[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
Case number 20-3083, United States of America versus Wayne O'Rourke of Balance.

[00:00:07] Speaker 01:
Ms.

[00:00:07] Speaker 01:
Ernest for the balance, Mr. Bernie for the evidence.

[00:00:11] Speaker 01:
Ms.

[00:00:11] Speaker 01:
Ernst, good morning.

[00:00:24] Speaker 05:
Good morning, Your Honor.

[00:00:28] Speaker 02:
My name is Robin Ernest and I represent Appellant Wayne Holdward in this appeal.

[00:00:42] Speaker 02:
Congress did not write or it wrote and into the plain text of the safety valve statute as amended by a bipartisan first act.

[00:00:56] Speaker 02:
Consequently, this court should decline appellee's request to read an unwritten board into the statute now for three reasons.

[00:01:05] Speaker 02:
First, the plaintext.

[00:01:07] Speaker 02:
Second, its structure as a conjunctive negative proof.

[00:01:11] Speaker 02:
And three, its compliance with the Senate legislative drafting manual.

[00:01:17] Speaker 02:
All support one possible reading, and that is that it is conjunctive.

[00:01:23] Speaker 02:
Or as a Ninth Circuit stated in Lopez,

[00:01:26] Speaker 02:
that and means and.

[00:01:29] Speaker 03:
And then how do you address George Colton, what I think impeccable decision, the eighth circuit and pulse of one.

[00:01:39] Speaker 03:
And I mean, I think that is exactly right in so far as the readings on the other side and

[00:01:46] Speaker 03:
be very honest with you from my perspective, it's a compelling reading of the statute.

[00:01:51] Speaker 03:
And I think that this argument over and is completely misguided.

[00:01:55] Speaker 03:
There are three requirements that have to all be met.

[00:01:58] Speaker 03:
And I think that's exactly what the words say.

[00:02:00] Speaker 03:
And I was shocked that anyone thought otherwise.

[00:02:03] Speaker 03:
And I don't mean to suggest I know it all.

[00:02:07] Speaker 03:
I was just shocked that there was another reading.

[00:02:09] Speaker 03:
And so, you know, I put that on the table.

[00:02:12] Speaker 03:
You can answer it as you see fit.

[00:02:15] Speaker 03:
My view right now, having prepared very carefully for this case is Judge Collinson's position is correct.

[00:02:22] Speaker 03:
Why do you think it's wrong?

[00:02:25] Speaker 02:
Your honor, respectfully, um, the eighth circuit fine found in Pulsifer that, um, it adopted a distributive reading only after finding that there was surplusage, only after finding that when you would have

[00:02:43] Speaker 02:
subsections B and C met that you would automatically have subsection A met also.

[00:02:52] Speaker 02:
Pointing to the opinions by Judge Wood in the Seventh Circuit and by the majority opinion in Lopez, they provide two compatible reasons why we feel that that is not true, that there is no subsection.

[00:03:10] Speaker 02:
Linguistically, the language in subsection A is different from that in B and C. Subsection A counts criminal history points, which the guidelines identify as being prior crimes, prior sentences, which are not older than 15 years for three-point offenses and 10 years for two-point offenses.

[00:03:38] Speaker 02:
In that regard, they are distinct under the guidelines from B and C, which only address prior offenses.

[00:03:48] Speaker 02:
And since each of the criteria in A, B, and C are qualified by the clause as determined under the guidelines, they must be read with the guidelines.

[00:03:59] Speaker 02:
The guidelines, Chapter 4, specifically Oral 1.1, is controlling on determining

[00:04:07] Speaker 02:
The commentary in 401.1 is clear that .1 and .2 must be read together.

[00:04:15] Speaker 00:
Ms.

[00:04:15] Speaker 00:
Ernst, I take you to be referring to the distinction that Judge Wood, in her opinion, and dissent in the Seventh Circuit makes this argument, but it seems to rest on a

[00:04:34] Speaker 00:
kind of a function of prior offenses or a description of prior offenses that's unrooted to their role, which is in understanding history.

[00:04:46] Speaker 00:
So it seems to create an understanding of a prior offense that is novel.

[00:04:54] Speaker 00:
Is that wrong?

[00:04:56] Speaker 02:
The term prior offense is not identified in Chapter 4 of the Guidelines 41.1.

