good morning and may it please the court my name is laden o'connell miller and i represent jeanette for rio one of the two defendants in this consolidated case during my time before the court this morning i want to try to address three issues with you first the violation in the closing it there were a number of objections made i don't think it was pacifically objected to verbally at the time but there were a it wide variety of objections made actually by the government  involved with a b c cicero kids during closing argument mr jackson referred to a contract he created related to a b c sister of kids that said they parents agreed for the center to allow all children to be counted as present  or any time of attendance whether they were there that individual day or not the only way that that ever came out according to the government in testimony of trial was through the first day testimony  clearly violate state mall because it would miss recording the actual dates of attendance for the children the only testimony a trial that was actually made didn't relate to the two daycare centers that mr reed to the day care center a b c cicero testified a number of those individuals testified that their children didn't attend on days where there were daycare certificates attendance good gets submitted to illinois action for children however not a single witness so percentage of the forms use the alias and it were two months and claims were submitted for reimbursement for five months after the suit the town of so surreal closed down the facility claims were submitted it was not clear during trial if you it's possible that there were still children attending the center even though the kind of sister who did close down the daycare center no question about that there is some question in the trial testimony as to whether or not there were still children in attendance at the facility at that point in time and of course she at most saul mr rhea a total of three or four times at the daycare center itself she was actually living in the state of georgia outside of atlanta at the time and so the only thing she really did lawyers thought things were going really really well for her in this trial your i was the second chair of the trial a district judges grant of a mistrial means she has to go through another trial where she might not fare so well so i have i'm who pretty rare circumstances that require a district judge to grant a mistrial sue a spontaneous without any objection i would agree that your honor i would say that this is one of those situations i had as i said i was the second chair to the all the rather may please the court matthew mcquade on behalf of herman jackson herman jackson argues on appeal the same argument that you raised at trial that the evidence the government presented did not true that he intended to defraud the state of illinois or illinois action for children he maintains and maintained then that he did not intentionally create or participate in a scheme to cheat the state of child care subsidy funds using the three separate daycares mr jackson contended in contends that the government's evidence actually supported his defense despite the theory put forward by the prosecution and on appeal mr jackson raises several arguments in support of that he the government attempted to portray jackson's lifestyle as the curious and extravagant highlighting the cars that he was driving the houses and again quickly put into foreclosure due to his generously suspect business practices as far as paying bills he took no trips to exotic locations no expense of the case and he made no extravagant purchases with the money the money that that came in which funneled back into the church that he had he had bought and then tried to maintain and build a congregation jackson states that is business decisions were misinformed and naive he presented testimony through his meant but not attendance jackson attended approved at trial that he got to fight the state agencies to keep the daycare's open and this contract was evidence of his lack of sophistication in business it was evidence of his innocence intent and misunderstanding what evidence do you think the government offered that the jury was required to disbelieve judge i the only thing i would say is possibly the evidence of some of the people that were employed by the daycare that indicated that their kids were being built for time they weren't there this was a handful of witnesses your honor so i know that there was numerous other when a suit who came in who were not involved with the daycare other than being billed for their kids never being there some of separating that i would believe in my opinion my only evidence would be that when jackson confronted them with the certain time sheets indicating that their children were there when they said they weren't there show the more than a complete contradiction but it showed a credibility issue credibility not required to disbelieve not required to disbelieve but credibility and again it and i would say it was a partial contradiction not a full contradiction mistrial during the middle of jackson's closing first the for rhea never objected a single time during jackson's closing statement she never moved to suffer never to move to sever any point before trial or during trial you know the mystery man you were fairly busy during the closing i was i objected numerous times but the defense never for a number objected the other point i want to make is jackson was the first defendant the case so he argued first for the defense that meant that f his closing came after that so free ahead an opportunity to respond to what jackson said she never did there was nothing really in that closing that was directly responsive to jackson's statement she had the opportunity to respond to what jackson said but never did because jackson never pointed the finger at her their defenses were not mutually antagonistic to the extent that there was any finger point in this case they went the other direction from for ria to jackson and in fact if the judge had granted the mistrial sponte in this case there's a good argument that she would have been undercutting for defense because for he had been setting up a defense throughout trial that she was similar to kisa jackson his ex wife was involved the first two day carers and denise pugh who was the front nominee owner of the second daycare you can see that in the cross examination of wikis to jackson and other witnesses that she wanted she was setting up the argument that jackson was the was the architect at all from for ia during his closing she had granted us last ponce mistrial it quickly could've she might have been worse off in the later trial and as even sounds like we have admission here that the defense thought the trial was going very well so it would have made little sense for there to be a mistrial at that point but in short we're not mutual intel you know stick for ia may well have benefited from the joint trial given the