[00:00:01] Speaker 01:
Okay, may it please the court.

[00:00:03] Speaker 01:
I'm Karen Landau and I represent Timothy Peoples and I am appearing remotely as you can see.

[00:00:09] Speaker 01:
I will watch my time.

[00:00:11] Speaker 01:
Before I start, I would like to withdraw the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and the plain error argument.

[00:00:21] Speaker 01:
So arguments C and D of the brief.

[00:00:25] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:00:27] Speaker 01:
So that leaves us with two arguments.

[00:00:30] Speaker 01:
The principle argument here, of course, is that the court abused its discretion in weighing the credibility of the defense witnesses and ruling that no reasonable juror could find that a, I don't know if I can call him, yeah, a corrupt police officer participated in the search of Mr. People's residence.

[00:00:57] Speaker 03:
Well, and just to be clear, I mean, you were hedging on your use of corrupt.

[00:01:03] Speaker 03:
It really doesn't matter.

[00:01:04] Speaker 03:
Your argument doesn't hinge on whether he was, as you say, corrupt or not corrupt.

[00:01:09] Speaker 03:
The question is, we have a factual dispute here about whether Omari was present.

[00:01:16] Speaker 03:
And your position is the district court is prohibited under the rules from weighing in on the credibility.

[00:01:26] Speaker 03:
whether your witness, whether defense witness was believable or not, that had to go to a jury.

[00:01:31] Speaker 03:
Is that your position?

[00:01:33] Speaker 01:
Well, it is, Your Honor.

[00:01:34] Speaker 01:
I mean, he was corrupt, but you're right.

[00:01:36] Speaker 01:
It doesn't matter.

[00:01:38] Speaker 03:
Don't force us to buy into more than we need to.

[00:01:41] Speaker 01:
We're in prison now, so there we go.

[00:01:44] Speaker 01:
But that's neither here nor there.

[00:01:46] Speaker 01:
No, but you're right, Your Honor.

[00:01:48] Speaker 01:
The point is that the court really, and the court even said so in its order.

[00:01:54] Speaker 01:
He said, you know,

[00:01:55] Speaker 01:
She's just not believable.

[00:01:57] Speaker 01:
She's strongly motivated in favor of her partner, which that's a given.

[00:02:01] Speaker 01:
That's pretty much the case with most most most witnesses are motivated in favor of one party or the other.

[00:02:08] Speaker 01:
But you know, she was impeached and I'm not I'm not saying she wasn't and there was evidence that he wasn't there.

[00:02:15] Speaker 01:
But there was her evidence that he was.

[00:02:19] Speaker 03:
So I guess I'm trying to give you the credibility that you have a reasonable argument that the district court overstepped on excluding this.

[00:02:28] Speaker 03:
You still have to overcome, and you heard a little bit about this in our prior case, you still have to show that it would have changed the outcome.

[00:02:36] Speaker 03:
And I guess that's where I'm struggling, is a little bit of a harmlessness

[00:02:43] Speaker 03:
position here, because most of the evidence that was brought in upon which the conviction happened was obtained well before Amari got involved at all.

[00:02:54] Speaker 01:
Well, let's talk about that, because so here's the thing.

[00:02:58] Speaker 01:
Mr. Peoples wasn't charged with conspiracy.

[00:03:01] Speaker 01:
And that, you know, I think honestly, I don't know why the government didn't charge him with conspiracy, but they didn't charge him with conspiracy.

[00:03:08] Speaker 01:
So he was only charged with possession with intent to distribute based on the cocaine that was found in his house.

[00:03:15] Speaker 01:
And the government, yes, had considerable evidence that he had been distributing cocaine, but there was evidence that it had stopped before the search.

[00:03:28] Speaker 03:
So what what evidence that he'd stopped before?

[00:03:31] Speaker 01:
Well, he as I recall, there was a break because Lorenzo Lee, who was the source of supply, had stopped selling.

[00:03:40] Speaker 01:
And so and I may be misremembering this, but that was my there was a lapse.

[00:03:45] Speaker 02:
So wasn't wasn't there 52 recorded phone calls where he ordered where he ordered cocaine?

