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Wesley Snipes ordered to prison for tax conviction

MIAMI - Actor Wesley Snipes was ordered Friday to start serving a three-year prison sentence for a felony tax conviction after a Florida judge rejected his bid for a new trial.

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“The Defendant Snipes had a fair trial ... The time has come for the judgment to be enforced,” US District Judge Terrell Hodges said in his ruling.

He ordered the star of the “Blade” trilogy to report to prison as directed by the US Marshal’s Service or Bureau of Prisons, but it was not immediately clear when or where Snipes would begin serving his time behind bars.

Snipes had already lost his appeal of the prison sentence stemming from his conviction in 2008 in an Ocala, Florida, court on three misdemeanor tax charges for failing to file income tax returns for 1999 through 2001.

In seeking a new trial, Snipes’ lawyer, Daniel Meachum, had argued that jurors in the original trial were biased and that the prosecution’s star witness had his own criminal problems.

At his sentencing in April 2008, prosecutors said Snipes, a resident of Windermere, Florida, had earned more than $38 million since 1999 but had filed no tax returns nor paid any taxes.