[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
Mr. Bertram, you can come up when you are ready.

[00:00:02] Speaker 04:
And please let me know if you'd like to reserve any time for rebuttal.

[00:00:05] Speaker 00:
Thank you very much, Your Honor.

[00:00:06] Speaker 00:
I would like to reserve two minutes for rebuttal.

[00:00:07] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:00:08] Speaker 00:
My name is Gary Bertram.

[00:00:09] Speaker 00:
I represent the petitioner, Gerald Harris, in this case.

[00:00:12] Speaker 00:
The case law is clear that when a criminal defendant tells his attorney who wants to appeal a judgment

[00:00:18] Speaker 00:
The attorney has to file the notice.

[00:00:19] Speaker 00:
It doesn't matter if there's no grounds for appeal.

[00:00:21] Speaker 00:
It doesn't matter if appeal has been waived.

[00:00:22] Speaker 00:
It doesn't matter if the appeal might make the case worse.

[00:00:25] Speaker 00:
The attorney has to file the notice.

[00:00:27] Speaker 00:
In his state habeas petition and also in the Section 2254 petition, Mr. Harris alleged that his attorney was ineffective because he failed to file a notice of appeal after Mr. Harris had directed him to do so.

[00:00:39] Speaker 03:
But it has to be an express instruction, doesn't it?

[00:00:43] Speaker 03:
It does.

[00:00:44] Speaker 03:
And so isn't that the crux of the problem, though?

[00:00:48] Speaker 03:
Was this an express instruction?

[00:00:50] Speaker 00:
Our position is that it was.

[00:00:52] Speaker 00:
It was in terms of what Mr. Harris said he told his attorney and then also the response of the attorney to that initial statement.

[00:01:01] Speaker 00:
The language, the specific language in his declaration is important.

[00:01:05] Speaker 00:
Mr. Harris said that after the state court denied relief, he, and this was exactly what he said, asked Miss Singh

[00:01:11] Speaker 00:
if she would appeal the denial.

[00:01:12] Speaker 00:
And I read that as him recounting.

[00:01:15] Speaker 04:
I mean, isn't that susceptible of just an inquiry?

[00:01:18] Speaker 04:
Is she going to look into it?

[00:01:19] Speaker 04:
Is she going to think about it?

[00:01:22] Speaker 04:
Rather than a command, I want you to file an appeal.

[00:01:27] Speaker 00:
He certainly could have been more clear in his description of that in his declaration.

[00:01:31] Speaker 03:
But I think that if that was what you- Isn't that the problem, though, right?

[00:01:34] Speaker 03:
So the problem is, if he could have been more clear and if it's not

[00:01:39] Speaker 03:
an explicit instruction, our case law says that we have to take a different sort of tact here.

[00:01:48] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, going back to the initial point, I think that if he was saying something different than I told my attorney to appeal, I think he would have said, I asked my attorney if we should appeal.

[00:02:01] Speaker 00:
I asked my attorney if there was something to appeal.

[00:02:06] Speaker 00:
This is a pro se defendant.

[00:02:08] Speaker 00:
And what he said is he asked Ms.

[00:02:10] Speaker 00:
Singh if she would appeal the denial.

[00:02:11] Speaker 00:
And while it is not as direct as I wish it were, and it probably is as direct as Mr. Harris, which it was, I think construing that liberally, as we should do with pro se pleadings, I think that it's sufficient to show an express directive to his attorney to appeal.

[00:02:29] Speaker 00:
If the court feels that that statement itself is not sufficient to show an express directive,

[00:02:35] Speaker 00:
I think what he said about his counsel's response to him makes it that way, or at least his attorney, she construed it to be that way.

[00:02:43] Speaker 00:
He said that in response to him saying that, his attorney said that she would contact his appellate counsel about this issue.

[00:02:50] Speaker 00:
Now we know, based on the little post-it as an exhibit, that she never contacted his appellate counsel.

[00:02:58] Speaker 00:
And the district court construed all of it, but especially construed that second

[00:03:04] Speaker 00:
second statement in his declaration to be that, well, trial counsel would contact appellate counsel to see if this could be appealed or if there were grounds for appeal or what should be raised.

[00:03:16] Speaker 00:
And I think there are two reasons why that construction is really not reasonable given these facts.

[00:03:22] Speaker 00:
First of all, she never contacted the appellate attorney.

