Prosecutors: Hatch squandered chance to address deal

Federal prosecutors told a panel of judges yesterday that Richard Hatch, the "Survivor" star convicted of tax evasion, missed his chance to make his case that producers of the show might have paid taxes on his winnings.

Prosecutors made their argument in a brief filed yesterday in Hatch's appeal case. The winner of the first season of "Survivor" is serving a 51-month term in a West Virginia prison for tax evasion.

Hatch's lawyer, Michael Minns, contends that, in the trial in Providence last winter, the jury wasn't permitted to hear his client's chief argument for why he didn't pay taxes on his $1 million "Survivor" winnings. Hatch claims that he caught contestants cheating on "Survivor" and that, to make amends, producer Mark Burnett had suggested that Hatch's taxes would be paid if he won the show's top prize.

Under case law, Minns wrote in his own appellate brief, Hatch should have been allowed to explain his beliefs, since ignorance of the law is a defense in a tax case.

But in the government's 59-page brief, filed in the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, prosecutors argue that Minns had the chance to ask Hatch and Burnett directly whether there was a quid pro quo deal to pay Hatch's taxes, and never did. Instead, prosecutors write, Minns only asked general questions about cheating on the show, saying he was offering context.

"The wound, if any, was self-inflicted," prosecutors wrote.

In an e-mail from prison yesterday, Hatch disputed the government's claim. "As you might expect, I believe the government is wrong or lying -- AGAIN," he wrote. "The original trial's transcript clearly reflects our efforts to present the key evidence, which was disallowed." Hatch also wrote that he has requested a transfer to a prison in Devens in order to be closer to his family in Rhode Island.

Hatch was convicted of three counts of tax evasion and filing a false tax return. He was acquitted of seven counts of fraud.

The court is expected to rule this winter on whether it will hear oral arguments in the case.