[00:00:01] Speaker 00:
Case number 15-3018, United States of America versus Jeffrey Henry Williamson, also known as Jeff Williamson, appellant.

[00:00:11] Speaker 00:
Mr. Gilbert for the appellant, Mr. Larnitz for the appellee.

[00:00:16] Speaker 04:
Good morning, Chief Judge Garland, Judge Rogers, Judge Srinivasan.

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My name is Richard Gilbert, and as is probably apparent from the briefs, I did not represent Mr. Williamson below a trial.

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He represented himself.

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I would like to reserve three minutes for rebuttal.

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And although I'm prepared to argue on a number of points, perhaps my time would best be spent if I could answer the questions or concerns you might have about several different issues in this case.

[00:00:45] Speaker 03:
Well, on the first issue, you rely heavily on Russell.

[00:00:49] Speaker 04:
I do, Your Honor.

[00:00:50] Speaker 03:
Russell has a lot of general statements that are helpful, but I don't see how it helps you in this case.

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given the context and what your client is relying on?

[00:01:05] Speaker 04:
I think that Russell actually is a very close factual analysis, and let me explain why.

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In both cases, as you know, this is the Norton Russell case, and the issue there was the defendant's refusal to answer questions posed in the congressional hearings.

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And so the actual thing that the defendant did was to refuse to answer questions.

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And in this case, the thing that Mr. Williamson did was to threaten the life of an FBI agent.

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But as the court pointed out, in Russell, it would not be a crime to refuse to answer questions unless those questions were pertinent.

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In other words, there's an additional element

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beyond what the defendant did or in that case refused to do.

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In this case, it is the retaliation.

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In other words, this is not a federal crime unless Mr. Williamson does it in the factual context of this case, since there's no indication he was impeding or interfering with something contemporaneously.

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In this case, it's clearly a retaliation.

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argument.

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And that is a different time and place than the threat.

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And so the time, place and date information in the indictment as to when the threat was made does not answer any questions about the retaliation.

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And the court in Russell says, look, sometimes you have to go and you have to indict someone with greater specificity than simply citing the words of the statute.

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And I think that this is such a case.

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And I draw this primarily because of, as I said, the fact that the retaliation obviously had to happen at a different time.

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And I guess the government's argument is that it happens at a different place as well.

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So that's why I believe Russell's really a very good analogy for this case.

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So on entrapment, you rely on Brooks.

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The government doesn't respond in its brief to Brooks.

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But how do you distinguish McKinley?

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From Brooks?

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Well, from your case here, in terms of was there, even in your client's own testimony,

[00:03:18] Speaker 03:
enough as to inducement to require an instruction.

[00:03:25] Speaker 04:
Fine.

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I believe that first of all, we have to understand that at least threats, coercive tactics and harassment can be actions of government inducement.

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And so that's of course what we're relying on here, is to say this is the inducement.

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As far as the evidence of the inducement is concerned, I think the problem with Judge Collier was that she was focused on this issue of the tickets.

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Now, I understand that a lot of Mr. Williamson's pleadings in this court, pleadings in the trial court, focus on those tickets as well.

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But that's not all that he did.

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In his proffer, which I cite in my brief, he points out a number of different things over the years that he claims

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that the FBI, and particularly Special Agent Smith, did to harass him, to cause him financial hardship.

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And in one case, it's his belief that they caused him actual physical injury, resulting in hospitalization.

[00:04:24] Speaker 03:
So when the district court tried to get some details, were any provided?

[00:04:31] Speaker 04:
Yes, yes.

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I believe if you look at his proffer, that he sets out these things, I can identify where it might be.

[00:04:38] Speaker 03:
In other words, what I was trying to get at is, suppose in a hypothetical situation, it was a demonstration occurring on May 2nd, and it was established that the FBI was there, that agents arrested people, that there was a scuffle, things like that.

[00:04:59] Speaker 03:
And then we have a subsequent incident where your client, close in time, is in the hospital, as he says, as a result of this scuffle with an FBI agent.

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I don't see anything like that in this case.

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Am I just wrong?

[00:05:19] Speaker 03:
You're more familiar with the record than I.

[00:05:21] Speaker 04:
Well, this is what this is what the problem is fundamentally, is that he makes assert statements about what the FBI did, not just in issuing him those tickets all those years ago, but throughout, including right up and he's claiming his phone call purportedly is to stop what he perceives as harassment.

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Now, I understand that, um, Mr. Williamson, uh, it is present some for at least for those of us in the law, generally relying on logic and reason and so forth.