[00:03:25] Speaker 00:
If counsel needed to contact the appellate attorney because she wasn't aware of whether you could

[00:03:30] Speaker 00:
Appeal in SB 620, and if you could, what the grounds would be.

[00:03:35] Speaker 00:
She never contacted the appellate attorney.

[00:03:37] Speaker 00:
And so if she needed guidance in terms of was this an open question and should we appeal and what could we appeal, then she would have contacted Mr. Warner, Mr. Harris's previous appellate attorney.

[00:03:48] Speaker 00:
and the post-it note that was attached.

[00:03:52] Speaker 03:
So your argument now, then, is that the attorney should have consulted with the client and clarified, and failing to do so was ineffective.

[00:04:04] Speaker 03:
Is that essentially the argument?

[00:04:06] Speaker 00:
The duty to consult was not really presented by Mr. Harris below in the state pleadings.

[00:04:11] Speaker 00:
But I think the duty to consult is important here in looking at the response.

[00:04:16] Speaker 03:
Well, but if it wasn't race, then we can't.

[00:04:18] Speaker 03:
We can't.

[00:04:19] Speaker 00:
That's correct.

[00:04:20] Speaker 00:
But the government keeps talking below in its papers about how the lawyer is not dumb.

[00:04:24] Speaker 00:
The lawyer is going to do what a lawyer is supposed to do.

[00:04:26] Speaker 00:
And so when we talk about a duty to consult, if counsel needed to consult with the appellate attorney to figure out what they would do, then she would have consulted with the appellate attorney.

[00:04:36] Speaker 00:
The fact that she never

[00:04:37] Speaker 00:
contacted the appellate attorney, shows that this wasn't some open question.

[00:04:41] Speaker 00:
Should we appeal?

[00:04:42] Speaker 00:
Should we not appeal?

[00:04:43] Speaker 00:
What should we appeal?

[00:04:44] Speaker 04:
I see.

[00:04:44] Speaker 04:
So your argument is the fact that she didn't go on to do the consultation means that she understood it as a clear instruction and not something that she needed to poke around at further.

[00:04:55] Speaker 00:
Exactly, Your Honor.

[00:04:56] Speaker 00:
And the second point with respect to the second part of this declaration about what his attorney said to him is that if

[00:05:05] Speaker 00:
If counsel needed to consult with the attorney and it was sort of left open at the time they spoke, it's not exactly clear when they spoke, but it looks like they spoke right after the hearing in the courtroom.

[00:05:18] Speaker 00:
If it was left open at that point, then for sure the attorney would have contacted Mr. Harris at some point later on and said, well, I talked to Mr. Warner or I researched this myself

[00:05:33] Speaker 03:
I understand the argument and I'm glad that Judge Thomas clarified your position, but if that's the case though, then we come back to the standard though, which is can any reasonable jurist believe that that statement was maybe unclear or that statement was not a direct or explicit instruction?

[00:05:53] Speaker 03:
Isn't that the problem that we find ourselves in?

[00:05:57] Speaker 00:
That is the standard.

[00:05:58] Speaker 00:
Could the state court have denied this on a different ground?

[00:06:02] Speaker 01:
So as I understand it, the state court said nothing.

[00:06:08] Speaker 01:
So what the district judge did in response to the motion for reconsideration was to consider these various hypothetical meanings that this statement might have made and said, well, if any of them are reasonable, then this wasn't an explicit instruction to appeal.

[00:06:29] Speaker 00:
That's exactly right, Judge.

[00:06:31] Speaker 01:
Is that what our case law requires us to do, which is to come up with all of the possible things this might have meant, so that the state court basically is better off saying nothing?

[00:06:46] Speaker 00:
Well, they have to be reasonable.

[00:06:47] Speaker 00:
They have to be possible bases for the denial that are reasonable.

[00:06:53] Speaker 00:
I mean, you could say that.

[00:06:55] Speaker 00:
You could say that summary denial opens up the universe of possibilities.

[00:06:59] Speaker 00:
for why the court may have denied.

[00:07:00] Speaker 00:
And the government took advantage of that and wrote that long, hypothetical California Supreme Court decision that included a lot of different aspects.

[00:07:09] Speaker 00:
But they have to be reasonable.