[00:05:03] Speaker 02:
that 4.1.1 only talks about counting prior sentences.

[00:05:09] Speaker 02:
And so that's why it has to be read in conjunction with point 2.

[00:05:14] Speaker 02:
The linguistic distinction is very important because it's consistent with what courts currently do and probation officers currently do in counting criminal history points, not prior offenses, in determining a defendant's guideline range.

[00:05:32] Speaker 02:
And therefore, the linguistic distinction in A, since it only counts prior sentences less than 15 years, is different than what's in B and C. And so we feel that A, by its structure, addresses more recent criminal sentences.

[00:05:55] Speaker 02:
And B and C still allow the court to consider older

[00:06:01] Speaker 02:
criminal offenses, criminal sentences, in a sense of considering whether or not there has been recidivism in relation specifically to B. And in C, also allows the court to consider misdemeanors that they feel are compelling in relation to the fact that they might evidence some factor of violence.

[00:06:26] Speaker 02:
And of course, violent offenses, as used in the guidelines

[00:06:31] Speaker 02:
include both violence against persons and property.

[00:06:35] Speaker 02:
So it would include vandalism, for example.

[00:06:39] Speaker 02:
Under the government's interpretation, you would not want someone to be excluded from relief from mandatory minimums who simply had a misdemeanor offense or vandalism.

[00:06:55] Speaker 02:
That would be under C. So that makes the cumulative reading

[00:06:59] Speaker 02:
which was advanced by the court in Lopez for the Ninth Circuit and also adopted by Judge Wood in her dissent in the Seventh Circuit, the more reasonable, the more plausible one.

[00:07:12] Speaker 02:
Also, it's consistent with the canons of statutory interpretation, which require us to read and as and.

[00:07:20] Speaker 02:
And so reading and as conjunctive as someone who would be reading this plain text for the first time would,

[00:07:28] Speaker 02:
then they would feel as Colwood felt that he had to qualify for all three of the criteria listed in A, B, and C in order to disqualify for the safety valve consideration.

[00:07:40] Speaker 00:
Ms.

[00:07:41] Speaker 00:
Ernest, is your claim, I take it your claim is limited to an ineffective assistance of council claim.

[00:07:47] Speaker 00:
There's some suggestion in your brief, but then when the government calls it out, you don't take it up in the reply, but there's some suggestion that you were making a direct argument that the appeal waiver did not cover the first step act because the first step act was enacted after.

[00:08:04] Speaker 00:
I take it you were not making that argument.

[00:08:08] Speaker 02:
Our argument rests upon the allowance and the appeal waiver to bring in effective assistance of counsel.

[00:08:16] Speaker 02:
And that's what's being done here.

[00:08:18] Speaker 02:
But it rests upon the merits.

[00:08:20] Speaker 02:
There needs to be a determination as to whether or not the reading or the conjunctive reading was the one that counsel should have been put forth at the time of sentencing.

[00:08:31] Speaker 00:
So you believe we do need to reach the merits and decide that issue.

[00:08:35] Speaker 00:
We can't just say that's colorable and remand to the district court who, for example, might say whatever reading, I would impose the same sentence anyway.

[00:08:46] Speaker 00:
That's not a, you're not asking us to simply remand without deciding the merits of the statutory question.

[00:08:55] Speaker 02:
We believe that this, that whole wards appeal raises a textual question as the,

[00:09:01] Speaker 02:
as was done before this court in Winstead, and then as this court did in Winstead, that you would need to reach the merits of that textual claim in order to determine whether or not there was ineffective assistance.

[00:09:15] Speaker 02:
In other words, in order to determine whether or not this was a reading that was so lame that in sentencing, the defense counsel should have committed one of his clients

[00:09:28] Speaker 02:
And we rely upon Winstead and also on Hawthorne for the argument that a beneficial sentencing argument should be put forth at the sentencing proceeding because of the finality of those proceedings.

[00:09:44] Speaker 02:
And in that sense, it is different from US v. Glover, which the government relies upon.

[00:09:50] Speaker 02:
But if I can get back to clarifying surplusage.

[00:09:53] Speaker 02:
And again, the East Circuit's decision

[00:09:58] Speaker 02:
They only reached the distributive reading once they found that there was, one, a conjunctive reading, and also that conjunctive reading yielded impermissible subplussage.

[00:10:10] Speaker 02:
Of course, the canon of subplussage is simply a statutory canon.

