A jury convicts Al Capone, not of murder, but of not filing a tax return

For years, federal and local prosecutors had tried and failed to put Al Capone behind bars for the violence that made him famous. On October 17, 1931, a Chicago jury found him guilty instead on five counts tied to his finances, covering income from 1925 through 1929. The case rested not on witnesses to his crimes but on his own admissions about unpaid taxes, made during failed negotiations to settle with the government. Capone, the nation's most notorious gangster, was convicted on his own tax records…