charges nd the court said he wouldn't comply with the rules of courtroom decorum sir the government says the court also made a finding that he was just doing this to delay the proceedings i'm not sure the court actually made that finding for purposes of argument done was a couple of things to try to further explain it st of all it could have stopped using the buzz words nature of the charges it could have just told mr couch or the government will have to prove the following th do so it's very least your honor the court had to make that attempt and i think after making that attempt to kid and should have made the finding what's going on on the nd ground i mean had there been at this point a long enough history of grounds until it's actually been tried and it were for there's no court room decorum there nd there were good reasons here to try it the main reason mr gouger was being obstreperous if we want to call it that is that he was saddled with an attorney he didn't want and i think it was much of what he was complaining about would have gone away if he was allowed to represent the prosecutor st of all he answered many of the forensic questions about his education or lack thereof about his lack of knowledge of the law about whether anyone in threatened or forced him to do this and so on and then the judge chad then he says few seconds later maybe jack the judge says no and then he asked a couple sentences later when can i just act and the judge is you don't get to object here but he was trying to figure out when he would be allowed to make his arguments and make his points and that was another reason it was appropriate very inappropriate to tonight and the right to suffer representation before he even had a chance to try it some exceptional circumstances where that might be appropriate they weren't present here your honor on the other grounds the government thinks the court relied on but i'm not so sure the court did is that the request was for a purpose a delay i think he'd actually be a basis for denying the stuff representation unless and until there's a request for delay mr katter never asked for a continuance here if he had started representing himself and or said and i'm gone we going to do this if i can have a continuous the court could have said we're going to trial on september th you can either do it yourself or all have the attorney do it but we're not changing the da without mr gallagher having made that request there was no basis for making a finding or an argument that the request for super purpose of delay i didn't want to touch on since i have a little bit of time before i get to th same seating for a bottle i wanted to touch a little bit on some of the other issues one that i think the court is to look at carefully is the potential conflict of interest created by the filing of the because i think the problem here the initial problem is there was no inquiry into the nature of the park place at least without knowing whether it was really a frivolous complaint or meritorious complaint of the district co which no conflict in the case law actually supports that when you look at it carefully the th circuit more case which wasn't so much conflict but it cited a couple conflict cases talked about the concern about there not being an evid critical stage of the proceedings where he was deprived of his right to counsel and that being that structural layer which is more steps had already been justified setting aside the order had that a direct appeal been taken then course i've tried to address that in the briefs i see in running short of my time but i think that goes to the structure of its structural lare the problem is just too hard to evaluate i think that's why it's structured mr good how can it be may please the court daniels it on behalf of the united states your honor starting with a bill revocation hearing this defendant could have appealed from errors at that hearing at immediately after the hearing understaffed the boy boyle in fact the district court gave him an opportunity to come back the following week with his new attorney and essentially really argue why you should be released on bail he never raised any of these issues at the time and he never filed an appeal so at this stage following conviction even if there was some error in allowing hybrid representation the remedy wouldn't be to overturn an otherwise valid conviction but of course there was no error and or at least the district court was well within its wide discretion in handling the sort of difficult situation that the defendant created at this bail hearing for four months leading up into to this hearing the defendant had steadfastly refused any appointed counsel he had refused to retain his own counsel and he had declined to represent himself under those difficult circumstances the district court allowed him a role in the proceedings to get to the bottom of what the allegations were and whether you had violated the terms of his  pretrial release so there was no th amendment violation at that proceeding and even if there was a reversal conviction would not be a proper remedy at this point as to the other six amendment claims relating to his request to represent himself the trial the district court properly denied his request for three reasons st as your honor noted the defendant refused to answer the questions about whether he understood the nature and cause of the nature of the charges against him and he kept repeating almost like a mantra that he didn't understand the nature and cause of the charges which was something he had been saying over and over again through three different freddy hearings and multiple hearings throughout but even before that point the st time that he made an unequivocal request to represent himself as the court tried to go through the inquiries he kept pushing back up giving qualified answers and non responsive answers the court had to stop and start over until he finally got to the point where he asked him you know after listing the charges do you understand the nature of the charges against you and he asked it four times and the defendant refused to answer at that point with the record as it was the district court simply could not go forward and allow him to represent himself if he did then we would be presumably having the opposite conversation right now on appeal in the defendant made it clear that he did not understand the charges and i think defense point that the court had some sort of obligation to avoid using buzz words or to phrase the way he asked it differently is not supported by the record through there was three separate forever hearings the st district court actually ordered the united states to prepare a bill of particulars that the defendant kept asking for court all of the courts repeatedly instructed the defendant on the specific