himself was charged with five counts of distribution of controlled substance one count of possession of a firearm by a felon and one count of conspiracy to distribute two hundred and eighty grams or more of a controlled substance in this case crack mr o'leary proceeded to a bench trial on the narrow issue of whether the government could prove the chrono t of drugs charged in the indictment by stipulation mr leary admitted to virtually every fact  including the existence of the actual conspiracy the government presented no testimony amber light instead an intercepted phone calls stipulations relating to individual transactions and mr o'leary's grand jury statement the only question presented to this court is whether mr o'leary's grand jury statement was sufficiently corroborated security the government's burden of proof pardon me the government's theory before the district court was based on a formula that was derived directly from mr o'leary's grand jury statement that formula stated that the conspiracy operated from two thousand and ten to two thousand fourteen that five workers operated on any given day that each worker sold an average of four packs per day and that each pack contained three grams of cocaine  the supreme court and this court of held repeatedly that the prosecution cannot rest alone on uncorroborated corroborated statement of the defendant the statement must be sufficiently corroborated to establish it trustworthy and a statement is not sufficiently corroborated and less the essential facts of that statement are corroborated by independent evidence the level of corroborate required to pen's on the government's case in this case because no other evidence proved the element of chronically additional corroboration is required that's the question for this court under opp or and the seven circuit cases is whether the facts are essential as what facts are essential to corroborate mr o'leary's statement the drug quantity is an independent element which must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and as mr  the government's corroboration was insufficient specifically as to element one of the government's formula that the conspiracy lasted from two thousand and ten to two thousand and fourteen there w thus there was no evidence at all that the conspiracy existed before this time with respect to the element of five workers operating on any given day the intercepted phone calls undermine the government's a rgument in that most of the phone calls referred to the workers in the singular as to the number of pacs there was no evidence whatsoever to corroborate the number of pacs and the phone calls are inconsistent with the government's formula because the government is entirely reliant on the statement to establish the element of quantity it must have provided additional evidence to the district court me please the court my name is roger lott and i represent the united states in this matter this was a bench trial in which the district court wrote a detailed opinion describing his finding fact and how he went about corroborating the statement offered by mr o'leary i want to begin by noting this was a statement made under oath before the grand jury after mr o'leary had been represented by counsel and there's no suggestion that it was coerced or in any way unreliable the statement as a whole was certainly corroborated by the stipulations that mr o'leary injured in to that he participated in the conspiracy described in his statement the factual stipulations as to the specific instances where law enforcement arrested members of that conspiracy or mr o'leary himself are consistent with the way he said the conspiracy operated so for example when he said that the packs of drugs were made up of thirty individual gram quantities that's exactly what law enforcement recovered on the two instances that mr leary stipulated that one foresman recovered those packs so the statement as a whole was corroborated and that's reliable so the district court could rely on it in its entirety but i'll note that the inputs even the specific inputs into the drug quantity calculation proved excess of two hundred and eighty grams even if you just looked at what was independently corroborated the district court went through that in its opinion but for example on the issue of time period even if you limit the time period to the roughly one hundred dollars days during which there was either wire interceptions or law enforcement observations of mr leary and others at the spot and you limit the quantity and not to  five workers per day that mr o'leary described but the minimum that would be supported by the calls which would be to mr o'leary and somebody else you still end up with roughly five times the two hundred and eighty gram threshold quantity mr leary statement itself describes conservatively seventy eight kilograms which is many one hundred times the threshold quantity here so the difficulty is not faced with frankly a close question on drug that the existence of the corroborating of the existence of the conspiracy is sufficient to corroborate mr o'leary statement as to the drug party that simply inaccurate and i would refer the court to this court's decision in dollhouse in which the court specifically says that the nature of corroboration is fact specific and depends on the nature of the element which is uncorroborated in this case because it is the drug chronically and mr o'leary actually stipulated to the existence of the conspiracy it's the drug chronically and the government's calculations that must be corroborated but we're not the panel has to question seems not thank you very much and counsel we appreciate your willingness to accept the point has taken under advisement and the court will be