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I realize that Mr. Williamson presents some problems because he's an angry man.

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He has no, uh,

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no real confidence in the government.

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He's very deeply suspicious of law enforcement.

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He's obviously deeply suspicious about his defense attorneys.

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And so it may be tempting for those of us to say, oh, well, that's fantastical.

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That's one of the words the government uses.

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What he's saying happened.

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Really, that's our FBI agents are not universally corrupt.

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They don't encourage violence.

[00:06:26] Speaker 03:
Well, I think Brooks gives you a lot of leeway, but I'm just trying to see are there any details here.

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I mean, the FBI is involved in a lot of things, but time.

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In any event, let me ask you, just because I know your time is short here, on your sentence argument, how do you respond to the government's citations in its footnote to sentences that were longer?

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Because most of those cases involved individuals that had violence attached to them.

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I believe it's the Pinson case, which is the fellow had actually tortured and killed animals and said, one day I'm going to graduate to people.

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The thing with these violent and disturbing threats by Mr. Williamson is there's no indication he was ever in a position to carry them out.

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There's no indications that Mr. Williamson, for all of his vulgar language and so forth, ever actually committed any of these acts of violence.

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I know he threatened that he would rip the trachea out of the FBI agents, but he never did that when he was arrested.

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And so those other cases, I think you had people that posed a real obvious, even past evidence of violence.

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And that's why I believe the statistics that Mr. Lecker put together, which I cited verbatim, which I appreciate his having done that work.

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But that's why I think it shows this is an outlier.

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So can I go back to entrapment for just one second?

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So on entrapment as a just as a legal matter, we have cases that indicate that entrapment arises when officers or government agents are involved in soliciting or suggesting a crime.

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And it's difficult to fit this case within that kind of rubric because

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The argument would be that Mr. Williamson was provoked into committing a crime, not that the government agents and officers actually intended to solicit or suggest that he commit the crime that he committed.

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That's correct.

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And what's the legal support for the proposition that the category of entrapment ought to be expanded?

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Well, I rely on the fact that the description of police inducement includes threats, coercive actions, and harassment.

[00:08:44] Speaker 05:
Threats, coercion, in order to get somebody to commit an illegal act, right?

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So it's either you sell the drugs here or we're going to torture your family.

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But there's no indication here that the government was trying to get him to make a threat rather than

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this idea that they provoked him.

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Well, Mr. Williamson certainly felt that's what they were trying to do was to get him to make a threat.

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You heard him talk about it in these calls to the United States attorney.

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Look, they're trying to, if they push me too far and something goes wrong, it's going to be entrapment.

[00:09:24] Speaker 05:
Yeah, I understand that.

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He's saying that I can do whatever I want, and I'm going to have a defense, and here's my defense.

[00:09:30] Speaker 05:
I'm telling it to you in advance.

[00:09:31] Speaker 05:
But that's not the same thing as actually being entrapped.

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All the cases that I know about entrapment are the agents, allegedly and sometimes successfully in terms of the defense, try to get somebody to do a drug deal, to rob a bank, to commit a terrorist act, providing the money, providing

[00:09:54] Speaker 05:
helping to facilitate it.

[00:09:56] Speaker 05:
But I don't know of any cases where, of any case at all, where what's really happening is provocation, where the government is not, the agents are not, there's nothing in the case indicating that the agents wanted to be threatened.

[00:10:13] Speaker 05:
That seems to be the problem here.

[00:10:16] Speaker 04:
Well, of course we don't have any testimony from the agents that that's what was going on.

[00:10:21] Speaker 04:
In fact, I'm quite confident that the agents will all say, look, he's wrong.

[00:10:26] Speaker 04:
We're not doing anything like that to harass him.

[00:10:28] Speaker 04:
I mean, part of what makes this an interesting issue is the government is denying the harassment occurred.

[00:10:34] Speaker 02:
Can I ask you this?

[00:10:34] Speaker 02:
So under your theory, suppose that an assault actually occurred.

[00:10:38] Speaker 02:
So, the harassment is so successful, I guess you'd say, that in fact, Mr. Williamson did assault the officer.

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Would the attrapment defense still apply?

[00:10:52] Speaker 04:
I don't know the answer to that.

[00:10:56] Speaker 02:
It seems like that's the logical implication of the theory is that

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that the harassment on the part of the government agents was designed to elicit a response on the part of Mr. Williamson.

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And that response was at least a threat.

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But of course, a threat is that I'm going to do something.

