defacto life sentence in the federal bureau of prisons as a result of the errors committed in the district court in this case to begin with your honor  the the the the defendant of the appellant in this case was convicted as a result of the district court's misinterpretation of the hostage taking statute it's instructing the jury in correctly admits that the hostage taking statute was in correctly applied and the jury was improperly instructed in this case the to begin with as we've we've argued in the br language of the statute would seem to require that third parties be the subject of some sort of demand that they have be aware of the circumstances of the purported hostage taking  that some sort of demand be made of them to make payment to take some action to refrain some from taking some action in exchange for the hostage takers agreeing either to release the hostages or or to if the court were to employ issues of statutory construction i think this is an important point the riginal hostage taking statute was an attempt to implement  international treaty on terrorism that congressional intent is referred to repeatedly in the current rushnell record in the report of the committees that reported the bill out of committee in fact the underlying hostage taking statute was intended to essentially a dog the provisions of this international treaty and and so if you were to use the hostage taking statute as one method of determining congress's intent as to what the meaning of the elements of the hostage taking statute are one way of doing that would be to ask yourself in the context of international terrorism whether you could have a terrorist incident in which third parties whether they be private or governments wholly unaware of the circumstances in other words if if if someone let's say is kidnapped in a foreign country but the third parties neither their families nor the united states government are aware that they've been kidnapped and the third parties are unaware that there is any harm being posed to the people that have been kidnapped they're unaware of the kidnapping itself and there are no threats and there are don't know demands i think it's fairly clear that under the terrorism statutes in our international terrorism treaties i mean you wouldn't have an act of terrorism you might have a kidnapping you might have a robbery you might have something else but you wouldn't have an international incident involving terrorism because terrorism necessarily involves an attempt to influence the behavior of third parties that's important because if you were to rely on that aspect of the statutory intent of congress with respect to the underlying terrorism crimes in the international treaties then it would it would be somewhat absurd to contend that third party notice  compulsion third parties being demands or threats being made towards third parties as a condition for the release of hostages for example that none of that is necessary in the domestic context this is a the in the language or any case law even by analogy that would require third parties to to know that the victims are being held against their will so do you have there are no cases on point you have any  when ok thank you very much judge when i would cite the court to the united states versus rodriguez which is a second circuit decision decided approximately six years ago which was appellants briefs did not go into detail but on the court should take special care to read the rodriguez decision to answer your question the reason there aren't any  cases the laundry list of cases that have been cited by both parties here all involved quid pro quo demands every single one of them and i can give you the list of all the names but they all involve pro quo demands though those cases don't hold don't have a holding which defines the third element in this case the only case that i'm aware of nationwide  is the rodriguez case which is actually addressed this issue arguably it's the holding in the rodriguez case in rodriguez the second circuit was really focused on the did a determination as to how long and by the way i'd like to request two minutes of a bottle was focused on the issue of how long the detention had to be for for the for a hostage taking to take place in that case the so called detention was only about fifteen minutes and for various reasons the second circuit concluded that that did not amount to a hostage taking case but in doing so rodriguez court had to determine when did the actual hostage taking commence and the language of the court i think is is quite clear of the court  said after discussing the congressional purpose and congressional intent moved on to say if i can find the language detaining mendez for the purpose of compelling a third person to do an act as a condition for her release did not occur until the demand for payment was made at the service area so this was a case where there was a very lengthy interaction between the defendants in that case and the victims but the victim for a considerable amount of time didn't realise she was being held and in any kind of detention situation she was not the subject of threats her husband was the third party but her husband knew nothing about what was going on he didn't know she was being detained he didn't know she was frightened he didn't know that  was the subject of any kind of hostage taking or attempted hostage taking situation the husband was and was not the subject of any threats or communications at all it was only after considerable amount of time went by that finally there was a confrontation between appellant in that case and the husband wherein appellant stated to the husband you need to pay some much more so much money so we can let her go the second circuit concluded that that was a necessary factual predicate for finding a hostage taking on to the federal hostage taking statute and i think the court should consider the rodriguez case is highly persuasive in favor of palin's position here i'm not aware there may be other circuits that have weighed in i just didn't find any other opinions that dealt with the express his shoe here in every reported decision the ninth circuit has handed down it's never dealt with this this is a case of first impression in the ninth circuit but in every single case and i must have cited a couple of dozen cases in the breeze they're all involving quid pro quo demands there are