[00:03:52] Speaker 01:
And he again, yes, I am not I'm not disputing that he

[00:03:57] Speaker 01:
And again, the point is... But he was reformed.

[00:03:59] Speaker 03:
That's your position.

[00:04:01] Speaker 01:
I don't know if he was reformed or not, but I think there's a real question whether this... Whether he was doing it at the time.

[00:04:08] Speaker 03:
When was that?

[00:04:09] Speaker 01:
Exactly.

[00:04:09] Speaker 01:
And that was the defense.

[00:04:11] Speaker 01:
That was the only defense.

[00:04:13] Speaker 01:
You know, there was no... I mean, you're right.

[00:04:15] Speaker 01:
They had the phone calls and that was his defense.

[00:04:19] Speaker 01:
So, hey, you know,

[00:04:22] Speaker 02:
It really comes down to you think that if this had all gone to a jury and they had submitted the question and his romantic partner had testified to what she said, which I mean the reason I think maybe the district court judge erred by effectively doing a credibility determination, but the reason he did that is because frankly it's hard to believe that anybody would have found that

[00:04:52] Speaker 02:
to be credible.

[00:04:52] Speaker 02:
So that brings us to the harmlessness prejudice issue.

[00:04:56] Speaker 02:
And so when you add that with all the other evidence, it's just really, I understand that's your argument that, you know, he was dealing drugs before.

[00:05:04] Speaker 02:
I think she even said that he was dealing drugs, just not in the house, keeping it out of the house, I guess.

[00:05:10] Speaker 01:
No, actually, Your Honor, she said he didn't deal drugs.

[00:05:13] Speaker 01:
She was quite sure he didn't deal drugs, but she said he used and he had a habit.

[00:05:17] Speaker 01:
And that was, in a sense, and if you recall, there was the- That almost makes her a worse witness though, right?

[00:05:23] Speaker 03:
Because we know that he was dealing drugs.

[00:05:26] Speaker 01:
I mean, even- Well, yeah.

[00:05:27] Speaker 01:
No, I'm not saying, look, she may not have been the greatest witness, but she was a witness.

[00:05:32] Speaker 01:
And actually, one thing I would point out is, you know, one of the things that District Judge said is, well, she waffled on her identification.

[00:05:39] Speaker 01:
But what she didn't waffle on was the identification of the dogs.

[00:05:43] Speaker 01:
And I thought that was quite interesting because they're quite differently appearing.

[00:05:47] Speaker 01:
She was very clear that the large German Shepherd, which was, you're laughing, but that's fine.

[00:05:54] Speaker 03:
No, I love how these cases turn.

[00:05:56] Speaker 01:
The large German Shepherd was the one that came in the house.

[00:05:58] Speaker 01:
If you look at the pictures of the dogs, there is a big difference.

[00:06:02] Speaker 01:
As a dog person myself, there's a big difference between a German Shepherd and a Belgian Malinois.

[00:06:08] Speaker 01:
But be that as it may, look, if she had testified...

[00:06:13] Speaker 01:
Look, of course, can I say he would have been acquitted, but there's a reasonable, certainly there's a reasonable chance.

[00:06:18] Speaker 01:
And again, it's a reasonable probability that the jury would have found he was guilty of possession or they might've believed, you know, they might've believed that the evidence has been planted.

[00:06:31] Speaker 01:
I don't know that you are, that if you are quite aware of the impact of the Antioch police scandal and how, how, uh,

[00:06:43] Speaker 01:
You know, this is not an insignificant, this is a, in California and Northern California in particular, the news of this event was, it's fair to call it cataclysmic.

[00:06:59] Speaker 01:
It has caused many jurors to, you know, to not credit police testimony in the same way.

[00:07:08] Speaker 01:
So the information that this officer

[00:07:13] Speaker 01:
was not only a member of the Antioch Police Department, but also was under indictment at the time for not only, not only abusing his dog to bite people, which was quite clear, but also fraud, all of these charges, which he was convicted of, that would have had a big impact and that was excluded.

[00:07:34] Speaker 01:
Now, you know, it could have gone the other way, but when things could have gone either way, then, I mean, that's,

[00:07:42] Speaker 01:
that's enough to show prejudice.