disparity in evidence against jackson as opposed to her and for that reason it was not plain air for the district court to swap on to granted a mistrial with respect to free a sufficiency of the evidence argument it was there was plenty of evidence from which a restroom rational jury could have convicted her on the fraud counsel that should be affirmed over the course of more than a year for ia as she admitted to the f b i submitted new signed used an alias name to submit numerous false monthly certifications to get and to get subsidies that she was not entitled to from action for children should be false statements on those documents included billing for children that never attended billing fulltime for children it only attended part time billing for children after they work and loan were no longer at the daycares and then also a very long course of billing from february two thousand and eleven to july two thousand and eleven for services that never occur because the town of sr and shut down the day care at that point so those false statements themselves are of course evidence of her intent to defraud the jury verdict was also supported as to for area by her attempts to conceal her involvement in the fraud that of course came from her use of the alias name and or ts which is all over documents that have false representations in them and then also her statements and lies to the f b i when they came in approached her she said that they were sneaking in children along along the side from this to the side door after the cicero shut down the day care and there was simply no evidence to support that at all that was just an attempt to derail the f b i she was also challenged by two separate employees who had children who were going there the most telling challenge was from natalie navarro that was in mid two thousand and ten navarro let her know i know that you're billing for my children full time just the fact that they only went part time and her response was not to deny it it wasn't to express surprise she said don't worry about it i'll get you more hours which means i'll get you more money and she also said look at it this way you don't have to make a co pay the jury could have reasonably concluded that that was an admission that for ian knew that this was a fraud and that she was telling her  worker to be quiet about it because she was also benefiting from it so in short there's additional evidence but there's various there's plenty of evidence from which he jerked the jury reasonably convicted her and so you should the court should reject a sufficiency challenge on with respect to jackson the the evidence against him honestly was overwhelming and it was clearly sufficient for irrational jury to find him guilty he was the architect over this  occurred over a period of eight years there were dozens and dozens and dozens of false submissions to action for children and of course the same types of false statements that i described for ferriera were in those documents that jackson submitted and he also attempted to conceal his involvement in the scheme by regularly using the alias name and then also by using fronts like denise pirro the owner of the second day care and the whole point of him using those fronts was to distance himself from the fraud  so what happened with the monthly certificates your honor is the the the care center together the parent would submit the application once the application was approved for the child one for the child for one or multiple children once the application was approved then they were approved for six months and they could start that they could start billing for these children and or and then once key submissions and those were the but there are many false statements about the number of days attended on the house so the evidence against jackson was extremely strong his use of aliases his drive to the action for children employed process paperwork and then also his use of fronts and nominees throughout the process the points raised by his attorney here were largely beside the point the fact that the bentley was used as opposed to new he did there was evidence of course that he did did have an extravagant lifestyle he had a bentley he had a mercedes numerous residences he drove back and he flew back and forth between atlanta so the jury could have reasonably concluded that he did engage in extravagant lifestyle from the fraud but the reality is is the everyman used bentley with a shred of truth might agree or are put in the end the evidence against him was overwhelming it was clearly enough for a reasonable jury to convict him less this court has any other questions i'd simply ask the court to affirm both defendants convictions and affirmed her in a sense how old i believe she is in her forty's or late thirty's and she had young children she in jackson had one child while the case was pending we did a we had a trial date set and then it got kicked because of the pregnancy so i know that they have that one child together i don't know she may also have other have very young children no i think that that's something that was something that was raised at the sentencing though judge coleman gave for ia numerous continuances of her surrender date in part because of some health issues for me it was having and also in part to make sure that she could make arrangements for child care ok well thank you thank your schemata so long and further from his stroke believe your honor at the time just as howls of the children of the children's ages are she is eighty now i think one and a half year old here maybe two year old in the end the other two children or one of them i think the boys in its early teens there's a girl in her late teens as well in an if i could dreadfully touch back on the intent issue i think mr madden really identifies with the fundamental lack about princes which is that mr jackson did use a series of individuals like denise pugh and like he said jackson as fronts mystery or simply was never present more than three or four occasions at the daycare center she was signing documents and submitting them but she had no knowledge of what the actual attendance was th that information was being provided to her by somebody else there was no actual evidence showing that mr jack or that sorry mr we filled out incorrect daycare that knowingly filled out incorrect attendance information or information she felt was inconsistent with contractual terms of the parents when she just does the document require her to say i know this is true i believe it just requires a signature i'm trying to think of what the exact language is on the document i don't have a copy in front of me but i could certainly follow up with an answer to that thank you so much that one question i didn't see anywhere in your brief  she knew it she was doing she was being deceived by him but you're out of the fact that i didn't in the narrative of the brief go into that specific theory that was really the basis of the insufficiency of the evidence