appeal i will primarily be discussing argument while mine as well as three and four as they relate to the st argument for argument two i rely on the written brief but i would be willing to take any questions your honour's may have  lyle's was traveling as a passenger in a vehicle that was stopped for an alleged traffic violation while riding up the warning ticket for the driver he's conducted a canine swift sniff test of the vehicle and the dog alerted lyle's the male driver robert i and two female passengers elizabeth john and mary brown and then they conducted a search of the vehicle police found methamphetamine and duffel bag in the cargo area robert di has claimed ownership of the bag and its contents all four individuals were arrested and later police also found methamphetamine in two other other areas one was strapped with a girdle on to one of constructive possession or the evidence in trial was not sufficient to support a finding of constructive possession the state needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that mr lyles and knowledge of the meth that was found in the vehicle and that he exercised immediate and exclusive control over the area where was out neither element was proven besides being a passenger in the vehicle the state presented no evidence connecting mr lyles to the mat  first this was a rental car that was not in mr lisle's name he was not the driver or even an authorized driver on the rental agreement there was no matter contra browned in plain view it was in a duffel bag in a vacuum sealed bag with in the coffin bag and the other two locations or presumably on the female passengers mr dias took full responsibility for the drugs in the duffel bag defendant is present at the scene or even defendant's knowledge that our fence is being committed is insufficient to prove constructive possession accordingly the state now prove anything beyond mr lyle's being present  the state presented several arguments as to circumstantial evidence supporting start the possessions none of these arguments individually or cumin are cumulatively sufficient to support a conviction st the state argue that traveling to cleveland to resolve  i issue was unusual the state is attempting to impart negative inference is on something that is perfectly normal thing to do  the state has as i can be found anywhere but inherent in filing in s s i is certain documents among which would be w choose from an employer and birth records or information regarding dependents these kind of documents would only be available by being present within the state for example so while the s s i application may be found anywhere the documents relating to that could require a person to travel to a certain city nd that state argue that travelling without any belongings is unusual this was it from l a to cleveland would be a twenty to thirty hour trip and it would not be that unusual to make that entire trip without changing clothes and mr lyles had stated that he was planning on permanently living in cleveland that can account for why his clothes were not present with him because they were already where he already in cleveland further if this was i suppose a drug trafficking round trip that would only mean that mr lyles had make a round trip seventy hour trip without clothes and i would also have even more unusual rd the state argued that mr drugs and he would have said things to avoid suspicion for the state argues that it's not logical for a group transporting drugs to bring someone not involved criminal should not be expected to operate logically or even intelligently and regardless there is very little to the other passengers and the driver the math was not in plain view and there was very little reason for mister lisle's to be looking in someone passengers it would be somewhat outrageous to expect that mr lyle's would know what was underneath the clothes of the two female passengers the state also talks about mr lyle's demeanor and this is a completely rational response to being arrested and the state says that once the police officer entered the car mr lyles started to be nice and again this is police and found five phones and everyone had claimed every one of the passengers and the driver had claimed one of the phones and then there was one account for it was not necessary mr lyle's the phone wasn't powered on to check who it belonged to and it wasn't determined whether that the phone even got service further even if this was mr lyle cell phone it's not unusual for people to have multiples of people keep old phones as backups and in today's age is easier ways to remain anonymous than having multiple phones the next  argument that the state made was the distribution of cocaine commission that mr lyles had from one thousand nine hundred and ninety six this is also covered in one an argument three and this should have not been something that was presented to the jury except as propensity evidence it is not at all relevant to the question of possession st of all the offense occurred twenty years ago and prior conviction was for delivery of cocaine delivery was not an element of the offense in the instinct case and the state sides to wash watkins now watkins is distinguish e because that's a case where the prior conviction was for delivery as well as the the current charge was for delivery so that show that because earlier defendant with a large amount of drugs was planning to sell it it shows that in the current case defend it with a large amount of drugs it was probably trying to sell it does it's not relevant to the question of knowledge of possession to use it as a propensity evidence and finally which was covered also an argument for is the cleveland casino video again this is not relevant to the issue of drug possession and the court even makes this finding which is why initially the court granted the defense's motion in limine on this topic the court later found that it was relevant to impeach mr lyall statement about s s i however this is a collateral issue and not relevant to the element of the charged offense accordingly impeachment should not have been permissible on  matter as it's typically not allowed to cloud all matters further it's not particularly relevant to the s s a issue either just because someone is applying for s s i it doesn't necessarily mean they have no money whatsoever and even if they did have a large sum of money doesn't necessarily mean that as i would have been granted so it's not particularly relevant to the issue and even if it was relevant the probative value here is as the court indicated very little but the court also understated the prejudicial effect the state used this evidence to argue that mister mr allows money laundering which is and also the state alleged that he was a drug dealer because he carried large amounts of money both of these were very prejudicial inferences to make in somewhat improper improvements just make and there was no limiting instruction on how the finally the video was not even properly authenticated mr lyles well as the defense was under the impression that this video would not be coming in pursuant to the motion  and it was at the very last minute that the court on the state's motion reversed that ruling during the middle of trial at that point the there was the state had not provided any accordingly this was a true almost like a trial by ambush this is the defense was not expecting this video to come in but the court allowed it at the last minute but there was no way for the defense to areas to analyze when it comes to constructive possession and case law is established a lot of different things to