[00:10:16] Speaker 02:
It should not override the weight of the plain text, which we believe is conjunctive as the Ninth Circuit found in Lopez.

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
I see that my time is up if there are other questions.

[00:10:31] Speaker 02:
Otherwise, I will reserve the rest of my time for rebuttal.

[00:10:34] Speaker 01:
OK.

[00:10:34] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:10:36] Speaker 01:
Mr. Burney?

[00:10:53] Speaker 05:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:10:54] Speaker 04:
May it please the Court and members of the United States.

[00:10:58] Speaker 01:
Can I ask you first, the way I read 3553 F1 is someone with two point nonviolent offenses or less qualifies.

[00:11:15] Speaker 01:
Other than that, no.

[00:11:19] Speaker 01:
You don't count one point.

[00:11:20] Speaker 04:
That's right.

[00:11:21] Speaker 04:
You don't count one point.

[00:11:22] Speaker 04:
So if somebody only had one point conviction, they're 50 off.

[00:11:26] Speaker 01:
And two, two point nonviolent would still be within the not more than four.

[00:11:31] Speaker 01:
Correct.

[00:11:31] Speaker 01:
And you would not have the three point.

[00:11:33] Speaker 01:
Can you think of another combination?

[00:11:37] Speaker 04:
Well, obviously a one and a two, a two point nonviolence.

[00:11:43] Speaker 04:
Or less.

[00:11:43] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:11:44] Speaker 04:
Would also count.

[00:11:45] Speaker 04:
But yes, I think those are the only permutations I can think of at the moment.

[00:11:50] Speaker 04:
But I think that's actually a good point, Your Honor, because obviously a lot of this discussion is involving around absurdity and how to read this statute in context.

[00:12:01] Speaker 04:
So for example, let's say that we had a defendant with two drug distribution convictions for which they served one year in prison on each conviction.

[00:12:15] Speaker 04:
That's pretty serious.

[00:12:17] Speaker 04:
That would be, in almost all cases, two felony drug distribution convictions.

[00:12:22] Speaker 04:
They are still eligible for the safety valve under our reading.

[00:12:28] Speaker 04:
And that is the modest expansion of the safety valve.

[00:12:31] Speaker 04:
that Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley were indicating in the legislative history when Congress passed.

[00:12:37] Speaker 00:
Well, really, we don't know.

[00:12:38] Speaker 00:
I mean, they talk about modest, but they also say this is, you know, on the way to correcting the problem with over incarceration based on nonviolent drug offenses.

[00:12:48] Speaker 00:
And so the text is really what we have to contend with.

[00:12:52] Speaker 00:
And I have to say, when I read this, I thought, and this, this and this,

[00:12:58] Speaker 00:
If you have these three things, that's what disqualifies you.

[00:13:01] Speaker 00:
I mean, that's the way we use the language, and that's the way the Senate drafting manual uses the language.

[00:13:08] Speaker 00:
So one has to conclude that this was, they meant something else, and that we're willing as a court to redraft the statute to fix it.

[00:13:23] Speaker 04:
Well, I think there are two possible readings on the statute.

[00:13:26] Speaker 04:
I think there's the statute, the reading that Your Honor posits, in which it is used as conjunctive cumulative.

[00:13:33] Speaker 04:
And that's how low it is.

[00:13:35] Speaker 04:
But I think there is also the reading that we advocate for here, and that Pulsiver also adopts, and that the concurrence in PACE adopts.

[00:13:46] Speaker 04:
And honestly, the majority in PACE adopts a very similar reading.

[00:13:49] Speaker 04:
It uses the word disjunctive, but it comes out in the same way.

[00:13:53] Speaker 04:
So basically, PACE and Pulsiver are both

[00:13:55] Speaker 04:
using the and in a conjunctive, distributive sense, which is another way that you can read the statute.

[00:14:05] Speaker 04:
And I think part of the complexity here is the fact that the preparatory phrase not, that is in the preparatory phrase.

[00:14:16] Speaker 04:
And Scalia points out in his book that with negatives, there are nuances.

[00:14:22] Speaker 04:
This is the type of nuance I think that we're talking about.

[00:14:24] Speaker 04:
One person could read it the way your honor is posited, but another person could very easily read it the way that we're positing it.

[00:14:35] Speaker 04:
In fact, we think our reading is better.