[00:07:43] Speaker 01:
I don't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have acquitted my client.

[00:07:47] Speaker 03:
No, you don't, but I mean I think you acknowledge.

[00:07:50] Speaker 03:
I guess really what this turns on is are we able to say that the recordings and all of the prior surveillance would not have been enough and I think that's where I opened up my questioning and that's what Judge Van Dyke's questioning is geared at is

[00:08:09] Speaker 03:
It seems like it was pretty overwhelming that any mistake here effectively was harmless in the conviction.

[00:08:16] Speaker 01:
Except that, as I said, there was a lapse between the end of the recordings and the execution of the search.

[00:08:23] Speaker 01:
Certainly, you're correct.

[00:08:24] Speaker 01:
The jury could have said, well- How much a lapse was that?

[00:08:30] Speaker 01:
You know, Your Honor, that was the one thing I did not check.

[00:08:34] Speaker 02:
If your argument is that there was a break, if it's a 24-hour break, it's not that compelling.

[00:08:40] Speaker 01:
And try to find that for you in rebuttal.

[00:08:43] Speaker 02:
We'll ask the government.

[00:08:44] Speaker 02:
Maybe the government will be able to tell us.

[00:08:47] Speaker 01:
Or provide that to you in a 28-J letter.

[00:08:50] Speaker 01:
I apologize.

[00:08:51] Speaker 01:
That is something I should have known.

[00:08:54] Speaker 01:
I would like to address briefly the issue of the jury instruction.

[00:08:58] Speaker 01:
I recognize the case in Hamilton.

[00:09:00] Speaker 01:
Obviously Hamilton approved a similar instruction, but I do think this case is that decision was issued after you appealed, right?

[00:09:09] Speaker 01:
Yes, yes.

[00:09:10] Speaker 01:
After I wrote the opening brief.

[00:09:12] Speaker 01:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

[00:09:15] Speaker 01:
Yes, but yes.

[00:09:17] Speaker 01:
But nonetheless, I do think this case is distinguishable.

[00:09:20] Speaker 01:
I distinguished it in the reply, but.

[00:09:24] Speaker 01:
You know this case was.

[00:09:27] Speaker 01:
The defense did not argue, the defense conceded that the evidence was legally obtained.

[00:09:34] Speaker 01:
The question was, was it trustworthy?

[00:09:38] Speaker 01:
And that was the entire defense.

[00:09:40] Speaker 01:
And the court's instruction took the scales in favor of the prosecution.

[00:09:48] Speaker 01:
And in fact, the prosecution in closing rebuttal, which is the last thing the jury hears, said, look,

[00:09:55] Speaker 01:
They're saying the evidence was planted and the court just told you everything was legally obtained.

[00:10:01] Speaker 01:
So that, you know, that distinguishes this case from Hamilton.

[00:10:08] Speaker 01:
If there's no further questions, I would say- I just want to be clear.

[00:10:11] Speaker 03:
You are withdrawing the career offender in the IAC claims?

[00:10:15] Speaker 01:
Yeah, the plan error.

[00:10:16] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:10:17] Speaker 01:
Got it.

[00:10:17] Speaker 03:
My apologies.

[00:10:18] Speaker 03:
That's my thought.

[00:10:19] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:10:21] Speaker 01:
You'll reserve?

[00:10:22] Speaker 01:
I'll reserve, Your Honor.

[00:10:24] Speaker 03:
That's what I was asking too.

[00:10:27] Speaker 03:
We'll hear from the government.

[00:10:37] Speaker 00:
Good morning.

[00:10:38] Speaker 00:
May it please the court, Elizabeth Beringer for the United States.

[00:10:41] Speaker 00:
The district court did not abuse its discretion, either in finding certain evidence was irrelevant at trial or by instructing the jury about its proper role.

[00:10:50] Speaker 04:
But rule 104 says, specifically with respect

[00:10:56] Speaker 04:
When the relevance of evidence depends on whether a fact exists, proof must be introduced sufficient to support a finding that the fact does exist.

[00:11:09] Speaker 04:
So it creates a carve-out from the rule that the judge decides other predicate questions like Daubert qualifications, etc., by a preponderance.

