One of Gov. Beverly Perdue's judicial appointments had some tax problems.
Sherry Dew Tyler will be sworn in Friday as a judge for the 13th Judicial District in Bladen, Brunswick and Columbus counties.
But WWAY television reports that she owed back taxes:
When Governor Perdue chose her for the judgeship, Tyler had a huge overdue tax bill. With interest included, she owed the federal government about $76,000 in back income taxes.
"I had a federal tax lien. It's been a matter of public record for a period of time. My plan had been to take care of that. It was the right thing to do before I was being considered as a district court judge,” Tyler said.
When we caught up with Ms. Tyler outside the courthouse Wednesday afternoon, she told us she had just paid her overdue tax bill in full.
Tyler is the law partner of Sen. R.C. Soles.
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Re: Perdue nominee had tax trouble
Sounds like some folks in the 13th Judicial district are not real pleased with Bev or her appointment for District Court judge.
Bladen Journal
Controversial appointment
Al Capone, the famous mobster, didn’t pay his taxes and was convicted of income-tax evasion. Sherry Dew Tyler, an attorney in Columbus County, didn’t pay her taxes and she was appointed by this state’s governor to the position of 13th District Court judge.
We’re certainly not trying to draw any parallels between the lives of Capone and Tyler. They are obviously vastly different. We are confident that Tyler has dedicated her career to putting people like Capone where they belong, which is squarely behind bars.
But the crime they each have committed — tax evasion — is the same.
Whereas Capone may have failed to pay his taxes over a number of years as the crime boss of Chicago, Tyler failed to pay her income taxes for the years 2000 and 2001 — to the tune of nearly $80,000 including penalties and interest.
Although we don’t think Tyler should be whisked away to jail in Capone-like fashion, we also don’t think she should reap the benefit of being appointed to the bench, either. Those who wear the black robes and preside over important legal matters should be, in our mind, squeaky clean.
We understand there can be oversights, but nine years does not an oversight make. We are sure the Internal Revenue Service had notified Tyler of the fact that she owed them money over those two years. We can only wonder if those notices were ignored.
As an attorney, Tyler must understand the difficult position this puts her peers in.
How do you explain to a client who has broken the law that the judge they may be standing before also broke the law and, aside from paying the penalties and interest, not only walked away unscathed, but managed to be given a governor’s appointment to that bench representing the people of Bladen, Columbus and Brunswick counties?
And then there’s our governor.
Beverly Perdue, who ran a campaign based on giving her administration credibility through honesty and integrity, fell flat on her gubernatorial face when she made this appointment — only because she was aware of the taxes owed by Tyler and chose to all but ignore it, as long as they were paid by the time Tyler was sworn in last week.
What this boils down to, in our mind, is a campaign thank-you to Tyler’s husband, R. Mitchell Tyler, who was a fundraiser for the governor’s 2008 campaign, as well as a political nugget to state Sen. R.C. Soles, who is a law partner of Sherry Dew Tyler’s, with offices in Tabor City and Whiteville.
We hope that, in the end, Tyler’s tenure as 13th District Court judge is one of integrity, ethics and fairness. To do that, its ending will need to be far better than its start.