Letter from Attorney General William D. Mitchell to George E. Q. Johnson (24 July 1931)
The Attorney General approves the Chicago U.S. Attorney's proposal to recommend a sentence of two and one-half years if Capone pleaded guilty to the income-tax counts.
- Date
- 1931-07-24
- Kind
- case-file
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- NAID
- 12021808
- Rights
- A record of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Department of Justice, held by the National Archives at Chicago in Record Group 118. A United States government work, public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The National Archives catalog lists access and use as unrestricted.
A two-page letter on Office of the Attorney General letterhead, Washington, D.C., dated July 24, 1931, to “Hon. George E. Q. Johnson, United States Attorney, Chicago, Illinois.” It is signed William D. Mitchell, Attorney General. It opens:
This is to advise you that your proposal to make a recommendation to the Court as to the sentence to be imposed on Alphonse Capone has my approval. I understand the recommendation will be that on his pleas of guilty to the several counts in the indictments charging violations of the income tax laws he be sentenced to a term of two and one-half years in the aggregate, to run concurrently with the sentence that is imposed upon him under the indictment charging conspiracy to violate the National prohibition act.
The approval carries a condition: that if the court adopts the recommendation, “Capone will waive all legal rights to move in arrest of judgment or question the validity of the sentences or to take any legal steps to delay commitment.” The letter gives as reasons the uncertainties of trial and appeal, “the chances of disappearance of witnesses and loss of evidence pending trial,” and the delay of a year or more a trial would bring. It adds that the Treasury Department considered the sentence more severe than any other imposed in an income-tax case on a guilty plea.
Six days later, on 30 July 1931, Capone withdrew his guilty plea, as the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in 56 F.2d 927 records. The stored image is page one, downloaded from the National Archives catalog on 12 October 2026 and reduced in size; page two carries the closing paragraph and the signature.