[00:14:37] Speaker 04:
If you have these two competing readings, then you have to decide, okay, what did Congress mean?

[00:14:43] Speaker 04:
And that is where you have to go to context.

[00:14:45] Speaker 04:
We obviously make a number of arguments along those lines, not just the absurd results argument, which I can elaborate on, but also the sort of poofless argument.

[00:14:54] Speaker 04:
So Appellant's reading of offense versus points in BMC is quite strange, we would submit.

[00:15:03] Speaker 04:
I mean, Pulsiver noted that the word effects in BMC is really just a common sense shorting.

[00:15:08] Speaker 04:
How else was Congress supposed to refer to a prior conviction as an offense?

[00:15:14] Speaker 04:
The important word in BNC is point.

[00:15:18] Speaker 04:
Congress is saying three-point offense, two-point offense.

[00:15:23] Speaker 04:
And that is really what should be looked at.

[00:15:25] Speaker 04:
So these past convictions, which are not scored, which have no points, are not really relevant.

[00:15:30] Speaker 04:
That's not a reason to say that the candidate against superfluidity doesn't apply here.

[00:15:37] Speaker 04:
One other thing that I just want to note before getting more into the merits of the issue, which, of course, I can respond to questions to, is that this is an ineffective assistance of counsel issue.

[00:15:50] Speaker 04:
It is not the merits, which is what Pulsiver and Lopez and Case all had to deal with.

[00:15:57] Speaker 04:
Here, this court, frankly, I think has, I don't want to call it an easier burden, but a different inquiry to me.

[00:16:08] Speaker 04:
It is just whether counsel was so deficient, so constitutionally deficient for not making this argument, which we have, I think the briefing has already established is not an obvious argument to make.

[00:16:22] Speaker 04:
And I would note too, that at the time that counsel, at the time of Holroyd sentencing, as far as we can tell, there had been, the argument had never been made in any court throughout the country.

[00:16:35] Speaker 04:
Even in Lopez, the district court had not yet received a sentencing memorandum from the defendant that made this argument.

[00:16:42] Speaker 04:
So, just putting yourself in Mr. Zucker's defense counsel shoes, at the time of this sentencing, the argument has never been made, apparently.

[00:16:52] Speaker 04:
It certainly has never been decided.

[00:16:56] Speaker 04:
He is looking at his client who at this time, the PSR is indicating is a career offender.

[00:17:04] Speaker 04:
which is dramatically increasing his exposure.

[00:17:08] Speaker 04:
And so Mr. Zucker has focused that sentencing on that.

[00:17:11] Speaker 04:
And he writes a very persuasive sentencing memorandum for why he is not a career offender, which the district court agreed with.

[00:17:18] Speaker 00:
What's the strategy in that situation of not also making a plain textual argument?

[00:17:27] Speaker 00:
I don't understand how that even could be a strategic decision.

[00:17:32] Speaker 00:
If you have a strong argument on career offender, this doesn't detract from that.

[00:17:37] Speaker 00:
It doesn't express any, you know, failure to take responsibility.

[00:17:42] Speaker 00:
It just says, here's a new statute that is intended to give the district judges more discretion.

[00:17:51] Speaker 00:
It doesn't require anything of that.

[00:17:54] Speaker 00:
It gives them discretion if they think it's appropriate.

[00:17:57] Speaker 00:
Why wouldn't

[00:17:59] Speaker 00:
Council make that argument.

[00:18:00] Speaker 00:
I don't understand the strategic characterization.

[00:18:06] Speaker 04:
Well, I think there are two potential responses.

[00:18:09] Speaker 04:
First, just on the more directly on the strategic point that your honor is making.

[00:18:14] Speaker 04:
Mr. Zucker could have reasonably thought the career offender provision is really driving the inquiry here.

[00:18:24] Speaker 04:
And that's what I need to spend most of my time on.

[00:18:26] Speaker 04:
That's what I need to convince the court.

[00:18:29] Speaker 04:
And he is looking at, instead, an issue here, the safety valve, which nobody has ever brought up.

[00:18:39] Speaker 04:
And so why not, instead of raising all of these issues for the district court and getting bogged down in that, instead just focus on the career offender approach and dramatically reduce his exposure?

[00:18:53] Speaker 04:
But then the second thing I would say is that could he have made the argument?