[00:07:11] Speaker 00:
And the point I try to make in my briefs and the point I really want to make today and the point that Judge Thomas made better than I did is that if this had not been an express statement at the time of the hearing when they had this, I think, brief interaction following the denial,

[00:07:29] Speaker 00:
of SB 620 relief, trial counsel would have acted differently.

[00:07:33] Speaker 00:
Trial counsel would have contacted the appellate attorney to figure out what to do, or trial counsel at a minimum would have contacted Mr. Thomas and said, okay, I've looked into this, we have no basis to appeal, and so I'm not going to appeal.

[00:07:48] Speaker 00:
The fact that there was complete silence from trial counsel to the appellate attorney and also to Mr. Thomas, I think is strong evidence that

[00:07:57] Speaker 00:
Council understood this at the time, the statement was made to be, I want to appeal.

[00:08:01] Speaker 00:
Mr. Thomas, he's been 40 years to life for a murder conviction and a gun enhancement.

[00:08:07] Speaker 01:
Mr. Harris.

[00:08:07] Speaker 01:
Mr. Harris.

[00:08:08] Speaker 00:
Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:08:11] Speaker 00:
It's all right.

[00:08:12] Speaker 00:
I apologize.

[00:08:15] Speaker 00:
And this, I mean, this was really his last stab at it in terms of state proceedings, state direct proceedings.

[00:08:22] Speaker 00:
And so it makes complete sense that Mr. Harris told

[00:08:26] Speaker 00:
his attorney wanted to appeal.

[00:08:28] Speaker 00:
What happened?

[00:08:28] Speaker 00:
Why wasn't the notice filed?

[00:08:29] Speaker 00:
I don't know.

[00:08:30] Speaker 00:
But I think the record is there's enough to meet that express directive standard.

[00:08:36] Speaker 00:
And I think the district court's conclusions of the contrary were not reasonable.

[00:08:42] Speaker 00:
And I have a minute 26.

[00:08:44] Speaker 00:
OK.

[00:08:44] Speaker 04:
Well, I'll put two minutes on the clock for your rebuttal.

[00:08:46] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:08:47] Speaker 04:
Very much.

[00:08:47] Speaker 04:
OK.

[00:08:54] Speaker 04:
Mr. Feinstein.

[00:08:59] Speaker 04:
Good morning.

[00:09:00] Speaker 02:
Morning.

[00:09:01] Speaker 02:
May it please the court, Deputy Attorney General Max Feinstein on behalf of the warden.

[00:09:07] Speaker 02:
Dishar's argument is that the interpretation of his phrases that he asked his attorney about an appeal or asked if she would appeal, he says that one interpretation of this is that that was an express directive to appeal.

[00:09:27] Speaker 02:
But that's not the question.

[00:09:28] Speaker 02:
It's not whether it was a possible interpretation or even a reasonable interpretation or even the most likely interpretation of that phrase.

[00:09:36] Speaker 02:
The question is, is there any other reasonable interpretation of the phrase?

[00:09:40] Speaker 02:
And as we pointed out in our briefing, this could easily have been petitioner asking his attorney whether there were reasonable grounds to appeal.

[00:09:52] Speaker 01:
Why would that be?

[00:09:53] Speaker 01:
A defendant doesn't need reasonable grounds to appeal.

[00:09:58] Speaker 01:
A defendant has the right to appeal, which is when a lawyer doesn't file a notice of appeal when they're instructed to, there's presumed prejudice even if everybody would agree an appeal would have had no basis, no merit.

[00:10:15] Speaker 01:
It just seems that we're being asked to parse a pro se litigant statement.

[00:10:25] Speaker 01:
I asked my lawyer if she would appeal, to which the answer should have been yes or no.

[00:10:32] Speaker 01:
And she said, I'll talk to your appellate counsel.

[00:10:40] Speaker 01:
From a pro se litigant, why is it reasonable to assume that he was saying, in essence, I have a right to appeal.

[00:10:49] Speaker 01:
I know I do.

[00:10:50] Speaker 01:
But tell me, is it worth it?

[00:10:54] Speaker 01:
Is there merit to it?

[00:10:56] Speaker 01:
Is it possible I would win?

[00:10:58] Speaker 01:
I mean, those aren't the things that go into deciding when a criminal defendant decides to appeal.

[00:11:05] Speaker 01:
They appeal because they have a right to appeal.

[00:11:07] Speaker 02:
Certainly could be.

