Wesley Snipes Gets a Ticket to Fly

Judge allows actor to go to England and Thailand for work while the appeal of his tax-evasion conviction plays out

Wesley Snipes is free to go...overseas to work on some films, that is.

A federal judge signed off Wednesday on the actor's request to be able to travel for work while he waits out the appeals process pertaining to his conviction on tax-evasion charges.

According to Senior U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges' ruling, Snipes is allowed to go to London this month to complete postproduction on the horror film Gallowwalker and then to Bangkok in September to film the action flick Chasing the Dragon.

Prosecutors objected to what they called Snipes' vague estimate of how long he'd be spending in Thailand (eight weeks, the actor said), saying it's one thing to let him go to England for a week but another to allow him to spend at least two months "beginning a new project half-way around the world with an open-ended return date."

Snipes was sentenced in April to three years in prison for failing to file multiple income-tax returns but the court has allowed him to remain free while his attorneys appeal his case.