Taking down a Gangster
Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Aaron Youngquist was responsible for supervising the biggest case of his career. Alphonse (Al) Capone had taken over the Chicago mob empire of Johnny “the Fox” Torrio, who would be named by IRS Enforcement Branch chief Elmer Irey “the father of American gangsterism.” He had expanded the mob business quickly, earning as much as $878 million in 2020 dollars, with wealth estimated at $1.5 billion in 2020 dollars. Violence accompanied the growth of his empire as he eliminated rivals, but law enforcement personnel were unable to make any murders stick.
When on May 16, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 that “we see no reason to doubt the interpretation of the Act, or any reason why the fact that a business is unlawful should exempt it from paying the taxes that if lawful it would have to pay,” law enforcement finally had a way to stop Capone. The Secretary of the Treasury tasked Elmer Irey with the job of bringing Capone to justice. Meanwhile, in the so-called 1929 Valentine’s Day massacre, Capone lieutenants who were posing as police officers executed seven members of a rival gang in Chicago. In 1930, Capone was named “Public Enemy Number One” but believing he was untouchable, he failed to answer a grand jury subpoena, and was arrested for contempt of court, and then on a weapons charge.
While Capone waited out his sentence on the weapons charge in luxury in a prison cell in Philadelphia, federal prosecutors were making a case against him for income tax fraud. Federal agents found evidence of millions of dollars of income for which Capone had never filed a federal income tax return, claiming he had no taxable income. Capone was indicted on 22 counts of federal income tax evasion.
After an initial plea agreement was refused by the judge, Capone went to trial. Capone secured a list of the jury pool, and began to bribe or threaten them into agreeing not to find him guilty, but the judge was tipped off to the scheme. In a surprise move on the day of the trial, federal judge James Wilkerson switched the jury pool with a jury pool in another courtroom. Capone was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in prison and ordered to pay the current equivalent of over $3.6 million in back taxes. After misbehavior in an Atlanta prison, he was sentenced to Alcatraz for four years, followed by a stint in a mental hospital after he contracted syphilis and began to have mental problems. He died in 1947 at the age of 48.
Early legal career
G. Aaron Youngquist went to law school at the behest of his boss, the president of Minnesota Life Insurance, for whom he was a private secretary. He had to enroll as a special student because he had no high school diploma. Youngquist later recounted that going to night school while holding down a day job was a grind: he studied before his employer’s office opened, at noon, and then between his job and classes, which ended at 9:30. Youngquist’s facility as a stenographer allowed him to sell his class notes for 25 cents each, which paid for his tuition and books.
In order to become a regular student so he could sit for the bar examination, Youngquist was tutored and passed his high school equivalency test. Youngquist finished second in his class at St. Paul College of Law in 1909.
After law school graduation, Youngquist moved to Thief River Falls, where he had a hard time making a living, earning only $110 in six months. Youngquist was then hired by attorney Charles Loring, who would become a Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, to do stenography, bookkeeping, and some legal work, as well as cleaning the office as necessary. As Loring focused more on trial work, he gave other legal work to Youngquist who became his partner a few years later.
Public life
In 1915, Youngquist ran for the position of Polk County Attorney, growing a moustache during the campaign to change his youthful appearance and being supported by the Norwegian farmers because he was “dry” during Prohibition. In his autobiography, Youngquist describes the rough-and-tumble atmosphere in East Grand Forks in those days, and his work with police in conducting raids on gambling houses and trying a madam for keeping a house of prostitution.
In 1921, Youngquist was appointed Assistant Attorney General, trying many cases for county attorneys who needed trial assistance, and appearing three times before the U.S. Supreme Court on cases as well as arguing before the Minnesota Supreme Court. He also taught Criminal Law and later Insurance at St. Paul College of Law. In February 1928, Governor Theodore Christianson appointed him to be Minnesota Attorney General after the new Attorney General Albert F. Pratt, died suddenly.
In 1929, the Minnesota Republican Party urged Youngquist to run as their gubernatorial candidate for the 1930 election, which would be ultimately won by fellow St. Paul College of Law graduate Floyd B. Olson on the Farmer Labor ticket. Youngquist was reluctant to run, and was relieved when U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell, son of the Minnesota Justice for whom William Mitchell College of Law was named, convinced Youngquist to accept a position as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the Department of Justice. Youngquist had to be approved by then Senator and fellow SPCL alumnus Thomas Schall, and confirmed by the Senate.
Mitchell gave Youngquist the task of enforcing the Volstead Act, the federal law that implemented the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale of liquor in the United States. Because of corrupt and ineffective enforcement of the Volstead Act by the Treasury Department, President Hoover had transferred enforcement of the Act through the Bureau of Prohibition to the Justice Department. When Youngquist was appointed to what the New York Times called “the Dry Chief of the Justice Department,” the Times noted that Youngquist was a friend of Andrew Volstead, who authored the Prohibition Act, and was “dry personally and politically.”
His department was charged with enforcement of both liquor and tax laws in all divisions except cases in the Court of Claims and the Board of Tax appeals. Youngquist remained at the Department of Justice until 1933, having argued between sixty and seventy cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. His most well-known accomplishment was overseeing the trial and sentencing of Al Capone on tax evasion charges. In 1931, he represented the federal government in United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716 (1931), which affirmed the constitutional validity of the Eighteenth Amendment.