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And then if he does the thing that he threatens to do, he would still have been entrapped into doing that.

[00:11:19] Speaker 04:
Well, I think what keeps Mr. Williamson in this case under the realm of entrapment is even the threat itself.

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Is this what I need to do to get you to stop doing what you're doing?

[00:11:31] Speaker 04:
I mean, that's why we talked about the issue of the predisposition.

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He's clearly wanting what he perceives as harassment to stop.

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That's what all those other phone calls leading up to this do.

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And even in that phone call, he's saying that this is what's happening and it needs to stop.

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And what do I have to do?

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Do I have to do something dramatic, even though he's not actually in a position to do that?

[00:11:57] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:12:06] Speaker 01:
Good morning, may I please the court, Dan Lenners for the United States.

[00:12:10] Speaker 01:
I'll respond to appellant's issues in the order in which he discussed them.

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The indictment in this case was sufficient.

[00:12:18] Speaker 01:
It need not have alleged the specific official act that Agent Schmidt was performing that caused the client to retaliate against Agent Schmidt because the specific official act is not an element of the offense.

[00:12:33] Speaker 01:
Section 115 makes it a crime to retaliate against a law enforcement officer on account of the performance of official duties, plural.

[00:12:42] Speaker 01:
And it's a jurisdictional hook for the statute that distinguishes a threat against Agent Schmidt, say, in his FBI agent duties versus a threat against Agent Schmidt because he's a bad neighbor.

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And so it's not distinguishing between particular official acts, but is instead just requiring that one distinguish between Agent Schmidt's official duties and his acts as a private citizen.

[00:13:08] Speaker 01:
And for that reason, the indictment in this case was plainly sufficient as to- So what- I'm not sure I totally follow what you're saying.

[00:13:16] Speaker 03:
If Agent Schmidt was his neighbor,

[00:13:21] Speaker 03:
And did something that caused the defendant to make a threat, the indictment would still be sufficient?

[00:13:32] Speaker 01:
No, it wouldn't be a crime.

[00:13:34] Speaker 01:
And so by saying that the threat in this case was retaliation for Agent Schmidt's performance.

[00:13:41] Speaker 03:
Well, we have a situation in the paper these days where two neighbors had a tussle.

[00:13:48] Speaker 03:
All right, now suppose one of them was Aidan Smith and the other one was the defendant.

[00:13:52] Speaker 03:
I'm just trying to understand what you're saying about the sufficiency of the indictment.

[00:13:56] Speaker 03:
It has nothing to do with his FBI duties.

[00:14:01] Speaker 03:
I just want to be clear about that.

[00:14:04] Speaker 01:
then that tussle would not be, the threat that was part of the tussle would not be a crime.

[00:14:10] Speaker 03:
And the reason that... He broke the ribs of the other guy, arguably.

[00:14:13] Speaker 01:
It would be a state crime.

[00:14:14] Speaker 01:
It would not be a federal crime under Section 115.

[00:14:17] Speaker 01:
It wouldn't be this crime.

[00:14:18] Speaker 01:
It wouldn't be this crime.

[00:14:20] Speaker 01:
It wouldn't be this crime, yes.

[00:14:20] Speaker 01:
The official duties requirement in this statute is the jurisdictional hook that allows the United States to prosecute this threatened federal court as opposed to it being a state court offense.

[00:14:30] Speaker 03:
So it's just a matter of the burden of the government.

[00:14:33] Speaker 01:
That's correct, Your Honor.

[00:14:34] Speaker 01:
And as the Seventh Circuit recognized, the government need not prove that the retaliation was for some specific act.

[00:14:40] Speaker 01:
The jury need not agree as to which official act was involved, but simply that it was an official duty rather than duties as a private citizen.

[00:14:49] Speaker 01:
As to the entrapment defense, I think the court correctly seems to understand the distinction between inducement and provocation.

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And I see no logical reason why this entrapment defense would need to stop at the crime of threats.

[00:15:08] Speaker 01:
Why, under defendant's theory, if he's truly been

[00:15:11] Speaker 01:
harassed to the degree he claimed for over a decade by Agent Schmidt, why he would have to stop the threat, why he couldn't follow through on the threat, which in this case was in fact a threat to murder.

[00:15:24] Speaker 01:
And I see no logical reason, and the appellant can't really point to any... Well, but, you know, we do have Brooke, and you don't respond to that in your brief.

[00:15:34] Speaker 01:
I understand this court has said in Brooks and elsewhere that the court must credit the defendant's testimony and treat it as though it's true.

