Kent Hovind Trying To Undo His 2006 Conviction

Originally published on Forbes.com.

Over four years ago I called an end to L’affiare Kent Hovind on this platform as his co-defendant (Paul John Hansen) in his 2015 trial received a below guidelines sentence. Something told me he would be back. There is a new filing seeking to overturn Hovind’s 2006 conviction, with Hansen acting as his legal counsel.

Background

Just a bit of background for readers unfamiliar with Kent Hovind. Kent Hovind is an Independent Baptist Minister who, among other things advocates Young Earth Creationism. YEC is a hyper literal reading of the Book of Genesis. When you sum up all those begats and tack on seven 24 hour days, you get a universe that is about 6,000 years old.

Among the implications of YEC is that dinosaurs and humans must have coexisted. This inspired Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola and earned Hovind the sobriquet Doctor Dino (Hovind claims one or more PhDs, which his critics find a bit dubious).

In the nineties, Hovind also advocated what are called tax protester theories boasting on one of his videos that he had not filed a 1040 in decades. It was the way he ran the Pensacola Dinosaur Adventure Land that got him into serious trouble as he was found guilty in 2006 on a fifty-eight count indictment for failure to withhold from employees, structuring and endeavoring to obstruct and impede the administration of the internal revenue laws.

The 2006 conviction had him in prison till 2015 and also led to property forfeiture. Filings he made with respect to that property led to another trial in 2015. That trial made him a celebrity in the right wing conspiracy bubble including an Alex Jones interview. Sharp legal work and a bit of juror nullification saved him from doing further time.

Since his release in 2015, he has been going great guns on youtube and is building a new Dinosaur Adventure Land in Lenox, Alabama. I visited there, kind of incognito, earlier this year.  It is quite a place. And he has been promoting his innocence narrative.

The Latest

Kent has filed a motion to vacate his conviction. It is a challenging document to read, as it is informed by the sovereign citizen notions of Hansen. You can get more of an explanation beginning at 9:05 in this video.

The main argument is that there is no evidence that a proper complaint was brought before the grand jury that indicted Kent in 2006. Kent often mocks people for wasting time watching sports on television, but is nonetheless fond of sports analogies. The way he puts the flaw in the process, it is like a runner failing to touch first base as he rounds the bases after hitting a long ball.

There is also quite a bit about the limited jurisdiction of the federal government and Kent’s refusal to consent to it. The analogy there is that if he were just walking around carrying a basketball, he could not be accused of not dribbling because he was not in a game.

It’s Been A Long Time

When I realized that it was Hansen I briefly ran into at DAL, I got a bad feeling that Kent was still involved in sovereign citizen mishegas. Personally, I prefer card and board game analogies. Think of a federal court as being something of a bridge tournament. Hovind and Hansen are going there and playing Crazy Eights.

Regardless of that, the notion that a flaw in the grand jury process could reverse everything is an intriguing one. It was also familiar. I picked up the Kent Hovind case from the Tax Court decision in the case of his former long-suffering spouse Jo. Robert Baty, Hovind’s most indefatigable critic, began an email correspondence with him while he was in prison in which I became an indirect participant (Prison regulations limited Kent’s electronic penpals). Early on he wrote

If the charge in the indictment is wrong the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.  It is NEVER too late to challenge jurisdiction.  This is NOT over yet. 🙂

Unlike many of the claims, this had some level of plausibility, so I thought it would be worth reaching out to a real attorney.

Legal Analysis

Peter Goldberger focuses on “ appeals and other post-conviction aspects of federal criminal cases”. After reviewing the document prepared by Hansen, he wrote me:

When a federal defendant has fully served his sentence, including any post-incarceration supervision, the district court where he was convicted no longer has authority to undo (“vacate”) the conviction, except by issuing the extraordinary writ of coram nobis. Normally, any motion to vacate a federal conviction or sentence, for some fundamental reason not addressed in the original trial court proceedings or on appeal, must be filed within one year after the appeal time ends. And coram nobis is only available when new facts come to light that could not have been discovered earlier, entirely refuting or defeating the charges, or when a new legal principle (constitutional or statutory) is announced that applies to the case — and which is retroactive (most aren’t) — that shows the conviction or sentence to be completely invalid, not just for some procedural reason, but substantively. (A conviction invalidated under the Supreme Court’s June 2019 Davis decision, could be an example.) Nothing in this motion remotely reaches that standard; most of it is based on procedural misunderstandings, at best, or legal nonsense at worst.

Reactions

Roberty Baty’s long running Facebook site Kent Hovind’s Worst Nightmare , where you can find what Mary Tocco (Kent’s second wife) referred to as the “obsessed internet fanatics dedicated to revealing to the world their perception of Kent Hovind as fraud con-artist” had quite a bit of traffic on this latest development. Unfortunately, it seems to have become buried under other issues.

I have to thank Mr. Baty for alerting me to this development.

The most surprising reaction I got was from the person I thought of as Kent Hovind’s most trust adviser, Ernie Land. Ernie wrote me:

“Would “surprise” be a good comment. At least it would be a truthful comment coming from me. Thanks for sharing.”

In following the Hovind story over the years, Ernie struck me as one of Kent’s more sensible advisers, so his being out of the loop on this is not a good sign.

Update

The Court responded quite quickly. Here is what magistrate Elizabeth Timothy recommended on November 6, 2019”

“1. The “Motion to Vacate” (ECF No. 492) be dismissed because this court does not have jurisdiction to consider the motion. 2. A certificate of appealability be DENIED.”

The document gives the history of Hovind’s previous motions making it an interesting read.