elements there's no case law that would suggest that the court and when fred it self requires a finding as to that the defendant understands the nature of the charges against him but the court couldn't use that language in order to sort of void the inflaming irrational defend it but there is as to the the nd point that th report even had it concluded that the defendant really did understand the nature of the charges i would have still properly denied the right to representation itself representation simply based on the defendant's conduct attempted to engage in a for editing inquiry the court sort of just took the defendant's antics and unreasonable behavior leading up to the hearing and then sort of out of the gate denied the right to representation that's very different from the facts here where the defendant even as the court was trying to conduct a threat inquiry it defended kept pushing back interrupting and in fact at that hearing three weeks before trial the defendant had to be removed from the he also had to be removed for failure to abide by the court's instructions and so given up the standard allows for a denial of self representation if a defendant refuses to abide by the and as my opponent noted the court also properly denied this request purely based on the timing over the course of a year of pretrial litigation the defendant made a very clear that his efforts in this regard were intended to sort of play off the right to self representation against the right to retain an attorney of choice and use that to simply stop the trial from going forward up to the date of the trial itself the defendant so told the district i'm happy to answer there's a lot of other issues raised by the defendant i'm happy to answer any questions the court had other issues i have a question about whether or not this dry king his testimony after he took the stand leaving just the identification of his name doesn't that bring this within the grand tello case from the th circuit put it on all fours with that honor i don't i don't think that at this in this case either the district court or the defense attorney recognized that by taking the stand testifying but testifying in a way that was contrary to the law and resulted in your and nothing more and the and the court held that that was it was improper to comment on that one what he failed to say i think in this case because there was no objection from defense counsel and because we were only reviewing for plain error given the manner that this unfolded at trial it was not so clane or obvious that this particular fact pattern of a defendant testifying but doing in a way that results in his testimony being stricken i s the equivalent of invoking the th amendment right to remain silent or equivalent to that circuit case of simply taking the stand but not saying anything so to the extent they're similar i think there's enough difference there that the  not to recognize this as a th amendment invocation any error would have necessarily been harmless in this case the prosecutor came back up after the defendant testified and asked a total of ten questions the defendant did not respond to any of the ten questions from the prosecutor all of those answers were stricken and the court then instructed the jury that the questions of counsel were not in evidence  and in closing defense counsel at the st thing he said was reminded jury that any questions the prosecutor asked were not in evidence so even if it should have been playing to the court that he after sort of warning the defense extensively that if he took the stand he would be subject to cross examination that at that point once he gave non responsive answer is that he should have the court should have ordered to stop the prosecutor they're not allowed any further questioning  because the defense never actually answered any of the questions all none of this would have affected the overall outcome of trial and that's particularly true even if you take into account the fact that the prosecutor made a comment in rebuttal closing argument this point about what the defendant said or did not say on the stand was one minor point in a case that was otherwise overwhelming and essentially uncontested  one that controlled the computer there was items that resumes and photographs on the computer that contained the child pornography and there was essentially no real dispute in this case that he was the user and operator of the computers where it was found so even if there was an error on the part of the district court and is highly unusual circumstances a reversal conviction on planar review would not be appropriate in this case you also addressed the discovery issue has contended that the majority rested in declining orders or pressure and expectations about changes and reforms would be made and they tried to make a showing to argue that there was reason to think that those had not been done and therefore perhaps the result from dryer should be different why why was it appropriate in you clothes off discovery sure your honor i think that the bill is well within the district court's discretion to decline this discovery request in this case for a few reasons st in armstrong the supreme court made it clear that rule sixteen provides for discovery as a defense to the actual case and she brought against the defendant another were it as the court described it as says she'll defenses against the evidence from the united states but it does not open t broader sort of sword discovery to attack the prosecution or the way that the prosecution was brought up more particularly in the united states versus chon cited in the brief the court has already considered a request for information from the n c i has to support a pos a commentator as defense and held that that's the type of sword discovery that is not covered by rule sixteen and even putting that aside the particular investigation in this case took place in two thousand and twelve years before around the same time as the investigation in the dryer case and this was years before the th circuit's original panel opinion or the on back opinion so for the court to order discovery and aid of a sword  defense to essentially argue that the th circuit was misled and conducted its analysis wrong in order to sort of send a message by dismissing a case that occurred before any of these  circuit cases even came down it's several steps removed from the sort of normal rule sixteen process and certainly under an abuse of discretion standard it wasn't illogical or irrational for the court to decline to go down that road and to keep this case focused on the actual facts at  different interpretation of cause so i think this is a far far far different from some of the cases the government sites where the defendant wouldn't answer any questions at all on the cross examination