[00:15:44] Speaker 01:
But in numerous analogous circumstances, and other courts have recognized- No matter how implausible the theory.

[00:15:52] Speaker 01:
That's the language in Brooks, Your Honor, yes.

[00:15:55] Speaker 01:
And I guess what I'm saying is that crediting the defendant's testimony, it's not entrapment.

[00:16:02] Speaker 01:
It's provocation, not inducement.

[00:16:05] Speaker 01:
I can discuss why I don't think Brooks goes as far as the language seems to say.

[00:16:09] Speaker 03:
So in this case, we don't have to say that provocation could never amount to inducement, but simply that here even taking the defendant's testimony is true.

[00:16:25] Speaker 03:
It's not sufficient provocation that would be tantamount to inducement.

[00:16:32] Speaker 03:
I mean, you and I can think of hypotheticals.

[00:16:35] Speaker 03:
where you're so provoked that it could be viewed as inducement.

[00:16:42] Speaker 01:
I think the idea of inducement is the

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the government's soliciting or suggesting a specific crime.

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And here, there's no crime that whatever agent's provocation is taken to be that he appears to have been soliciting or suggesting from this defendant.

[00:17:02] Speaker 03:
Well, I don't read the cases quite that way, is it?

[00:17:05] Speaker 03:
I mean, if the agent is trying to get him to buy illegal drugs and he shoots somebody that has nothing to do with the drug,

[00:17:13] Speaker 03:
Do you think he has any sort of defense there where he says, I wouldn't have been in that situation but for the agent?

[00:17:25] Speaker 01:
I've not seen an entrapment stretch that far.

[00:17:29] Speaker 01:
And in this case, as Your Honor pointed out, even taking the defendant's frankly implausible to the point of being fabulous story as true, it wasn't inducement.

[00:17:42] Speaker 01:
It was merely provocation, as the Fifth Circuit recognized.

[00:17:45] Speaker 03:
Well, you're fighting this circuit.

[00:17:46] Speaker 03:
That's all I'm getting at.

[00:17:48] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:17:50] Speaker 01:
But the Fifth Circuit didn't say we don't believe the defendant.

[00:17:52] Speaker 01:
The Fifth Circuit said.

[00:17:53] Speaker 03:
No, but we said no matter how implausible the theory.

[00:17:59] Speaker 01:
The court has to credit the defendant's testimony.

[00:18:01] Speaker 01:
The Fifth Circuit didn't reject the defendant's testimony.

[00:18:04] Speaker 01:
It said crediting his story, which I assume to be the same story he gave here, that he was provoked, he was not entrapped, he was not induced into committing those threats.

[00:18:14] Speaker 01:
And then on the sentencing, I think Judge Collier had

[00:18:19] Speaker 01:
lots and lots of interpersonal interaction with this particular defendant who was representing himself pro se, who filed something like 130 pro se motions in the district court.

[00:18:31] Speaker 03:
I think that's a factor.

[00:18:32] Speaker 01:
I'm sorry?

[00:18:34] Speaker 03:
Go ahead.

[00:18:35] Speaker 01:
I think it's a factor in the sense that this court defers to district courts sentencing judgments because they are in a better position to know the defendant than the appellate court is.

[00:18:45] Speaker 01:
And Judge Collier was in a particularly good position to know this particular defendant because he represented himself, per se, filed so many motions.

[00:18:55] Speaker 01:
She knew him far better than most trial judges know most defendants.

[00:18:59] Speaker 01:
and she properly recognized that he had been undeterred from spending effectively five and a half years in jail on two previous threats convictions, committed this threat just six months after being released from jail, and that eight years, a longer sentence than five and a half years was necessary to attempt to protect the public.

[00:19:23] Speaker 03:
I mean, he's what, 50, 51 years old?

[00:19:27] Speaker 03:
I'm just trying to understand this.

[00:19:30] Speaker 03:
You know, he may have antagonized the judge by filing all these motions.

[00:19:35] Speaker 03:
That can't be a reason we would defer to the judge, would it?

[00:19:40] Speaker 01:
I don't believe that Judge Collier suggested she was antagonized by him.

[00:19:44] Speaker 01:
My argument is that she knew this defendant very well.

[00:19:49] Speaker 01:
She knew his thought process.

[00:19:50] Speaker 01:
She interacted with him.

[00:19:52] Speaker 01:
She saw him get angry and forth.

[00:19:53] Speaker 03:
But the reasons you gave was he acted pro se and he filed a lot of motions.