[00:11:09] Speaker 02:
Here, I mean, we had a situation where he just had a direct appeal.

[00:11:14] Speaker 02:
He had raised his constitutional claims.

[00:11:16] Speaker 02:
The judgment had been affirmed.

[00:11:19] Speaker 02:
And he had had this limited remand for the imposition of a gun enhancement.

[00:11:27] Speaker 02:
So this was a very limited situation that he was coming back for.

[00:11:31] Speaker 02:
So asking your attorney, hey, is there any reason to appeal this?

[00:11:36] Speaker 01:
But that's not what he said.

[00:11:37] Speaker 01:
He said, would you appeal?

[00:11:39] Speaker 02:
Would she appeal?

[00:11:40] Speaker 02:
Is there a reason to appeal?

[00:11:43] Speaker 02:
Would you appeal in this situation?

[00:11:45] Speaker 02:
That is a reasonable interpretation of that phrase.

[00:11:49] Speaker 02:
And her response also indicates that it wasn't a directive to appeal.

[00:11:55] Speaker 02:
Because as the Supreme Court has pointed out,

[00:11:57] Speaker 02:
filing a notice of appeal is a purely ministerial task.

[00:12:00] Speaker 02:
So if your client says to you, I would like you to file a notice of appeal, then you go file a notice of appeal.

[00:12:06] Speaker 03:
Counsel, is there an analysis that we have to make here about whether or not this was an indigent or not indigent, but the level of sophistication of the defendant, is that part of the analysis?

[00:12:19] Speaker 03:
I mean, here we have someone.

[00:12:21] Speaker 03:
Here we have someone who was perhaps had an appeal before but maybe didn't understand that he needed to be as explicit with the particular words.

[00:12:34] Speaker 02:
The doctrine of liberal construction applies to a pro se's legal filing.

[00:12:40] Speaker 02:
So if they misstate the standard in their legal filings or if they ask for

[00:12:47] Speaker 02:
a certain type of relief when they should be asking for a different type of relief.

[00:12:51] Speaker 02:
If they mistitle a pleading, we will liberally construe that.

[00:12:54] Speaker 02:
We don't make up facts.

[00:12:57] Speaker 02:
So when they allege facts, this is what happened.

[00:13:00] Speaker 02:
There's no liberal construction in that sense.

[00:13:04] Speaker 02:
They tell you what happened.

[00:13:06] Speaker 02:
You don't get to then say, oh, they actually meant to say this because that's not the standard we're under.

[00:13:13] Speaker 01:
under EDPA, we are determining whether- Isn't your argument, we're gonna look at the words that he used, and we're gonna come up with all of these hypothetical things it might have meant, as opposed to what's a reasonable construction of what was said.

[00:13:36] Speaker 02:
Any reasonable construction, your honor.

[00:13:38] Speaker 02:
That's the standard.

[00:13:39] Speaker 02:
So if there's any reasonable construction of that phrase,

[00:13:43] Speaker 02:
that is not an express directive to appeal, then we defer to the state court's ruling, which is there was no differential performance and no prejudice.

[00:13:53] Speaker 04:
And what do we make of the fact that council did

[00:13:58] Speaker 04:
Nothing.

[00:13:58] Speaker 04:
I mean, there is some logic to the notion that if she did nothing, that meant that she understood that she was supposed to appeal rather than that she thought she was supposed to go and talk to somebody else about it.

[00:14:12] Speaker 02:
I'm glad you brought that up, Your Honor.

[00:14:14] Speaker 02:
We actually don't know what counsel did.

[00:14:16] Speaker 02:
All we know, assuming that we believe that sticky note that she never contacted appellate counsel,

[00:14:24] Speaker 02:
is that she didn't contact the public counsel.

[00:14:26] Speaker 02:
We don't know if she had another conversation with petitioner.

[00:14:29] Speaker 02:
He never alleges in his pleadings, she never talked to me again.

[00:14:33] Speaker 02:
He doesn't say that anywhere.

[00:14:35] Speaker 02:
So she could have gotten back to him and said, hey, I ran into the public defender as I was leaving the courtroom.

[00:14:43] Speaker 02:
I talked to him and they said, no, there's no issues here.

[00:14:46] Speaker 01:
Isn't that pretty much an unreasonable construction of his affidavit?

[00:14:50] Speaker 02:
No, that's actually the construction that we have to take because we are under Strickland deference here and we are assuming that counsel acted competently.

