an assistant regional commissioner. With Swanson neutralized, Yablonsky was able in 1983 to get the help of the IRS in returning Conforte to the United States in exchange for testimony against Claiborne. A federal grand jury heard testimony against Claiborne in Portland and Reno, where the Conforte bribes allegedly took place, before indicting Claiborne on bribery, fraud, and tax evasion on December 8, 1983. In April 1984, however, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared, primarily because Conforte's bribery testimony did not hold up in court. Trial evidence showed that Conforte could not have been in Nevada to make one of the bribes because he was in New York renewing a passport while appealing his tax conviction. According to Swanson, "Conforte perjured himself consistently at the trial. His testimony was fabricated. I don't think there were any bribes at all. Conforte constructed the testimony to suit Yablonsky's needs." At Claiborne's second trial in July 1984, prosecutors dismissed the bribery charges and proceeded only with the tax charges, which did not involve Conforte. Claiborne was ultimately convicted the next month for failing to report more than $107,000 on his 1979 and 1980 federal income tax returns, money he earned as a lawyer before his appointment by President Carter in 1978. Prosecutors alleged that the judge had hidden thousands of dollars in attorneys fees from the IRS after he was appointed to the federal bench in 1978. On August 10, 1984, Claiborne was found guilty in the U.S. District Court of Nevada for tax evasion, fined $10,000, and sentenced to two years in prison. He became the first federal judge ever convicted of crimes while on the bench. On March 16, 1986, Claiborne began serving his prison sentence in a federal prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. He was there for 17 months until October 1987. Many lawyers and judges in the Nevada legal community regarded it as a case of selective prosecution. Swanson said that had Conforte not been brought in to testify against Claiborne and give him a bad name, the IRS would have resolved the judge's tax problems through routine civil proceedings. Claiborne long maintained he was too busy on the bench to pay close attention to his tax return, noting he never even looked at the document until his accountant brought it to him. "I asked how much I owed, and I wrote a