[00:19:58] Speaker 03:
That's all I'm responding to.

[00:19:59] Speaker 01:
Right.

[00:20:00] Speaker 01:
So most defendants spent most of the trial standing silently next to their attorney.

[00:20:04] Speaker 03:
Sometimes they do.

[00:20:05] Speaker 03:
Sometimes they don't.

[00:20:06] Speaker 01:
Sometimes they don't.

[00:20:07] Speaker 03:
And Section 355.

[00:20:10] Speaker 03:
That's not one of the factors listed.

[00:20:15] Speaker 01:
No, Your Honor.

[00:20:16] Speaker 03:
I was arguing that because... I'm not trying to resist your argument that we defer.

[00:20:23] Speaker 03:
It's just the reasons you gave, I thought, was if we were to say, well, it was pro se and he filed a lot of motions, so we defer.

[00:20:31] Speaker 01:
No, I think it's we defer because the trial court is in a better position and knows the particular defendant better than the appellate court.

[00:20:38] Speaker 01:
This trial court knew this defendant far better than most trial courts know most defendants because of these direct interactions, unlike most defendants who stand silently next to their attorney.

[00:20:50] Speaker 03:
Well, district courts get these pre-sentence reports, don't they?

[00:20:54] Speaker 01:
They do get the pre-sentence report.

[00:20:56] Speaker ?:
Right.

[00:20:57] Speaker 01:
But if that were the test, this court could also read the pre-sentence report.

[00:21:03] Speaker 01:
And so there wouldn't be none of this language about deferring to trial courts in their greater knowledge of the particular defendant.

[00:21:11] Speaker 01:
But in any event, the eight-year sentence was amply justified by the defendant's years of harassing Agent Schmidt, as well as his prior convictions for which he remained undeterred.

[00:21:22] Speaker 03:
So it's the prior conviction.

[00:21:26] Speaker 03:
serving time and within six months basically repeating the same.

[00:21:33] Speaker 01:
That was one of the reasons that Judge Collier gave.

[00:21:36] Speaker 01:
She also noted that the defendant was, he was not only undeterred, but that he had been obsessed with these tickets for over 10 years, that his anger about them, if anything, seemed to be escalating.

[00:21:50] Speaker 03:
And what was the basis for that?

[00:21:53] Speaker 01:
The basis for those findings were both the nature of the threats at issue, both the 911 call and also the 14 calls to the AUSA and the calls to the Denver FBI, U.S.

[00:22:06] Speaker 01:
Attorney's Office threatening to murder Agent Schmidt.

[00:22:09] Speaker 01:
These particular threats were more directed at this particular FBI agent than the threats for which he was convicted in Texas, which were more generally aimed at the FBI.

[00:22:20] Speaker 01:
There was a letter that the defendant sent from jail threatening to destroy Agent Schmidt's life and his career.

[00:22:28] Speaker 01:
There was Agent Schmidt's testimony that after Agent Schmidt and Officer Gallegos issued the first ticket, the defendant's harassing and threatening phone calls to the FBI increased.

[00:22:39] Speaker 01:
the defendant began filing lawsuits against Agent Schmidt.

[00:22:44] Speaker 05:
I mean, I think that the judge actually laid this out pretty clearly at the beginning of her opinion.

[00:22:52] Speaker 05:
February 29, Pete sent emails.

[00:22:56] Speaker 05:
The FBI headquarters threatened to kill agents on May 15, 2008.

[00:23:00] Speaker 05:
He left a message stating,

[00:23:04] Speaker 05:
I'm going to come down to the U.S.

[00:23:05] Speaker 05:
Attorney's Office and effing throw a couple of them at the effing door and then pick up a MAC-11 or MAC-10, it's a name for a semi-automatic weapon, and come down there and effing shoot the effing office up.

[00:23:18] Speaker 05:
On June 27, 2008, he sent an email threatening to blow up FBI headquarters.

[00:23:23] Speaker 05:
Please advise Director Mueller, I will take justice into my own hands and blow the front off the J. Edgar Hoover building.

[00:23:31] Speaker 05:
On July 1st, 2008, he made a threat in interstate commerce in violation of 875.

[00:23:39] Speaker 05:
He was convicted.

[00:23:41] Speaker 03:
I suppose that's the only reason I asked you why you started off with the pro se and filing the law.

[00:23:47] Speaker 05:
It seems unnecessary to go beyond what the district court laid out.

[00:23:51] Speaker 05:
I only got halfway through the set of threats, but they seem more than sufficient without embellishment.

