Art Dealer's Bid to Avoid Prison Cites Trauma

Boone is scheduled to be sentenced this month after pleading guilty in September to two counts of filing false returns for 2011 for herself and her gallery. Federal authorities had charged her with reporting a false business loss andclaiming about $1.6 million in personal expenses as business deductions.

Each of the two counts carries a possible penalty of three years in prison.

But in a memorandum to Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Boone’s lawyers asked that she be sentenced instead to home confinement and probation with up to 1,000 hours ofcommunity service. Her troubled and unstable childhood led to mental health issues, a suicide attempt and drug and alcohol abuse, they wrote, and played a role in the crimes she committed. In particular, they said the poverty of her early life had left her fearful that, despite her success, she would end up destitute and dependent on others.

“Behind the facade of success and strength lies a fragile and, at times, broken individual,” the lawyers wrote in the filing made last month.

The lawyers, Robert S. Fink and Michael Sardar, sent the judge a psychological evaluation of Boone and more than 100 letters attesting to her character from friends, artists, collectors and other art-world luminaries, including Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei and collector and philanthropist Peter Brant.

Prosecutors, who have yet to file a reply memo, according to court records, declined to comment Monday. When Boone pleaded guilty to filing false returns for 2011, prosecutors said she had engaged in similar schemes in the previous two years.

Defendants routinely ask judges for leniency — requests that are often contested by prosecutors.

Boone opened her gallery in SoHo in 1977 and rose to prominence while showing the work of artists like Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A vivacious and sometimes imposing figure, she became a constant in the ever-changing art world, continuing over decades to show the work of younger artists.

According to her lawyers, Boone’s father died at the age of 29, when she was 3, leading to a childhood filled with “abject poverty” and grief. Her drive to succeed, they wrote, was fueled by a fear that she would “end up penniless, like her mother, and die young, like her father.”

Psychological examinations show that Boone suffers from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic symptoms, her lawyers wrote. They argued that keeping Boone out of prison would enable an important business, and employer, to remain open and that her strength of character was evident in her successful fight to combat addictions to alcohol and cocaine. She has not used either in 20 years, according to the defense memo.

Boone is “repentant and remorseful,” her lawyers said, and has paid $6.9 million in taxes, interest and penalties related to her 2009, 2010 and 2011 tax returns.

In his letter to the judge urging leniency at Boone’s sentencing, now set for Jan. 18, Ai wrote, “Through my contact with Mary I come to know that she is caring with a kind heart.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.