Out with the Old

Old school creationist and antievolutionist Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, were convicted of tax evasion, violation of laws against structuring withdrawals to evade reporting, and obstructing investigation of those crimes.

They appealed the convictions, their sentencing, the amount of restitution ordered, and the substitution of property for assets that would otherwise have been seized for the restitution.

The appeals court has ruled: “The convictions and sentences of the Hovinds are AFFIRMED.”

The decision of the appeals court is revealing as it step by step rebuts the lame arguments Kent and Jo Hovind offer as their reasons that various things should be set aside. It seems obvious that the Hovinds — and their legal representatives — were just as ignorant of the laws they sought to criticize as Kent Hovind has been of the science he sought to criticize. The complete cognitive disconnect that underlies the bizarre interpretation the Hovinds cast on the relevant structuring law is an example, where the Hovinds asserted that they could not be found guilty of structuring withdrawals because the government never showed them withdrawing more than $10,000 at a time, when the structuring law exists to provide a means to prosecute people who purposely withdraw less than the $10,000 figure where reporting is automatic. One might have thought that the persistent miscomprehension Kent Hovind showed concerning evolutionary science might have been compartmentalized, and that he might have been competent in reasoning about other topics, but the appeal shows that there are other deficits in his ability to think about unrelated topics, or at least that he retained people with such deficits and was unable to correct them when they put together his appeal.