consider when dealing with constructive possession a person constructively possesses when they have the intention capabilit property in this vehicle besides two bags one with men's clothes name calling one with female clothing and pills and blankets the defendant had told an officer that they were coming from los angeles to california that's a long trip he did say he was moving to cleveland he didn't bring any property or anything so i think the jury can find any rational jury find that this was a round trip as counsel matthew  the defendant had access to that bag and probably did change his clothes even a round trip from l a to cleveland is a pretty long drive while it's possible he didn't change clothes it's probably not reasonable to believe that and the fact that he was such a long trip with these these three individuals and mr dias claimed that he knew that the drugs were in the bag obviously wasn't jones had the drugs on a person and mary brown also had a significant amount of methamphetamine which you hidden under the seat in the squad car during her transport so the state's missed the fact that three of these individuals clearly had possession of significant amounts of math and the defendant didn't is not a reasonable conclusion to be drawn based on this evidence here the  that there was methamphetamine of course he was in close quarters in this vehicle for a long period of time it's reasonable to believe he did know in some way shape or form that there was drugs in his car and that he was involved in this this plan clearly to drive to distribute we also know that birds of a feather seem to flock together so if a guy who is a drug dealer sees one of his friends and gets in a car with and he knows his friend is a drug dealer too but that drug dealer has he knows to be a drug dealer does that put him and let's say this guy is in fact himself a drug dealer but does that put him in constructive possession of the dope and the back of  the car he got and not if it was a five minute drive your honor i would say no but this was a long trip this was again as counsel suggested part perhaps into a car in a taxicab with three other people and they all had drugs on the person you of course not know that but this wasn't a taxicab so as a short drive this was clearly some sort of a plot scheme a plan and the state that it was read it was reasonable for the jury to believe that based on the fact that this was a long trip in an hour and a conscious plan to sell a lot of drugs that kind of probably did know what was happening mit's that as described the trial of these events do have quite a bit of baseline similarity there are multiple people involved there were drugs involved there was a cross country trip involved states and it's based on those those facts in the similarities between the cases that this was relevant and established defendants knowledge as they argue below and i argued in my brief about watkins that was in this court and in walk ins this court cite stated that it is true that the majority these cases deal with admitting prior convictions to establish now it's of intent to deliver it seems to be a th of the liver is the focal point of these cases the state understand the distinction i don't believe there should be a distinction again the state summits the facts of the prior case or the baseline facts there beside the intent were very similar this case and should be shows that this his presence in that car in this long trip with all these drugs it was not inadvertent or or innocent behavior and additionally that the state's mr the jury was instructed to only use they wouldn't agree with the trial court to this this wasn't all that probative from the statement wasn't all that prejudicial for the defendant i believe that is absolutely the case this this video doesn't show that offend and engaged in any drug activity he's he's in a casino and it's curious behavior it's bizarre it's odd but it's not criminal and so my overall point my strongest point on this this issue is  harmless error if this is error listen harmless error because it just it's very weak on both sides and the judge consistently said he said this was not the still a central point of the state's case as wasn't critical evidence in the state only piece of evidence at trial that nd phone didn't have some tie to defend and but i don't i don't think there was any yeah there was no other proof that that was his phone that he had to  argued in my brief and i would argue now that that's not a significant piece of evidence in this case i think that there  know because i think the jury the jury never heard proof that the nd phone was the defendant's i e that the state that was not a bedrock of state's case the state didn't stablish that but both of these phones were defendants so i think that you know giving the jury some credit they didn't hear there was no expert or anything brought in to prove that these phones were active and that they were registered offender and that he used them so i think that the state with regards to the length of the trip i believe our counsel said that it would be different it was a short trip versus a long trip a must prior to long trips the passenger checks the entire car and all the other items in the car it would be no difference on the time of the trip here there was one duffel bag and there were two male passengers i believe they said there was some one male clothing in there so  presumably this is one of their duffel bags but mr dias has claimed responsibility for the state never admitted the bag and itemized what was in it so we can't say that they were sharing this package as far as the evidence shows this was just one person's bag and mr nice has claimed responsibility for th with regards to being around trip seventy hours without clothes that if they want to see one to say that twenty to thirty hours without a change of clothes unusual that would make a seventy hour trip even more unusual  mr lyles was having a conversation with i believe it was mr brown and they were certainly expressing surprise at that point mr wiles doesn't express that same thing to the police officer just because i mean it would make sense to be polite to someone who is arresting you let me ask you this just mr lyles is identification indicated he was  and people retailer this court said even that would not even defendants knowledge that offense is being committed is not sufficient so even if mr lyle's at some suspicion that there was drug drug trafficking going with regards to the argument three the state said that that it didn't understand the distinction and the distinction would be that  drugs found around him are now his is is like the definition of propensity it's acceptable in the case of a delivery because the question then is not whether defend him possessed the drugs the question is whether the defendant possessed it to sell it now if the defendant previously possessed a large amounts of drugs and sold it then that shows that well he was probably going to do the same thing with this  so it goes toward motive it to go toward possession and knowledge of possession that would be a propensity inference  with regard to the cell phone i believe just as you had asked about where the phones were found and the there was testimony that five  phones were found and that everyone had accounted for one of the found and there was one left over i don't remember at the top i have which officer testified that but the two phones were now both found on mr lyle person it's possible that one of them was the testimony and that wasn't clear regardless of having to found again within is not unusual