[00:11:20] Speaker 04:
When it comes to relevance, which was the issue here, and a predicate fact, was he present?

[00:11:27] Speaker 04:
The standard is whether sufficient evidence was produced to establish the fact.

[00:11:32] Speaker 04:
And her testimony does do that, even though it was heavily impeached.

[00:11:37] Speaker 04:
He made a credibility term.

[00:11:38] Speaker 04:
He seems to have done exactly what 104B says he can't do.

[00:11:43] Speaker 04:
Am I right?

[00:11:43] Speaker 00:
I don't agree without your honor.

[00:11:45] Speaker 00:
First of all, the standard, when we combine 104A and 104B, reading it with Huddleston, is that the court has to find whether a reasonable jury could find the conditional fact by a preponderance of the evidence.

[00:12:00] Speaker 00:
necessarily in that rule, the district court must act as a gatekeeper and determine the reliability of evidence under 104A.

[00:12:08] Speaker 04:
And make credibility determinations?

[00:12:10] Speaker 00:
I don't think that's what happened, Your Honor.

[00:12:12] Speaker 04:
That's what he's saying.

[00:12:13] Speaker 02:
But if he did make a credibility determination, you would agree that's improper?

[00:12:17] Speaker 00:
In the sense that the court was acting as a gatekeeper, but let me just explain.

[00:12:23] Speaker 00:
It is inherently, when you look at what a reasonable jury could find by preponderance of evidence, the court must assess the reliability of the evidence.

[00:12:32] Speaker 04:
And in this case... But what he said was, you know, Alan demonstrated strong bias in favor of peoples and against the government.

[00:12:39] Speaker 04:
Her identification of Amiri as having been at the scene of the search was shaky at best and subject to impeachment.

[00:12:46] Speaker 04:
This is fact-finding.

[00:12:48] Speaker 04:
He's weighing the evidence.

[00:12:49] Speaker 00:
I don't agree.

[00:12:49] Speaker 00:
I don't agree with that, Your Honour, and the reason is, is yes, in a vacuum.

[00:12:53] Speaker 00:
If we had this evidence in a vacuum, I would 100% agree with you, but it's not in a vacuum.

[00:12:58] Speaker 00:
Amiri could not be in two places at one time.

[00:13:01] Speaker 00:
He, according to the dispatch records, according to his own text messages from the time, he was at Lee's house.

[00:13:10] Speaker 00:
And he cannot be at Lee's house and at people's house.

[00:13:13] Speaker 03:
Hold on.

[00:13:14] Speaker 03:
I mean, there's evidence, there's two pieces of evidence here.

[00:13:18] Speaker 03:
One is the record that he was

[00:13:20] Speaker 03:
at this house, and then there were the text messages that came in later that said he was at another house.

[00:13:26] Speaker 03:
One of those has to be true.

[00:13:27] Speaker 00:
I agree.

[00:13:36] Speaker 00:
pretty strong evidence that he's at the Amiri house.

[00:13:38] Speaker 02:
Let me give you a little counterfactual.

[00:13:40] Speaker 02:
Instead of his romantic partner, let's say it was his boss.

[00:13:43] Speaker 02:
So you had all the same evidence in the case, but you just replace her with this Amiri, whatever his name is, his boss, and he says, yeah, he was there.

[00:13:52] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, you still have the problem of Amiri can't be in two places at one time.

[00:13:55] Speaker 03:
Right.

[00:13:56] Speaker 03:
But the question is, which place was he in?

[00:13:58] Speaker 03:
And I'm with you.

[00:14:00] Speaker 03:
90% chance you're right.

[00:14:03] Speaker 00:
Well, it's not just .

[00:14:04] Speaker 00:
.

[00:14:04] Speaker 00:
.

[00:14:04] Speaker 03:
And the district court seemed to say, 90 percent's good enough.

[00:14:06] Speaker 00:
It's not just .

[00:14:08] Speaker 00:
.

[00:14:08] Speaker 00:
.

[00:14:08] Speaker 00:
I mean, 104A must have some meaningful role.

[00:14:12] Speaker 04:
It can't .

