appeals, as well as on the question of whether private sector employers are required to withhold wages without a signed wage withholding order in effect. "They used quite a few standard legal tricks. It was a textbook case of stealthy encroachment." The levy situation leaves banks and employers subject to suit on contracts, and without a defense that they honored a levy under 26 U.S.C. 6331 & 6332 since no levy occurs, according to Cropsey. Cropsey’s briefs show the pre-1954 case law was continued in effect by Congress under the 1954 Code. Since then, a consumer snatch-back line of cases in the Supreme Court makes clear that the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment requires sworn statements for pre-judgment seizure. These standards also apply to federal tax seizures according to the Supreme Court, Cropsey says.

Cropsey says her research also shows future earnings aren’t property under state law, and therefore under 26 U.S.C. Sec. 6331, the federal tax levy statute, so the IRS cannot reach future earnings with current levy process as they currently do.

"The situation is despicable; every member of Congress, every President in modern times, bears responsibility for allowing this situation to occur," she says, and encourages citizens to write Congress and the President and demand the IRS obtain the warrants the Constitution requires for tax searches and seizures. The warrant is critical to show all the necessary procedures and laws have been complied with to allow the government to seize the property, she says. "One judge stated he’d never seen anything like what my research exposes in 23 years on the bench."

"The IRS can’t get a warrant for these tax seizures because no competent authority can swear the tax debt is due and owing. The Constitution prohibits direct taxes without apportionment. The government is avoiding a test of the Constitutionality of the income tax by not technically seizing the property. It’s a double-end run of the Constitution, one the framers Fourth Amendment language was written to prevent, and one which must end immediately," Cropsey said. "The IRS has engaged in a calculated campaign to intimidate attorneys, legislators and others who should have reported this situation into silence – the situation is grim."