that occasion device if you have a document and it has its expiration date and the expiration date has expired usually means that documents no longer valid no longer imply a correct well i would agree with that except that well i will agree with that but i don't believe that was the question that the court had to address in this particular case whether and in fact the court did talk about whether this was whether the id was real and it was a representation that he was quote currently enrolled but the question that has this is a burlington county college burlington county community college id but but the question that the court should have focused on is not whether it was a current id or a valid and in fact i should say that this the the idea in this case had genuine we been issued by bronson county community college was issued in two thousand and one and in this case defendant cooney changed the expiration date to make it appear as if it was still a valid id he wrote in with an ink pen he wrote a number one over those xerox it was so somebody looking at that they didn't look carefully to see that there was a modification done manually might accept it but if if it was correct or was it was still two thousand and one someone looking at that probably would immediately say wait a minute this is ten years out of date how did that can't be  question that the court had to answer remember that here the core is applying a specific god might enhancement and the enhancement in order for it applied meant that the government had to prove it could it means any hologram want to mark certification and yes relevant to this appeal sequence of numbers letters or other feature that either individually or in combination with another feature is used by the issuing authority so not necessarily the guard but by the issuing authority on an identification document to determine if the document is counterfeit altered or otherwise  date that says after this date it's no longer valid it's like your license plates if you have it renew your ability to drive with a valid license plate is no longer the case if that license plate has expired it has nothing so in this case it's kind of hard to say it's not a way to authenticate if i think it means to prove or cases that have dealt with the issue have applied it to things that are unique to the issuing authority that relate back to the issuing authority and that are probably more sophisticated than what was done by the defense in this case so for example  are cases united states versus baker and united states versus jenkins watts and eighth circuit case the d c circuit case and in both those cases the courts were involved with defendants who were created counter is authentic and under the statute you could read the purpose of the sequence of numbers here is to determine if the document is counterfeit right if i if the purpose of putting that creature on the id card if they help to call it determine whether it's counterfeit then i think it might it would be an authentication way so my question is why first of all the card without any alteration is not corner right here that i agree with that so the question is this changing the date make it a counterfeit well i think it does yes i punishment of the enhancement which basically doubled his offense level it took his offense a little from six to twelve the knife was let me ask another some a question to just addressing myself to bronson county police officer see somebody on campus looks at this id calls the registrar and the registrar says well we don't know what the registrar would say there was no proof that this ever happened but the court's hypothetical was that the  college should be able to tell the police officer that no jamie shepherd is not currently registered here but that's not what's required to decide whether an off authentication feature is is part of the sentencing questions are headed i think this is the direction it's headed why why one and why no in the other yeah i think i think that's the crux of what was concerning judge hellmann and what i wish i could have  an expiration date is not something that's unique it changes all the time first of all there was no record evidence in this case how or when the college used or set its expiration date  if i went there it's a truck each of those cards they issue has a unique expiration date why why why why isn't the analogy applicable because there's only one card that they issued per year that is the combination of name and date well first i would challenge that assumption i don't think there was any proof that any particular expiration date was assigned or even how they did that and in fact it's the government's burden to prove that they're in hanson should apply and what the government did was cite to the bronson county college hunger well and if it was let's say for example that a colored sticker for every semester a different color sticker was used to validate current enrollment status if mr carney had come up with an orange sticker or any color sticker and put that on the card i think i would have a much harder argument because that is an authentication feature that is a specific device what the guidelines says is and i'm reading from to be one point one ten a if the offense common sense that an expiration date is just looking for the language here then an expiration date would be a sequence of numbers or letters that would allow the issuing authority to determine if it's real simple phone call from a police officer stopping a student to the registrar is their personal injury sharp jamie shepherd unrolled today would allow the officer to determine whether identification document was real and i'm saying that that  i don't think it means if it's different than whether the document was counterfeit alter or otherwise but i mean watch out for more than three it seems i thought you were going to say is that in effect by nature of what he pled to that that takes into account the alteration of the date yes and therefore it's baked in the cake and it's just it's double dipping