good afternoon my name is charles wilson may please the court i represented lewis cause me in the proceedings before the district court judge and i half in the appeal we've raised two issues one i think i can put to the side rather quickly we've argued that the court should have a case the conviction for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction arising out of the defect in the indictment when we consider what happened in race i recognize that the court of appeals has rejected this position so essentially at this point and i'm just leaving it to rest on my papers so as to preserve it  this element that we see discussed and resave the idea of having knowledge that a person belongs to a class of people who are prohibited from possessing firearms the government and i appear to be in agreement that there was an error that the error is clear or obvious we part ways when it comes to the two questions of whether the error affected the defendant's substantial rights were seriously affects the fairness record and then the other is his limited function and the government highlights one or two areas in the record where they claim you made an admission and i'll get to that last as for the period of time and however if you look a little more deeply there are things that distinguish mr cosmic criminal record from those discussed in the cases where the court has rejected an effort by a defendant to have the core apply re in particular he does not have the very long sentence that some of those defendants have had for example in the very recent  to when you look at the decision and they're saying that there isn't any real prejudice they tend to look at the existence of prior convictions of course but there's often a reference to how long the one to two years fifteen months one to three years and i'm not clear exactly how long you actually serve but those very substantial that on top of what judge calibrates he was pointing out make it very difficult for me to think that there's a reasonable possibility that he could with the intellectual challenges that he faces with not have appreciated that he had been convicted of felonies that he did narcotics as the case there would serve a year there's a very good chance they would least probably somewhere around fifty five percent of the sentence similarly although the numbers obviously are getting longer a two year sentence involving s again right well that's the point i wanted to dress specifically so let's say it's somewhere and it's it's really fifty percent plus today is usually sufficient but generally speaking that doesn't happen it usually is about fifty five percent in my experience but keep him so his understanding of what he's really getting is unclear as to the three year sentence which obviously is the biggest issue in terms of when you look at them individually he also appears to be getting sentenced or at least consideration in connection with his prior conviction in paragraph fifty two dollars where he had a seven year suspended sentence three years probation but that probation was terminated on the same day he was sentenced as to  assault nd and that's our position you know one never knows when someone is sentenced for a violation of probation that's it may not be clear to the person that they're being sentenced you know tying back to the prior case they're being sentenced for a violation of probation which that they do want to get judge calgary's his question as well which i think ties in to your question judge we miss significant number of convictions you know normally i would say that's the end of the discussion but when we consider the facts that are in the expert report to which the government did not object during sentencing which extent which established quite clearly that mr carson is a man limited functioning well we would like to think that over time he would have grasped the concept you know and ultimately we never would have been here we would like to think that that's inconsistent with the fact that he has a condition you know he has limited intelligence so this isn't someone who's necessarily going to figure it out and now his statement that i'm a felony and when he gets arrested which isn't necessarily a statement that's a summary of a police report which obviously could be tested in a different context or a motion to suppress but assuming that that had he been formed as he should have been the result would have been anything i think that's a question that would have taken significant counseling it's a more complex question than just you had a gun when issues we're talking about today but having said that we do point to two key factors that would clearly suggest suggest and show that mr cause me absolutely understood his status as a felon in april two thousand and seventeen when he had the gun he literally said to the police government contention he understood that he could not get a pistol permit because he was a felon and what better proof of that would be the three clean we'll call clean  felon the status as a felon the definition is you were exposed or convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year imprisonment you know what to do here you just have to be exposed to a crime that's punishable by more than a year in prison and the pre sentence report and a lot of the other paragraphs starting at forty two through fifty it makes note of jail sentence for example of one year suspended four years suspended so there are instances where it's very clear that mr carson received suspended time but jim wilson also points out that in connecticut the defendant might do fifty five percent of the time of the drug case i think it's eighty or eighty five percent of the considered a violent crime but regardless that's with good time credit that's not automatic and i was looking at direct the court's attention to the pre sentence report i think a paragraph sixty nine dollars which indicates that while in the department of corrections for the state credit for a good time that might have taken a fifteen month sentence and transfer transferred into something less than a year in jail but to the court the point about what does it really matter i think it's a great point a sentence of three incarcerated and you know this record while extensive is spread out over a long period of time and sentencing is confusing and confusing to know us to look at the sentence to pose them maybe just for fifty five percent or you know fifty percent plus a day or what have you and that's what is punishable by what amount to you know it's not  but again given the time lapse i want is there anything in the psychological assessment that we've done that we could latch onto in comfort that he actually did appreciate that he was a spell and therefore allowed to do this you think your honor i went through before the argument that i went through the psychological report and i don't think there's anything in there to answer your question directly that's going to give comfort to the court from that perspective i would note that frankly oftentimes a person with limited mental capacity or limited function and there's no argument that's that's certainly a factor in this analysis and in this case is exposed to a criminal justice system more than the average citizen or average person and for better or worse becomes acquainted with the terms and the rules about  that he had a prior felony conviction that he had been let's see if he just said he has a prior felony conviction or that he had to have been sentenced to more than a year or orange or that's when i didn't show didn't that he has been convicted of a crime punishable the term of imprisonment not actually sentenced to a term of imprisonment punishable by term of imprisonment of more than one year and that's why the governor's relying on those three particular convictions so that is that is  that is actually not that simple a concept that you are punishable not that your sons necessarily  and then a government paid seventy eight dollars of the government's appendix should shake so one more question mr cause me is it true that before april th two thousand and seventeen before the date on which you had the government are you were convicted of a felony at any time he answered yes now that he i guess the argument would be for mr wilson a moment well he didn't know that or we don't know that he knew that back in april he knew that at the time of his guilty plea months later but i do think that it shows that mr cause me is in the record that suggests that his mental limitations make it difficult for him to understand that he had been convicted of felonies you know there are any number of mental limitations a person may have a terrible memory a person may not be able to add two and two but what we have to figure out is is there is there's something about his limitations that would have made it hard for him to know what he had you know that's what i'm struggling thanks your honor obviously mr wilson will help and also be on his feet to be addressing the court in a moment and he may point to something but i'm not familiar with anything in the record that would support that conclusion mr cause me absolutely had post traumatic stress and anxiety issues and generally low i q but he was taking literacy courses prior to sentencing so i think he had to billet to educate himself and to comprehend things so i would say he was he was he was competent to plead guilty also of course yes thank you you have a minute left concluded that a thirty month prior jail sentence was sufficient to show the defendant knew of the status as a felon we've got other cases that this court has decided over the months last week us versus large johnson i can by the court with the sites as well us versus anthony smith from may twenty six cases where well and anthony smith the sentence was two instances of sentences of more than a year wilbert hayes from april christopher your honor so st of all the lack of literacy is a key piece of this defendant's inability to read the charge to resist statute things of that nature is paul you know it's a significant step backwards or you know it's the communicant deficiency coming into the process so when we look at the record there are indications about how he would fall behind on top of the fact that his i q was low and the other deficiencies described in the report you know is literacy level he wasn't moving from reading johnny tremaine to you know william proctor this is a guy who was reading picture books at that that you know my kindergarten age and age kids when they were that age could r lot to consider but in terms of the cases i don't not familiar with the forensic case that just cannot today the milking of this case where the person to see fifteen months that priors sentence for fifteen months i believe may have s at least a couple of which had really long sentences in the smith case one of the prior is an issue with a six plus year sentence but the person had served or the person had served six plus years prior to having the case so one