[00:18:59] Speaker 04:
Of course, theoretically, any defense counsel can make any number of arguments, right?

[00:19:03] Speaker 04:
But the record indicates that he did not agree with the arguments.

[00:19:09] Speaker 04:
He said on the record he did not think Mr. Holroyd was correct.

[00:19:12] Speaker 04:
By the way, we agree with that.

[00:19:14] Speaker 04:
We don't think Mr. Holroyd was correct.

[00:19:16] Speaker 04:
But that was a perfectly reasonable position for Mr. Zucker to take.

[00:19:20] Speaker 04:
And he does not have to make all the arguments that Mr. Holroyd wants him to make, of course.

[00:19:25] Speaker 04:
When you look at the record as a whole, Mr. Zucker did a

[00:19:29] Speaker 04:
Pretty good job for his client.

[00:19:31] Speaker 04:
He brought down his exposure tremendously.

[00:19:33] Speaker 04:
At one point, Mr. Holden was talking about withdrawing his plea.

[00:19:37] Speaker 04:
The district court noted that if he had been convicted of one of the substantive drug offenses, he would have been a career offender if that had happened at trial.

[00:19:46] Speaker 04:
So Mr. Zucker is coming in here and actually we would submit doing a pretty good job, far from being ineffective.

[00:19:53] Speaker 01:
And at least a couple of circus, it turns out, agree with.

[00:19:56] Speaker 04:
I'm sorry.

[00:19:57] Speaker 01:
At least a couple of circuits agreed with him.

[00:20:00] Speaker 01:
That's correct.

[00:20:01] Speaker 01:
Eventually.

[00:20:02] Speaker 04:
That's right.

[00:20:04] Speaker 01:
Do you have 3553 in front of you?

[00:20:08] Speaker 04:
I do.

[00:20:09] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:20:10] Speaker 01:
First of all, I think the defendant agrees that all five have to be met subdivisions, one through five of 35.

[00:20:22] Speaker 01:
So that's

[00:20:23] Speaker 01:
one definition I mean one usage of and other words one two three and four one two three four and five all have to be met okay right nobody talks about four and I'd like you to tell me what your reading is of the and in the in four in other words

[00:20:49] Speaker 01:
to be eligible, you cannot be an organizer, leader, so on and so forth, and not engage in a CCE.

[00:20:59] Speaker 01:
How do you read that and?

[00:21:02] Speaker 04:
Well, here I would read the ands.

[00:21:06] Speaker 04:
I think everyone reads this and to say that, yes, he has to meet all five of these criteria.

[00:21:15] Speaker 04:
But we would actually argue that

[00:21:18] Speaker 04:
the ands in F1 that we've been talking about this whole time is consistent with that reading because we're arguing he has to meet all three of the criteria under F1.

[00:21:30] Speaker 01:
Well, I'm asking about subsection four.

[00:21:33] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:21:34] Speaker 01:
So if you have been a leader in an organizer, but not in a CCE, do you qualify?

[00:21:46] Speaker 04:
Let me just look at this very quickly, Your Honor, because I haven't considered this until now.

[00:21:53] Speaker 05:
Oh, I see.

[00:21:54] Speaker 05:
You're talking about the internal hand.

[00:21:55] Speaker 05:
I understand.

[00:21:56] Speaker 05:
Hold on.

[00:22:07] Speaker 05:
I think you would have to meet both of these requirements.

[00:22:15] Speaker 04:
You would have to show that you were

[00:22:17] Speaker 04:
not an organizer, et cetera.

[00:22:19] Speaker 04:
And it would have to be shown that the defendant was not engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise.

[00:22:31] Speaker 04:
That's my reading of it offhand.

[00:22:33] Speaker 04:
I have not looked at this issue, though, yet, Your Honor.

[00:22:42] Speaker 04:
Yes, I think both of those would have to be met.

[00:22:44] Speaker 01:
That's my personal opinion.

[00:22:47] Speaker 01:
The CCE is surplusage because my clerk and I looked at this and according to the CCE crime itself, you have to be a leader or a supervisor or a manager to be guilty of CCE.

[00:23:06] Speaker 01:
So that second

[00:23:09] Speaker 01:
requirement of not being engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise may be surplus.

[00:23:15] Speaker 01:
But I just wondered if you'd looked at it.

[00:23:17] Speaker 04:
I did not.