[00:14:12] Speaker 04:
.

[00:14:12] Speaker 04:
.

[00:14:13] Speaker 04:
It does.

[00:14:13] Speaker 04:
On issues like Daubert, whether or not you're a qualified expert, the judge makes the decision.

[00:14:19] Speaker 04:
But when it comes to questions of relevance, it's just, could it be found?

[00:14:24] Speaker 04:
Because otherwise, the judge is going to take over the whole trial and decide the issues.

[00:14:28] Speaker 00:
But this is not relevance.

[00:14:28] Speaker 00:
This is not relevance.

[00:14:29] Speaker 00:
This is conditional relevance.

[00:14:31] Speaker 00:
And 104B

[00:14:33] Speaker 00:
Has to be read in conjunction with 104 a where the court performs the same gatekeeper role when analyzing his job That's huddleston huddleston says the judge is the gatekeeper and has to decide what a reasonable jury could find by preponderance of the evidence But even if even if I mean I I agree that the court held a suppression here and was willing isn't hard is this where you're going harmlessness

[00:14:56] Speaker 00:
Well, not only based on the strength of the evidence, which the court has targeted, and it's my friend on the other side.

[00:15:02] Speaker 03:
And by the way, just to put a pin in, at some point, can you please address the time?

[00:15:08] Speaker 00:
Sure, yes.

[00:15:09] Speaker 00:
Because apparently he was reformed and he wasn't doing the same thing.

[00:15:12] Speaker 00:
This is from 1SER6.

[00:15:13] Speaker 00:
It lays out the days.

[00:15:14] Speaker 00:
There's three 30-day periods where the wiretap happened.

[00:15:18] Speaker 00:
All three 30-day periods, which were the last one ended on February 17.

[00:15:23] Speaker 00:
The search was on April 30.

[00:15:26] Speaker 00:
But all three of those, he ordered kilos of cocaine every one to two days.

[00:15:30] Speaker 00:
So you take a snapshot of three 30-day periods within the year, all of them were consistent.

[00:15:35] Speaker 00:
So and I don't remember.

[00:15:37] Speaker 00:
Is that what I'm hearing as it was our two-week period after the end of the it was about ten weeks ten weeks from the last but Importantly I just so there was ten weeks in which he might not have been Possessing so he admitted to the officers when he arrested that he bought and sold cocaine and never claimed that the drugs in his house weren't his there was also an encrusted a cocaine encrusted grinder found in the house which Alan put in the house

[00:16:01] Speaker 00:
before the police ever entered.

[00:16:03] Speaker 00:
So, I mean, in addition to the wealth of evidence, the 50 calls and the 330 day periods,

[00:16:08] Speaker 00:
The surveillance showing the delivery to his house, the drugs in the kitchen, cocaine residue.

[00:16:13] Speaker 00:
He still had $15,000 of cash in his house, which certainly shows he was still in the active process of drug dealing.

[00:16:19] Speaker 00:
Two officers testified that he ran towards the kitchen when they breached the entry.

[00:16:24] Speaker 00:
So he was running to where the drugs were.

[00:16:26] Speaker 00:
The encrusted grinder, of course, that Miss Allen put in the house.

[00:16:29] Speaker 00:
He made post-trial statements, never claimed that those weren't my drugs, which would seem natural for him to say if they weren't.

[00:16:35] Speaker 00:
And then he admitted at trial that he bought and sold drugs.

[00:16:38] Speaker 00:
But in addition to that harmlessness ground, the overwhelming evidence, there's this other harmlessness ground.

[00:16:44] Speaker 00:
And that is that there was this independent legal infirmity under 403, is that not only did we have, even if that evidence had come in, Ms.

[00:16:53] Speaker 00:
Allen says he was at this house.

[00:16:55] Speaker 00:
They would have had to play the entire suppression hearing, whatever happened at the evidentiary hearing at the trial.

[00:17:01] Speaker 00:
So we have a whole day of just establishing he was at the house.

[00:17:04] Speaker 00:
But we also have to establish that he planted the drugs, which that would just be conjecture.

[00:17:11] Speaker 00:
Nothing in his past showed that he planted drugs.

