good morning your honor is it may please the court ma'am acquire on behalf of director clarke carry on blount has now been pardoned twice by two different governors of virginia and currently he is serving a fourteen year sentence after former governor mcauliffe pardoned him again on january twelfth twenty eighty eight that conditional pardon does not move the case however because for a couple reasons the first is that there are conditions attached to the pardon that he could violate that would cause a sense to revert back to forty years and also because the district court's decision in this case process by representing to virginia supreme court that whatever it did with respect to the governor's commutation order was going to be case dispositive then when the case returned to better court  when something like this happens it's very detrimental to recommit to an area of where the supreme court is stressed that comedy is in order so back to that i want you to answer that but you know there's also a ruling that the fourteen to one opinion the dissenting single sending the pinion in a fourteen a one case is better reason and therefore chose not to follow the fourteen and surat and and the on all squares holding in long all force holding that on virginia's thing was rejected because the court there they really have a problem with issuing a divide and advisory opinion because it in their view it puts them into a kind of a case under the terms of the federal court is the is the remedy for us to say you've got to follow the initial submission and dismiss the petition to make your case dispositive is is that court comedy requires that's the warrant or the director's position in this case judge will consent to go to try to talk to all this also together with judge niemeyer is point we see that is the sort of the threshold issue the other issues we the representing a director we were i'm representing the state your judgments from our position he senses fourteen years unless he violates one of the conditions of his most recent your all you're doing is asking us to to leave that alone to leave it alone judgments but the district courts original decision in this case was is premised on the idea that no act of executive clemency can cure the initial graham violation such that the taint of the original six life sentences flows through the executive clemency decision so from the commonwealth's perspective we read the district court's order in this case as requiring us to wholly re sensing event for mr blount notwithstanding the pardon caesar c so that's why the case is it moved while we have an interest here the certification issue is important to you familiar with is it is in maryland i will be quick to tell you is that you when you serve it by something you say that it has if you decided one way will determine the case it least in maryland and you tell me this is wrong tell me if you have wanted but because he obviously would like to walk free tomorrow and he would want to complete part of it but that isn't the thing the fact that if you request an executive commutation you get less than what you might ideally want or ask for it still remains an executive satins and we don't we just don't have don't i'm a little puzzled by that i don't disagree with the propositions my my question poses a question there is now standing a ruling a hey was the district court arguably had no jurisdiction to enter it's there and it's not moot now for os because that could be meaningful in some future  g there they say the secondary the success of petitions all kinds of arguments a supreme court can change a law somewhere and so it's important for the state to have this petition  to look behind or in some certifying it to the virginia supreme court but we would under judge to judge wilkinson questioning it is important for federal courts to respect the integrity of the certification process when they certify questions to state court is the problem and and disregarded on fortunately what was a clear and flat holding on the part of the supreme court so the question that confronts us and i'm and i think i agree that the bottom line here is that this thanks should be dismissed with prejudice but the question is which road do we take is it the misuse it what were thought about the catalysis is that the disposition below liberal now that's really a hard thing to do to commit three arrows of that magnitude in a single case but the question is what because i think that i don't know that we can have jurisdiction here because i think there's an executive satins if we do have jurisdiction the merits of the matter is when it's an executive sat so his sentence has changed here now he's serving an executive sentence but with conditions and at least as the district courts order in this case exists if one of he violates those conditions we will be your secondary argument is that if he violates a condition of the second or second part then he goes back to the first one and the court didn't address that one correct and you argue around the city so that or der has to be vacated and so they're still viability in the effect of that that we have to take care of we do not have the power to review the original sentence because it's moo good morning may it please the court i'm john coghill i represent travis regard this he b s court corpus petition during the pendency of the attorney general's appeal of the order granting bubs petition governor mcauliffe granted him a conditional and partial pardon reducing is sentenced to fourteen years my client has accepted this pardon and under the circumstances no longer wishes to prosecute his petition for re sentencing any further and has instructed me his attorney to cease further efforts on his behalf in regard to his havey petition except for the following i have communicated to the attorney general's office to offer its just the perhaps you can address so my client has instructed me to present his defense to this appeal based on the briefs is submitted in the alternative my client asks this court to dismiss the appeal without prejudice matter to the district court with a mandate that the district court one vacate its order without prejudice and to accept my client's voluntary dismissal it is a b s corpus petition without prejudice why without prejudice i mean the complications in this whole process you know he still has time to serve yes quite a few years yet to go a lot of things can happen and anything that you stand without prejudice or dismissed without prejudice the court is asking the difference between prejudice and without prejudice your honour's for purposes of haiti as in other words if he files another one is there a difference if he did it if we do it without prejudice does it affect another baby as petition coming down the road i honestly don't know the answer to that question so the hard thing is we can't just leave i mean i just use making purely for myself i have a serious question as to whether the district court's ruling on the graham issue was was anyone close to correct and it seems very problematic to as the  it this particular case give rise to all kinds of mischief down the road and on i think it's something that we have to clear up because we don't want  situation where we where it's just hanging out there that someone is with what the judiciary regards as an illegal sat and i think there's a difference between the sentence that out was being served this case to clean up as much as we can if there's maybe maybe there's some confusion about yes i would've thought there was confusion after our order of surat and i would have thought that that judicial says that that earlier sentance was just gone and and replaced it that the pardon power was the end of it that should have been all that was necessary but the problem was the district court went on and suggested if this person was serving any legal son and i think the difference and ever really i'm just speculating here i think the difference was that last night i sat down i looked at surat this court's decision less than a year ago and all you have to do is replace the president with the governor and the w that i just don't know what we possibly could say other than what we've said zora or your honor i am watching on to it and i see the rest of my time following my instructions of my client he does want the court to u se his brief says submitted some which has happened in the last twelve days and i'm just following his instructions but you're not going to just miss when you're not going to to accept it with prejudice you understand what i'm well maybe you can have i'm sorry all right not enough and maybe you can have further discussions with your client and send us a twenty eight a letter to say if you would consent with prejudice because as i understand the government's argument what they're saying is they're worried about a successive pay vs petitions and the effect of a without prejudice finding here i think that's all they have that's the only thing that's and probably one we have to take under consideration is what do we say about the district court's opinion and what do we rely on and it seems to me your position maybe it doesn't matter as long as we reverse or bake eight the baby s order because the court didn't have jurisdiction to enter it that is the critical first point from our perspective judge niemeyer what we think is the most important issue for the court to address and its order is both because of surat and because of the way it was certified to the venue supreme court once governor mcdonnell's pardon was considered constitutional under the constitution up or ginia his petition should have been dismissed at that point and the and the sure of it right now is if he violates a condition of the second part and then it will revert to the first parton and that's the part in the district court rendered illegal correct as the marker only he is serving logic of the decision applies fully today as it did to the forty your logic does but the holding only reached first trying to take direct and and you're worried about even today holding but you don't need to go that far because it is