[00:23:19] Speaker 04:
So I could not tell you're on one way or another, unfortunately.

[00:23:21] Speaker 00:
OK.

[00:23:21] Speaker 00:
OK.

[00:23:21] Speaker 00:
And doesn't that use of and underscore the difference between F4 and F1?

[00:23:31] Speaker 00:
Because to make F1

[00:23:42] Speaker 05:
I'm not going to pull this off.

[00:23:45] Speaker 00:
It seems like to read F1 the way you are urging us to read it, C would have to begin, does not have, as the clause following and says, was not engaged.

[00:23:59] Speaker 00:
So if it said the defendant does not have A, more than four, B, a prior three, and does not have prior two, that would make the negative distributive, but we don't have that.

[00:24:12] Speaker 00:
distribution.

[00:24:13] Speaker 00:
And so you're injecting text.

[00:24:16] Speaker 00:
And I guess my question is, I understand the reading, I've read the cases, they do a very good job of it.

[00:24:21] Speaker 00:
Where are you on the rule of lenity?

[00:24:23] Speaker 00:
You really think it's so clear that there's no ambiguity to read this in favor of the defendant, make him eligible for something, give the district court the opportunity to consider it in light of that authority

[00:24:42] Speaker 00:
that he can or can decide against exercising?

[00:24:46] Speaker 04:
Well, on the rule of vanity point, the standard there, as I've seen it in the case law and the other cases, has been a grievous ambiguity.

[00:24:53] Speaker 04:
We would submit there is not a grievous ambiguity here because of all of the factors we've pointed to.

[00:25:01] Speaker 04:
Superfluousness, historic results, legislative history, the structure of the statute, et cetera.

[00:25:07] Speaker 04:
I think it's pulse over.

[00:25:10] Speaker 04:
rejects the rule of vanity argument.

[00:25:12] Speaker 04:
It's either Pulsver or Pace.

[00:25:14] Speaker 04:
Pulsver does.

[00:25:15] Speaker 04:
Pulsver does, yes.

[00:25:16] Speaker 04:
And so we use a degree of this ambiguity standard, I believe.

[00:25:20] Speaker 04:
And so we would submit that that is the right way to approach that.

[00:25:26] Speaker 01:
All right.

[00:25:26] Speaker 01:
If there are no more questions, thank you.

[00:25:28] Speaker 05:
All right.

[00:25:28] Speaker 05:
Thank you, Elvis.

[00:25:31] Speaker 01:
The CMAS artist, why don't you take two minutes?

[00:25:40] Speaker 02:
I wanted to get back to the surplus of argument as it was addressed.

[00:25:44] Speaker 02:
Lopez, the court addresses that by showing that when you have B and C met, you don't necessarily have A met.

[00:25:56] Speaker 02:
And that's because you can have a three-point violent offense that satisfies both B and C but is under

[00:26:05] Speaker 02:
the number of criminal history points that are required under A. And I will use an example to answer Judge Henderson's questions about instances when a defendant would not be eligible.

[00:26:21] Speaker 02:
He would not be eligible when the defendant had a three-point recent violent offense and another three-point nonviolent offense because he would have six criminal history points

[00:26:35] Speaker 02:
he would have a under A, he would have a three-point violent offense under B, and that would simultaneously satisfy as a at least two-point violent offense under C. Another example is a defendant who has a three-point nonviolent offense and a two-point violent offense, then he would satisfy subsection A by having five criminal history points,

[00:27:04] Speaker 02:
He was satisfied B by having a three point prior nonviolent offense, and he was satisfied C by having a two point prior violent offense.

[00:27:13] Speaker 02:
All this is to illustrate that the safety valve as employing the conjunctive interpretation that appellants are requesting here does not have the absurd results that the government is arguing.

[00:27:26] Speaker 02:
It does not effectuate release

[00:27:29] Speaker 02:
are to allow safety valve eligibility for serious violent offenders.

[00:27:36] Speaker 02:
And what safety valve eligibility does is only allows courts discretion to sentence within the guidelines as usual.

[00:27:45] Speaker 02:
I see my time has expired.

[00:27:47] Speaker 01:
All right, Ms.

[00:27:47] Speaker 01:
Ernest, you were appointed by our court to represent Mr. Holroyd and you've done an outstanding job and we thank you.

[00:27:55] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:27:56] Speaker 02:
Thank you.