expletive threats there are direct negotiations with th parties this is critically important because i think if you read the government's arguments carefully you would come to the conclusion that the government is implicitly arguing that you don't even need the third parties i mean when you think about the consequences of what they're saying the consequences of their argument is that if i tell my wife who's my partner in crime that i intend to go next door i'm going to hold my neighbor at gunpoint and i'm going to try to figure out how to get some money out of them and i go next door and i hold my neighbor at gunpoint and i say i need to get some money from you and i say why don't you give me the your pin number t m and i'll go get some cash and after a period of time goes by he says no no no i've got five thousand dollars in cash and a box in my bedroom i'll give you that and i say ok seems to me the government would be arguing that i've committed to hostage taking because at least for a few minutes i had the intention of maybe going to this man's bank and so therefore there was some of those fleeting consideration of bringing some third party into this i don't think that is sufficient to qualify under the statute and i think if the court is going to give the statute its plain meaning it needs to do that it can't ignore important textual text aspects of the text cannot ignore the words in the tax if there's ambiguity it seems to me the court has to apply the rule of lenity if the court looks to the statutory intent i think that strengthens appellants position and finally it doesn't really it matters to some extent but ultimately it may not matter because what the district court it did even if you believe it's only a question of the defendant's intent kariya the district court gave the jury an instruction that had a bare minimum created ambiguity and confusion in the jury's minds as to whether they should carefully consider all the other dents that for on the defendant's  tent because the root of the factual record indicates i think almost conclusively that the defendant had no intention with respect to at least two of these victims he was perfectly happy you know if their families didn't know anything about what was going on and the court completely ignored the thank you counsel thank you  district court adequately addressed the jury's question and as with most criminal statutes almost all criminal statutes the government would urge the court to look to the elements they are clear in this case and they all deal with the defendant there is no mention of the family of a third party and what their knowledge needs to be and it was based on that fact that the district court answered the jury's question they specifically asked whether or not the family members needed to know or suspect anything and the judge accurately answered the question said it is not necessary and the reason why is because the focus should be on the defendant's intent and the defendant's actions there's three elements to the offense one that the defendant intentionally seized or detain the victim's two that the defendant threatened to kill injure or continue to detain the victims and three that the defendant acted with purpose  to compel a third person to act or refrain from acting as an explicit condition for the victim's release nowhere does it mention the knowledge the understanding the state of mind of the third party the only ambiguity is that which is being created here by the appellant now it's clear that the jury asked the question they just wanted to be sure because the the record indicates that at least one of the victim's family members in this case wasn't sure they didn't know and that's why the jury asked the question was it because of any ambiguity was because the evidence bore that out so the government would ask the court to effectively keep it simple and look to the elements of the if of the offense there's no need to resort to the rule of lenity there's no need to talk about the legislative history of this statute when the elements are clear and the government's position is that the elements are element in the hostage to the hospice taking statute in the alien smuggling context and the court held rightly so that all those that are are all that is required are that the elements are proven and there's a text there that i that i quoted in the brief and also i would note that the courts specifically held that twelve o three a is sufficiently specific for notice purposes and that's important because they address the ambiguity argument so that's the government's position in the twelve of three a argument raised by the by the defendant i know i've kept it short i'm open to any questions that the court house on this issue the question no thank you thank you very  much your honour's with respect to the hostage taking argument the government's correct i think the issue really boils down to the third so called element and the government is correct that many cases reported by the ninth circuit have listed a series of elements three elements and there you know that there's no disputing really what this what what what telamon tsar as they've been listed in those cases because it's simply a repetition of the statute the question is and this is what none of the circuits have really done certainly not the ninth circuit is how do you define the third element there's been really no discussion of it in this circuit although as stated earlier the second circuit has the government's response right now i think is is and this runs through the reply brief is there's a threat of harm about which the third parties were not only aware but they were they were brought into the every single case cited by the government involves a quid pro quo with the possible exception of one thousand nine hundred ninety five case that that's unclear so the the guity that comes in here i think is because we're having this argument i mean the statute is not clear criminal statutes are not exclusively aimed at the intent of defendants but also aimed at their conduct usually aimed primarily at their conduct what did they do there was a great deal of conflict about what the statute made below and  therefore i think the court if the court cannot resolve that with other rules of statutory construction at a minimum as the granderson court said if there's any doubt about the statutes meaning then the court should