--- description: Oct. 17, 1931: Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion and later sentenced to 11 years in prison title: Al Capone Trial: Anniversary of Gangster's Conviction image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ada4f4b88c76d6d/69875fbdf887dc886ee8761c/capone.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Al Capone Once Spent $6,500 on Meat by [Jennifer Latson](/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Oct 17, 2014 2:30 PM CUT  A November 1930 mugshot of Chicago gangster Al Capone A November 1930 mugshot of Chicago gangster Al CaponePhotoQuest / Getty Images by [Jennifer Latson](/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Oct 17, 2014 2:30 PM CUT Here’s a friendly regular reminder of why you should pay your taxes: Al Capone, the Chicago mob boss known for making the city’s bloody bootlegging business even bloodier, faced trial in 1931 — not for the [dozens of murders](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/miami/peopleevents/pande01.html "undefined") he is suspected of engineering, but for the [$215,000 in taxes](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1017.html#article "undefined") he never paid on more than a million dollars in illegal earnings. Instead of a body count, prosecutors totaled the lavish expenditures that made Al Capone one of the flashiest figures of the Prohibition era. According to the _New York Times’_ account of the trial, Federal Attorney G. E. Q. Johnson harped on the extravagance of Capone’s $135 suits and $27 silk shirts — which, “[in the stress and passion of his talk](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1017.html#article "undefined"),” the prosecutor sometimes referred to as $27,000 silk shirts. The expenses got bigger: $6,500 spent on meat to feed guests at Capone’s nightly poker parties, $8,000 on diamond belt buckles, $116,000 lost on horse races. The idea was that Capone’s expenses would prove that he had once had the money that had gone unreported. The list went on, as TIME [reported](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,742429-3,00.html "undefined"): --- > “” --- But when, on this day — Oct. 17 — in 1931, the jury returned their verdict, Capone was found guilty of only five of the 23 charges against him. Both the prosecutors and defense attorneys were puzzled; Capone’s attorney, unsure what he was hearing, asked for the verdict to be read a second time. Capone, on the other hand, “[grinned as though he felt he had gotten off easily](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1017.html#article "undefined"),” despite the fact that the five counts still carried a potentially heavy sentence. It’s unlikely his grin lasted through his sentencing hearing in November, since the 11-year term the judge imposed was then a record-breaking penalty for tax fraud. The costs of Capone’s years of extravagant living caught up with him behind bars, where he suffered from dementia related to late-stage syphilis. By the time he was released, his physician concluded that he had [the mental capacity of a 12-year-old](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/al-capone "undefined"). He [never returned](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/al-capone "undefined") to gang life, or — at least publicly — to Chicago. **_Read TIME’s original coverage of Capone’s trial, here in the archives_**: [Who Wouldn’t Be Worried?](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,742429,00.html "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3485839/al-capone-1931/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3485839/al-capone-1931/"},"headline":"Al Capone Once Spent $6,500 on Meat","datePublished":"2014-10-17T14:30:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:41:43.851Z","description":"Oct. 17, 1931: Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion and later sentenced to 11 years in prison","url":"https://time.com/3485839/al-capone-1931/","keywords":["Crime","Mafia","Mob","Prohibition"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ada4f4b88c76d6d/69875fbdf887dc886ee8761c/capone.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jennifer Latson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ada4f4b88c76d6d/69875fbdf887dc886ee8761c/capone.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Al Capone","caption":"Al Capone","creditText":"PhotoQuest / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3485839/al-capone-1931/","name":"Al Capone Once Spent $6,500 on Meat"}}]}] ```