[00:15:01] Speaker 02:
So if there was an outstanding question, we're assuming that she got back to him on it.

[00:15:06] Speaker 01:
But was there an outstanding question?

[00:15:08] Speaker 02:
We don't know.

[00:15:09] Speaker 02:
He was not clear in his pleading and that's why he didn't get relief and stay court.

[00:15:15] Speaker 01:
Well, state court, they got an advantage here because they didn't say anything about what these words meant.

[00:15:26] Speaker 01:
What was a reasonable construction of these words?

[00:15:28] Speaker 01:
They just said denied.

[00:15:30] Speaker 02:
But they don't have to say that, Your Honor.

[00:15:32] Speaker 01:
That's why I said, don't they get an advantage by saying nothing?

[00:15:36] Speaker 02:
It's not an advantage, Your Honor.

[00:15:38] Speaker 02:
This forum is one for

[00:15:42] Speaker 02:
Guarding against extreme miscarriages of justice, the standard is set up in such a way to both respect the state court decisions and provide petitioners an avenue of last resort.

[00:15:56] Speaker 02:
And here we have a state court decision that was reasonable and therefore we don't disturb it.

[00:16:04] Speaker 01:
I just want to clarify, you agree that we don't go and look to whether there was any merit to the appeal, that the standard here for failing to file a notice of appeal when there's an express direction to do so, prejudice is presumed because the defendant lost his right to appeal.

[00:16:23] Speaker 02:
So Roe v. Flores Ortega sets forth the prejudice standard in this situation.

[00:16:30] Speaker 02:
They rejected

[00:16:32] Speaker 02:
and a per se prejudice standard.

[00:16:36] Speaker 02:
They don't make you show a reasonable probability of a different outcome on appeal, but they still make a defendant prove causation.

[00:16:48] Speaker 02:
So in this case, the petitioner still has to prove that, but for his attorney's failure to file a notice of appeal, he would have taken that appeal.

[00:16:59] Speaker 02:
And in this case,

[00:17:01] Speaker 02:
We don't have prejudice either because of California's process for seeking belated notices of appeal.

[00:17:11] Speaker 01:
You don't find those cases distinguishable?

[00:17:14] Speaker 02:
Canales v. Roe, Your Honor, I think is directly on point.

[00:17:18] Speaker 02:
In that case, this court held that a petitioner's counsel didn't take an appeal after he asked them to, but

[00:17:29] Speaker 02:
then he later failed to file a belated notice of appeal despite being warned by the court that he didn't have an appeal.

[00:17:37] Speaker 01:
That's the distinguishing, being warned by the court so he knew that no appeal had been taken.

[00:17:44] Speaker 02:
Well, we don't have those.

[00:17:46] Speaker 02:
We don't know exactly when petitioner found out in this case.

[00:17:50] Speaker 02:
He didn't have an appeal, but we know he did because he subsequently filed his claims in state court.

[00:17:59] Speaker 01:
So well, wasn't it too late by then?

[00:18:03] Speaker 02:
It wouldn't have been if he had alleged the proper facts.

[00:18:08] Speaker 02:
So if he had come in and said, I found out I didn't have an appeal.

[00:18:13] Speaker 02:
a month ago, and I am now filing this claim asking you for a belated notice of appeal, he likely would have gotten one.

[00:18:22] Speaker 01:
Under California law, there's no time limit?

[00:18:25] Speaker 02:
There is no time limit.

[00:18:26] Speaker 02:
You just have to allege diligence.

[00:18:29] Speaker 02:
You have to show that you acted diligently.

[00:18:32] Speaker 02:
If you do so, then California will give you a belated notice of appeal.

[00:18:37] Speaker 02:
But he didn't allege any of that in state court.

[00:18:40] Speaker 02:
He didn't show when he found out

[00:18:43] Speaker 02:
He didn't have an appeal.

[00:18:44] Speaker 02:
He didn't show what steps he took.

[00:18:46] Speaker 02:
And he didn't show anything that indicated that he really did anything between the time of his conviction and the time he filed his habeas petition 10 months later.

[00:19:00] Speaker 04:
Any other questions?

[00:19:02] Speaker ?:
No?

[00:19:02] Speaker 04:
OK.

[00:19:02] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much for your argument.

[00:19:04] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:19:13] Speaker 00:
Proceed.