[00:17:14] Speaker 00:
So I just want to tell you that he was convicted, Amiri, after a 10-day trial.

[00:17:20] Speaker 00:
And this particular defendant was convicted after an 8-day trial.

[00:17:22] Speaker 00:
So we're going to be basically grafting on that 10-day police corruption trial

[00:17:28] Speaker 00:
onto this eight-day trial in order to establish that Amiri, in addition to being president of the scene, also planted the drug.

[00:17:35] Speaker 00:
So as the government argued below, this was a classic waste of time in confusing the issues in this particular case.

[00:17:43] Speaker 00:
So if there are no further questions about that, I'm going to move on to the jury instruction issue.

[00:17:51] Speaker 03:
And, of course, as my friend- Does Hamilton, I mean, doesn't Hamilton just control this?

[00:17:56] Speaker 00:
I believe it does, Your Honor, and it does.

[00:17:57] Speaker 00:
And I also want to just give the, I filed a 28-J last night.

[00:18:01] Speaker 00:
I'm sorry for the untimely.

[00:18:03] Speaker 00:
I know the court probably hasn't had a time to review it.

[00:18:05] Speaker 00:
It just came out on Friday over the holiday weekend, but I also feel like Hamilton in conjunction with that new case.

[00:18:11] Speaker 00:
Denclow, it's pretty, this is a foreclosed issue.

[00:18:15] Speaker 00:
In addition to Hamilton, this instruction was necessary.

[00:18:19] Speaker 00:
I just want to give,

[00:18:21] Speaker 00:
the court a little bit of context about this case that the jury had to be told that it was not their job to decide whether the evidence was illegally obtained based on the defendant's defense in this case, which suggested that the execution of the search and the recording

[00:18:35] Speaker 00:
of the confession was offensive or illegal.

[00:18:38] Speaker 00:
The defense had sought to suppress this evidence under the Fourth Amendment, claiming it was unreasonable, and then in the opening statement raised this again.

[00:18:47] Speaker 00:
Of course, the government objects and said this was already dealt with.

[00:18:50] Speaker 00:
This has been dealt with in the suppression hearing.

[00:18:53] Speaker 00:
And the court says, well, I'm going to let it in, but am I going to let it in for bias only?

[00:18:57] Speaker 00:
But it was very overlapping, and it was confusing.

[00:19:00] Speaker 00:
Even though it was framed as bias at trial, it overlapped with the suppression issue and could be interpreted as inviting the jury to speculate about the legality of the evidence.

[00:19:11] Speaker 00:
So much like this court's decision in Dengklau,

[00:19:14] Speaker 00:
The court had these competing goals that it had to navigate in order to tell the jury its appropriate lane and what it should be deciding, what it shouldn't be deciding.

[00:19:25] Speaker 00:
And the defendant agreed.

[00:19:29] Speaker 00:
I know that there's been a lot of talk in the briefs about evidence planting being the defense, but that was sort of been a mutation of what the defense was at trial.

[00:19:37] Speaker 00:
It really was about an attack on the reliability of the evidence and

[00:19:41] Speaker 00:
The defendant agreed at the charging conference.

[00:19:44] Speaker 00:
I want to point out at 6ER 1399 to 1401 that there was a difference between obtaining the evidence illegally or improperly.

[00:19:52] Speaker 00:
The court attempted to make sure the defendant could argue that improper tainting by taking out the government's proposed improperness and just focusing on the illegality and also added an additional instruction there that could focus on the weight of the evidence at the defendant's request.

[00:20:09] Speaker 00:
So the court was really trying to make sure both that the jury would not improperly use the evidence, as well as that the defendant could continue to argue his theory of the defense.

[00:20:21] Speaker 00:
The evidence planting was mentioned for the first time in the government's rebuttal argument, where it's castigated the defense argument as one of evidence planting.

[00:20:31] Speaker 00:
But that was never raised by the defense at trial.

[00:20:38] Speaker 00:
I just want to clarify a couple other things from the reply brief is that it was argued that the government used the instruction improperly to discuss the evidence planting, but I did want to point the court to the part of the record.