In his autobiography, Youngquist himself singled out several cases he worked on that were noteworthy. In the Blackmer case, a participant in the Teapot Dome oil scandals of the Harding administration had been indicted for tax evasion and perjury on his tax return. He fled to France which refused to extradite him. Several years later the government offered to reduce charges to a felony count if he would pay what he owned plus penalties and interest. Blackmer counteroffered to pay a million dollars if the charges would be reduced to a misdemeanor without jail time. Youngquist, however, decided that the offer should be rejected so everyone would know that the U.S. government would not permit a wealthy man to buy his way out of prison.
In United States v. Minnesota (270 U.S. 181, 46 S.Ct. 298 (1926), the federal government sued as trustee for Native tribes to recover millions of acres reserved to the Ojibwe, which was granted to the state of Minnesota when it achieved statehood. When the state argued that Minnesota had sovereign immunity against a suit by the tribe, Justice Van Devanter, who had been solicitor in the Department of the Interior, raised his voice: “Do you mean to tell us that the United States cannot protect its wards by an action in this court?” This so scared the attorney arguing the case that Youngquist was forced to take over the argument. Despite getting into hot water with the questioning, Mr. Justice McReynolds threw Youngquist a softball question and saved the day for the argument.
Later Practice
In 1933, Youngquist decided to return to Minnesota and practice law, urged by Judge Learned Hand that Washington D.C. was no civilized place for people like them to live. He joined a Minneapolis law firm led by Charles Fowler, and continued to practice tax law, including lobbying the legislature on important tax bills. Eventually he formed the firm of Youngquist, Comaford, Danforth, Fassett and Clarkson.
In one of his cases, Norwest Bancorporation vs. Benson, 292 U.S. 606, 54 S.Ct. 775 (1934), Youngquist represented Norwest in a case that went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court affirmed a lower court decision validating Minnesota’s Blue Sky Law and Insurance Commissioner Elmer Benson’s investigation into Norwest’s distribution of its stock. Youngquist also represented businessmen challenging Minnesota’s graduated income tax, though unsuccessfully, one of the many tax cases he litigated.
Youngquist continued to serve his profession. He was active in the American Bar Association Section on taxation and served on Minnesota State Bar committees as well. He was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court committee to draft the Rules of Criminal Procedure, which consisted of prominent academics such as the dean of New York University Arthur Vanderbilt and practitioners like SDNY U.S. attorney George Madelias. Battles between the law professors who focused on the rights of the accused, and practitioners who were attempting to draft practical rules prosecutors could follow were common, but in the end, the rules were adopted without dissent.
Youngquist also chaired Minnesota Supreme Court Advisory Committee to draft Minnesota’s Rules of Civil Procedure from 1947-1951.
Personal Life
Gustav Aaron Youngquist was born in Wara, Sweden, on November 4, 1885, one of seven siblings. His parents, a farmworker and seamstress, emigrated to the United States when Youngquist was a child, wanting a better life for their family. After landing in Boston, they first settled in Illinois and then in Minnesota.
Youngquist had to learn to support himself at an early age: at eight, he sold newspapers; and at ten, he was sent to his aunt and uncle’s home to watch their children in return for room and board until his father was able to afford to buy a blacksmith shop. At thirteen, he left school to work on a threshing crew, and then to make butter at a creamery, as well as bringing the water for the railroad steam engine and working in the fields, with some schooling in between jobs.
Unsatisfied with this kind of work, Youngquist moved to St. Paul and was hired as an office boy at Hayes Business College, which gave him the opportunity to attend classes and learn stenography and bookkeeping.
At sixteen, Youngquist got a job as a stenographer at the Omaha Railroad shops while continuing to peddle newspapers. Eventually, he was promoted in the railroad office and later served as a stenographer for the U.S. Army, taking night classes to become a court reporter. Eventually he was hired as the private secretary to the president of Minnesota Insurance Company, who urged him to go to law school.
As a young man, Youngquist was quite involved with sports, including running, wrestling, and basketball with the junior YMCA team in St. Paul. He stopped running in 1906 when he started law school but did play football with the Dayton Hill team thereafter. He also played lacrosse as a younger man, and later in life, played tennis and golfed in both Washington D.C. and Minnesota.
In 1915, Youngquist married Scharlie Mary Robertson, the daughter of a Scottish immigrant dental surgeon, and the first of their four children was born the next year.
Youngquist died on October 29, 1959.
References
*The quotations in this biography are taken from the references below.
Douglas R. Heidenreich, With Satisfaction and Honor: William Mitchell College of Law 1900-2000 (1999)
Kelly Phillips Erb, Al Capone Sentenced To Prison For Tax Evasion On This Day In 1931, Forbes, Oct. 17, 2018.
Minnesotan Gets Willebrandt Post, New York Times, November 2, 1929.
Autobiography of G. Aaron Youngquist
Minnesota Legal History Project, Citations to Cases in which G. Aaron Youngquist Appeared before the United States Supreme Court, 1925-1933.
G. Aaron Youngquist, Wikipedia.