Early Release Denied Nevada Judge Convicted of Tax Evasion

Former U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne of Las Vegas was denied parole from a federal prison where he is serving a two-year sentence for tax evasion, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The U.S. Parole Commission voted 8 to 0 Tuesday in a closed session to reject Claiborne’s request for immediate release from the minimum-security unit of the Federal Prison Camp at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., said Justice Department spokesman Joe Krovisky.

The 69-year-old former Las Vegas defense attorney was convicted in 1984 of failing to pay taxes on $106,651 in legal fees on his 1979 and 1980 tax returns.

The decision, for which there is no appeal, means that Claiborne will serve out his term, scheduled to end Dec. 22. If he is credited with time off for good behavior, two months would be cut from his sentence and he would be released next October.

In a letter notifying Claiborne of the decision, the commission told him that he had “seriously breached the public’s trust in that at the time of the submission of the fraudulent tax returns you were sitting as chief judge of the district of Nevada.”

Claiborne, who had refused after his conviction to step down from the bench and give up his $78,700-a-year federal salary, in October became the first public official in 50 years to be impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the U.S. Senate.

He began serving his prison term last May at the Federal Prison Camp after unsuccessfully appealing his conviction.

Claiborne, a Democrat nominated by then-President Jimmy Carter to the federal bench in 1978, testified at his Senate impeachment trial that he was the target of an ambitious chief FBI agent in Las Vegas.

The commission’s vice chairman, Cameron Batjer, abstained from voting on the parole question because he is a former chief judge of the Nevada Supreme Court and knew Claiborne professionally.