Adozen Michigan residents who tried to instigate audits of 18
judges by filing bogus reports with the Internal Revenue Service
were convicted yesterday on 67 counts of fraud, conspiracy and
tax evasion.  The case is one of several the Justice Department
has pressed against groups that deny the authority of the
federal government and advocate the use of financial frauds to
disrupt federal and state government activities.  The defendants
watched the last half of their 15-day trial on closed- circuit
television sets in their jail cells after repeatedly disrupting
the proceedings in Grand Rapids, Mich., before Judge Robert
Holmes Bell, the chief United States district judge in Western
Michigan.  Each day the defendants were in court they shouted
four questions that they believe shield them from all government
authority on the theory that the Constitution was voided when
President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the gold standard for
federal currency in 1933.  Donald A. Davis, the prosecutor, said
that the defendants