Al Capone concurrently. New lawyers hired to represent Capone were Washington-based tax experts. They filed a writ of habeas corpus based on a Supreme Court ruling that tax evasion was not fraud, which apparently meant that Capone had been convicted on charges relating to years that were actually outside the time limit for prosecution. However, a judge interpreted the law so that the time that Capone had spent in Miami was subtracted from the age of the offences, thereby denying the appeal of both Capone's conviction and sentence. Capone was sent to Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Upon his
Al Capone on Palm Island, Florida in Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami Beach. He never registered any property under his name. He did not even have a bank account, but always used Western Union for cash delivery, not more than $1,000. In an effort to clean up his image, Capone sponsored a soup kitchen in Chicago during the Depression. The protagonists of Chicago's politics had long been associated with questionable methods, and even newspaper circulation "wars", but the need for bootleggers to have protection in city hall introduced a far more serious level of violence and graft. Capone is generally seen