[00:23:59] Speaker 01:
I agree, Your Honor.

[00:24:02] Speaker 01:
If there are no further questions, we'd ask that the Judge make a decision.

[00:24:07] Speaker 05:
Is there a further time?

[00:24:09] Speaker 05:
All right, well, we'll give, Mr. Gove, we'll give you some more time if you need a reply.

[00:24:15] Speaker 04:
respond.

[00:24:16] Speaker 04:
I did have chance to look through my brief and let Judge Rogers know that really starting with page nine, running through about page 12, is where I do lay out the facts that Mr. Williamson tried to proffer concerning inducement.

[00:24:31] Speaker 04:
Now, I understand that's a different issue than whether provocation is the same as inducement, but at least these are the facts that he laid out.

[00:24:37] Speaker 04:
And there are two documents and then also his testimony.

[00:24:41] Speaker 04:
The only thing I guess I want to respond to is the point I made in my reply brief, and that is both going to the particular sentencing guideline commentary, but also, but what Mr. Williamson did in writing all the way up the chain of command complaining about these tickets was not harassment.

[00:25:01] Speaker 04:
American citizen can write to increasingly higher levels of supervision.

[00:25:07] Speaker 05:
But he can't make all these, American citizen can't threaten to blow up the FBI headquarters, threaten to go to the US Attorney's office with a semi-automatic and kill people, call and say, I intend to kill FBI agents.

[00:25:18] Speaker 05:
Those are all, Supreme Court has made quite clear whether he's able to do those or not.

[00:25:24] Speaker 05:
The question is whether he made a threat.

[00:25:27] Speaker 05:
right?

[00:25:28] Speaker 05:
And these are these are threats.

[00:25:30] Speaker 05:
These are real threats.

[00:25:31] Speaker 05:
I agree.

[00:25:32] Speaker 05:
They're not First Amendment protected, right?

[00:25:34] Speaker 05:
I agree.

[00:25:34] Speaker 05:
Okay.

[00:25:36] Speaker 05:
So all those things, all the things I read, not one of them is First Amendment protected.

[00:25:41] Speaker 04:
Those that you read, that's correct.

[00:25:43] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:25:43] Speaker 04:
But when she's one is applying the upward

[00:25:46] Speaker 04:
departure.

[00:25:47] Speaker 04:
She's talking about the harassment over the years.

[00:25:50] Speaker 04:
She's talking about Mr. Williamson's desire to injure a special agent Smith.

[00:25:57] Speaker 04:
She's here.

[00:25:57] Speaker 05:
She listed at the very beginning.

[00:26:01] Speaker 05:
She listed what the harassment over the years consisted of, and almost every one of those is a real threat as the Supreme Court's defined it.

[00:26:11] Speaker 04:
Well, with all due respect, your honor, I think that what she says she's focusing on later on is she's talking about the fact that Mr Williamson did not let the ticket issue go.

[00:26:23] Speaker 04:
All right?

[00:26:24] Speaker 04:
But when he's writing to the FBI and then when he's writing to the Department of Justice and the Attorney General and the President of the United States, he's not making threats, he's asking these agents to be held accountable.

[00:26:35] Speaker 04:
Whether that's reasonable or not, I don't know, but I submit that those letters, to the extent the judge is concluding that he's harassing Special Agent Schmidt because he's trying to get him punished, that's I assume what he means by held accountable, for what

[00:26:50] Speaker 04:
Mr. Williamson believed was an abuse of power in issuing those tickets.

[00:26:54] Speaker 04:
And that's what I'm suggesting that he had a right to do, and I'm suggesting that it's improper for the judge to take those actions into account in increasing his sentence.

[00:27:03] Speaker 05:
I just have one question.

[00:27:04] Speaker 05:
The list that Mr. Lecker prepared of the other cases, this wasn't submitted to the district court, right?

[00:27:13] Speaker 05:
I don't believe so, Your Honor.

[00:27:16] Speaker 05:
All right, we'll take the matter under submission.

[00:27:18] Speaker 05:
Thank you.

[00:27:18] Speaker 04:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:27:24] Speaker 05:
Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Gilbert, you were appointed by the court.

[00:27:27] Speaker 05:
We're very grateful, as always, for your assistance.

[00:27:30] Speaker 05:
We really appreciate it.

[00:27:31] Speaker 05:
It's been challenging.

[00:27:33] Speaker 05:
Excellent set of briefs.

[00:27:34] Speaker 05:
We appreciate them.