[00:19:14] Speaker 00:
The government says we don't make up facts.

[00:19:16] Speaker 00:
We don't we don't need to make up any facts in this case.

[00:19:18] Speaker 00:
I submit that when the when the initials statements excuse me that he made to counsel is again I think we would jump that's that statement on its own really indicates

[00:19:32] Speaker 00:
the reasonable interpretation that he told his attorney he wanted to appeal.

[00:19:35] Speaker 03:
Well, and maybe.

[00:19:37] Speaker 03:
I mean, in my prior life, I was a defense attorney.

[00:19:40] Speaker 03:
A client tells me that.

[00:19:42] Speaker 03:
Maybe I look at that and think, yeah, I think that's a request for an appeal.

[00:19:48] Speaker 03:
But that's not what we have to do at this point.

[00:19:51] Speaker 03:
Are there any other reasonable or possible, actually, possible reasonable understandings?

[00:19:57] Speaker 03:
Right.

[00:19:59] Speaker 03:
And that's the problem here, though.

[00:20:01] Speaker 00:
I think that's when we go to that second statement, which is what his attorney said to him.

[00:20:07] Speaker 00:
Again, with the 40 year to life sentence, really the last shot on direct appeal he's ever going to have.

[00:20:18] Speaker 00:
If counsel construed this to be just a general inquiry, which is what the district court found, counsel that's not dumb, and that's the word they use over and over in the hypothetical, counsel that is not dumb,

[00:20:31] Speaker 00:
is going to consult with the appellate attorney or do their own research and figure out, do we have a reason to appeal if it was left open?

[00:20:42] Speaker 00:
And regardless of what the result of that would have been, counsel would have contacted Mr. Harris.

[00:20:50] Speaker 00:
There's no other explanation for the silence to Mr. Harris and to the appellate counsel.

[00:20:56] Speaker 00:
Then the attorney understood that statement to be

[00:21:00] Speaker 00:
a express direction to her to appeal the denial of SB 620 relief.

[00:21:07] Speaker 01:
I have a question about one of Mr. Feinsat's last statements in response to my question on the prejudice prong.

[00:21:17] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:21:20] Speaker 01:
He still could have filed a late appeal if he had only asked.

[00:21:26] Speaker 01:
Is that so under California law?

[00:21:28] Speaker 01:
There's no, like, you have to ask within 30 days of when the time expires or something.

[00:21:34] Speaker 01:
That he still had had the right before he filed his state habeas or post-conviction relief that he could have said to the state appellate court, I just found out my lawyer did an appeal.

[00:21:48] Speaker 01:
I want to file a late appeal.

[00:21:49] Speaker 00:
I'm not sure exactly what the timeframe would be for Mr. Harris to have done that.

[00:21:56] Speaker 00:
But we're talking nine months after the re-sentencing occurred.

[00:22:01] Speaker 00:
And, you know, Canales, the facts were completely different in terms of the contact from the trial court twice.

[00:22:08] Speaker 00:
Once a week after the notice was late, once five months later, he waited, I think, 13 more months to actually try to perfect the appeal himself.

[00:22:17] Speaker 00:
In this case,

[00:22:19] Speaker 00:
I think that Mr. Harris took very reasonable steps, which was immediately file that state habeas include in there the correspondence with his appellate attorney in terms of what had happened.

[00:22:38] Speaker 00:
And so I think that while even if that was an avenue that was available to him, he took an equally reasonable attack, which was to file the state habeas

[00:22:47] Speaker 00:
I believe, initially, in the California Court of Appeal to try to handle it that way.

[00:22:51] Speaker 00:
And so he did what he could and what he thought he should do to try to perfect his appeal, unlike Mr. Canales, who waited 18 months and did nothing.

[00:22:58] Speaker 00:
So I think they're distinguishable.

[00:23:00] Speaker 00:
And in this case, Mr. Harris did what he thought he should do, given his legal experience and given his background, to try to perfect his appeal.

[00:23:08] Speaker 04:
Any other questions?

[00:23:10] Speaker 04:
No.

[00:23:10] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:23:10] Speaker 04:
OK.

[00:23:10] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:23:11] Speaker 04:
Thank you very much.

[00:23:12] Speaker 04:
We thank both counsel for their arguments in this case.

[00:23:15] Speaker 04:
This matter is now submitted.