[00:20:52] Speaker 00:
It's on 6 ER 1534 where it discusses when the prosecutor reads the instruction with regard to people.

[00:21:00] Speaker 00:
And my reading of it is the instructions relating to that first paragraph on 1534 where the prosecutor says, ignore all the distractions.

[00:21:09] Speaker 00:
He wants to talk about a lot of things other than the fact that it was cocaine on the kitchen counter.

[00:21:13] Speaker 00:
And what are those other things?

[00:21:14] Speaker 00:
What are those distractions?

[00:21:16] Speaker 00:
That is the execution of the search.

[00:21:18] Speaker 00:
So I believe that the prosecutor's comments when read in context were talking about,

[00:21:22] Speaker 00:
the execution of the search.

[00:21:24] Speaker 00:
But even if the court were to find, contrary to the case law in Hamilton, that the instruction was improper, any error would be harmless as in Hamilton because the jury was also instructed that Mr. Peoples had to know and have awareness, knowingly possess the drugs.

[00:21:43] Speaker 00:
So even if there was some confusion about

[00:21:45] Speaker 00:
The instruction touching upon his defense of evidence planting, it still had to find he knew.

[00:21:50] Speaker 00:
And if the evidence had been planted or any juror believed that the evidence had been planted, they couldn't find that he knew and knowingly possessed drugs that were planted in his home.

[00:22:00] Speaker 00:
So if the court doesn't have any further questions, I would ask you to affirm the conviction and sentence in this case.

[00:22:06] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:22:08] Speaker 03:
We're here for rebuttal now.

[00:22:14] Speaker 01:
Sorry, I had to find the mouse button.

[00:22:17] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, well, I do have a couple of points.

[00:22:20] Speaker 01:
So as you heard from the prosecutor, and thank you, there was 10 weeks between the last phone call and the search.

[00:22:27] Speaker 01:
And I would just like to correct one thing that my opponent said.

[00:22:31] Speaker 01:
He was not receiving kilograms.

[00:22:33] Speaker 01:
He was getting ounces.

[00:22:35] Speaker 01:
And so there were no kilograms as to my client.

[00:22:42] Speaker 01:
And he didn't admit anything at trial.

[00:22:44] Speaker 01:
That was another thing that the assistant US attorney said.

[00:22:48] Speaker 01:
He didn't testify at trial.

[00:22:50] Speaker 03:
So, but I think we go back to, you know, I mean, I thought, I thought though that he, he, I didn't think that she said he testified at trial, but that he agreed to it in, in interviews with the police officers.

[00:23:04] Speaker 01:
There was, you're right.

[00:23:05] Speaker 01:
There was a post arrest interview and he, yes, he did make admissions in that.

[00:23:09] Speaker 01:
And the defense did try to exclude that and that was denied.

[00:23:14] Speaker 01:
That was the subject of litigation.

[00:23:19] Speaker 01:
That's correct.

[00:23:20] Speaker 01:
Yes, he made admissions.

[00:23:22] Speaker 01:
He did.

[00:23:23] Speaker 01:
But I do not believe he admitted that that particular cocaine was for distribution.

[00:23:28] Speaker 01:
And again, we have to be focused on the particular cocaine in this case because he was not charged with conspiracy and he was not convicted of conspiracy.

[00:23:39] Speaker 01:
The other thing I think is, I think counsel has overstated the type of 403 problem that he would have had with, had the court admitted, had the court allowed Allen to testify, had the court allowed the defense to present the possibility that Amiri was present.

[00:24:03] Speaker 01:
I don't think we would have had a second corruption trial, but I do think there would have been evidence, as I recall, the defense,

[00:24:09] Speaker 01:
asked to introduce the indictment, the two indictments that he was facing, he hadn't been convicted yet.

[00:24:16] Speaker 01:
And one of those indictments was fraud, you know, were fraud charges.

[00:24:22] Speaker 01:
So again, I do think that is overstated.

[00:24:25] Speaker 01:
If there's no further questions, I would submit.

[00:24:28] Speaker 03:
Okay, thank you.

[00:24:29] Speaker 03:
Thank you to both counsel for your arguments in the case.

[00:24:31] Speaker 03:
The case is now submitted.