focus mr singer was convicted of attempted smuggling items into cuba and the government's proof was insufficient into regards to this conviction st the government failed to prove that mr singer had the intent to take items and nd the government failed to prove that a substantial step toward the attempt was committed i'm going to st focus on the failure to prove intent just last year the united states supreme court and we have stated that we quote we normally presume that congress did not intend to impose criminal liability on persons who due to lack of knowledge did not have a wrongful mental state in that regard the supreme court has held consistently that in certain circumstances ignorance can indeed be a defense and the rehov court stated that that's the case when the defendant quote has missed has a mistaken impression concerning the legal effect some collateral matter and that mistake results in his misunderstanding of the full significance of his conduct thereby negating an element of the defense what happened here is mr singer was bringing multiple and various items from florida to cuba they included motorcycle parts direct t v boxes telephones microwave ovens diapers all of those when one takes things cuba there are licenses and there are licensing exceptions there's a licensing exception to take things to cuba to support the cuban people that's a designated reason under the administrative rules if if if the item requires a license you have to apply for the license if the item does not require a license and you're traveling under a licensing exception to support the cuban people but you do not need to to to to apply for  but why didn't the evidence that was produced at trial when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict which we must do the fish and to establish if there was that he knew when we look at the fact that he did these three hundred and three dollars nano stations in the compartment under the bed in the bed was screwed down on top of it and then according to age and life who again we have to look at the evidence in the light most  favorable to the verdict said that he asked your client both well get the f least twice if you had anything else to declare he denied having anything to declare and then he told boies after finding after mr bell i found the nano station that he was sorry he had lied to the agents but that he didn't want them to find the nano stations why isn't that enough to establish at least circumstantially enough to support the verdict that he had knowledge that he wasn't allowed to take these items to cuba without a life two reasons your hon that he either that he either might have new might have known that i might have just failed to disclose it because he didn't feel like it or that well  disclosed that there were these other items you'd have to open up the bed and show them to the agents and then the nano stations would be discovered so i'm not sure how that works in the light most favorable to the verdict of the client like i said there's two reasons the st reason is not everything underneath the bed was subject to a licensing requirement there were other items under the bed so there's no point in hiding anything that's legal from the united states government m because because the question is does knowledge of the items his testimony was that he secured them under the bed because he was hiding them from the cuban government who would have put him in jail in cuba and there's been support for that just not terribly long ago we the united states had had a prisoner swap for someone who was doing this essential to the same thing that mr singer was convicted of yes i understand what you're saying but and i know that you said that i knowledge that he testified to that certainly it would have been it would have been totally fair for the jury to have believed him on that and acquitted him on that basis but it did not stand it apparently chose to believe age and life testimony that he told agents life that he was sorry that he lied about the bed being screwed down because of the cuban authorities but he really scooted down and hid the stuff under there because he didn't want the american authorities to find i mean we have to we have to credit that when we look at the burdock here under the sand nano stations not been under the bed we're not having this particular discussion because everything in the boat was legal but had been made it the only thing that made the nano stations illegal is the distance over which they transmit there is no evidence whatsoever that mr singer knew that the nano stations possessed that characteristic of the distance of transmission but here's the problem in that regard  nasa stations hadn't been under the bed perhaps the reason we wouldn't be here is because at that point either the bedlam has been screwed down or if it was screwed down there would have been no reason for your client to say he still hiding things underneath the bed which gives more credibility to his position that he was hiding him from the cuban government not the american government i agree with your honor that maybe mr singer was a little hard headed in his dealing with agent bli and he's got a conviction for false statement to the agent which i'm not challenging because he admitted to that in his testimony but being a hard head does not make someone a criminal if it did there's a fast majority of congress who might have  problem but being being hard headed does not mean that the government proved like that was necessary in the stables case that he was aware of and knew of that characteristic that made these manifestations illegal certainly seems to be a factor that could go against him because understanding that there are these regulations in place if you don't get an answer and you proceed anyway i mean can that  against your client i understand your question and the evidence actually is from tina corbett he was never informed about the export and ministration regulations the expert the expert testimony from everybody involved i don't think there's any other way to describe these regulations other than byzantine there is a declaration that communications equipment are x are encouraged to be brought to cuba this device  still prior i have a question for you i thought that there was testimony by one of the government witnesses that one of the reasons the normalisation were listed as classified was that the speed at which they transmitted declaration of the expert witnesses there are two things that made the nano station on the list of licensing requirements number one was it in christian and number two was the distance over which it the box boxes nothing about the distance or encryption on it allan christensen testified that modems and network access controllers are allowed to be exported to cuba the t p link modems were ok but the nano station wasn't because of the  distance agent glycine was confused over these things because he originally thought the direct t v boxes weren't allowed he confiscated them gave them back to mr singer saying quote they're good to go then incorrectly testified in front of a grand jury that they were needed a license which they do the passengers on the boat does that evidence impact your argument at all mister singer's declarations and his testimony and everything he s and which which i the that charge is different than the attempted exportation charge so that so his statement to tina korb is encompassed in a conviction that's going to stand because it wasn't challenged you know there was no really argument against it at trial and i can't challenge it now the challenge i'm making is against the attempt exportation won and i'm well beyond time so i'm happy to continue answering the cour discussion of mens rea in particular and i'd like to address the line of supreme court cases on which mr singer chiefly relies because in our view the contrast between those cases and this case goes a long way to explaining why his argument fails if there could be said to be a and overriding concern at the heart of the supreme court's mens rea case law over the last half century or so that concern would be ensuring that statutes don't sweep up innocent conduct that's true when we think about staples when we think about brian and most recently when we think about rafe and staples is really a case in point because there the supreme court was confronted with a statute the national firearms act that included no mens rea a provision whatsoever and the only way the supreme court could interpret that statute without  sweeping up innocent and in that case constitutionally protected conduct was to import mens rea into the statute specifically knowingly knowing conduct here we are dealing with a case in a statute that fall on the opposite end of the mens rea spectrum because here the district court specifically instructed the jury that it could only convict mr singer to conclude that he knew that his attempted exploitation was contrary to you your honor with regard to the administrative regulations the united states supreme court has said that where administration ministry of regulations deal with items not generally known to the public to be controlled by the government the court th government has to prove that the person actually knew and intended to violate that particular section but we've discussed the intent part quite significantly i'd like to move to the to the  step on the attempt the evidence seems to be clear on the record below that the trip was canceled that when when when a judge i'm sorry yes i'm sorry mr kerik you know  well generally you can't argue something in rebuttal that you didn't bring up in in your initial argument i know you thought you were going to be but you didn't get to it i guess what i'll do is  honor and that's ok i mean i did speak for a while in your section so what i'm going to do though to make it fair is i'm going to give you two minutes to address the argument i'm going to give mr math in one minute cancelled when he arrived on may st there were many people on board many things on board when he arrived i may nd there was nobody else on board other than mr singer and most everything was taken off there was no movement on the boat it was still more than the same place it was so near preparation is not sufficient for attempt it requires a substantial step and our view is that substantial step would have actually been on more in the boat and beginning that journey and that didn't and that didn't happen in this case so there's two back to the original point there's two reasons that the government's proof was insufficient one on the intent and two on the substantial step with the with the attempt and i appreciate the prescience of course indulgent and let me get to that particular smuggling context it's hard to think of too many things that more strongly demonstrate the firmness of criminal intent than concealing hundreds of nano stations under a bed so securely that it takes a power tool can have one delivered here tomorrow by amazon the only thing that makes them illegal is heading to cuba which he never did thanks and i read and i would ask the court to reverse our thank you council we will take the case under advi