double counting or double counting if you will by adding this six level enhanced yes that's exactly what i say he pled guilty to violating ten twenty eight by using and there's three prongs that statute and identification document and authentication feature for false identification documents and he pled guilty to the thousand and one and i think i think even the governor would agree that that was a genuinely issued bronson county id card but it was altered but my argument is that it was not altered by the way you think it should be interpreted well i think that the case law that has decided so far as in a pretty good job applying the definitional though i agree it's not a very well written definition but in the case of elm our duty there were to say oh yes there is an office and that's the code we use sort of our secret code for how we know that that's a genuine office and sort of person by by falsifying that information on the form that was what was considered  and i think the legislative i see my time is up but i would also urge the court to consider the legislative history behind the story sit down let's assume you're right and let's assume that under the right case from a court last year that on step one of the country analysis it was incorrect and you normally would send it back but then you've got here a judge that saying very clearly and with reasons even if i am wrong this is on pages appendix to forty four to forty seven even if i am wrong because i believe that this is a more punishment i  believe that this should there needs to be deterrence i believe that what he did here was egregious in effect bringing into play some of the thirty five fifty three a factors that he otherwise would even if we were at level i don't think with the discretion that's now given to the district judges i don't think there's a whole lot we could do well your honor i respectfully disagree because i think if the judge was told that this pacific hansen did not apply that he would have to work from the range of twelve to eighteen months and i believe that he would do that the problem is the difference between this case and write and this when i'm giving you now in terms of sentence but here the judge gave at least three or four specific reasons i'm like what was done right and th ng here is where you have such a track record level six of criminal history twelve eighteen months doesn't begin to do it this is in effect what he's saying even if i was down there at that range you get thirty six months and in addition i think you know part of the backstory may be he's looking at what he believes the individual was trying to get the information believe that the court should be able to punish mr cooney for things that did not happen but that we were afraid he was afraid would happen number one number two under the jurors didn't have this core of what did happen was he was posing or he got on as a census taker by use of documents that don't have his real name and by id pled to an id that no longer existed and what they found was that he had previously been convicted of crimes involving you know sex offender for girls under eighteen and most of the names that he had that they found were girls between eight and a team and you know or you can see how they could that could be rather scary in the community and government hadn't determined who he was long before he ever began working for him but putting that aside i think there is a procedure that the third circuit has made clear in the smaller case in the langford case that the but we have found the constitutional violations can them unless they harm us and in this case it almost seems like even if you were to win and win any victory would quinn has served twenty eight months of the thirty six month sentence quick acting by this court and by the district court below and having him reset it's could save him from a number of months it could save him  from the term of supervised release that he has to serve that's if the district court would have a complete change of heart and say ok they said i was wrong with respect to the calculation i'm still saying it's thirty six months i said what i meant and i meant what i said i also believe it will be important for this court to send a message that the courts and the parties need to be a little more careful when applying a definition especially in a case where the outcome is so this truly authentic it's real there's a difference between a hologram and an expiration date literally but the statute doesn't contain any language that says it needs to be a very difficult to reproduce authentication feature identification future if everything on that card and i think be considered an authentication feature in other words yeah something seemed to fall more under the means of identification not the expiration date but perhaps the name of the it could include someone's name if that's what the university would rely on if they were trying to check whether this was authentic under the example that the district court provided but really under the statute i think the better understanding is that someone's name is a means of identification someone social security number you need to them as a means of identification but it is possible that a institution would create an i d where they checked the weather it was counterfeit by looking at someone's name in conjunction with other features because that is also the language of the statute that if you use the feature in conjunction with other features to determine if it is counterfeit or if it's been altered then that would be an authentication winter mr cooney pled to a counterfeit charge the counterfeit what was the element that made this counterfeit expiration date and back to my point with your colleague in the us that would seem to be sort of parcel of the actual charge charge which guilty and it wouldn't make any sense add enhanced went to that which is right in the charge anyway the hands but usually is something that is an add on because of something else that occurred in addition id and reproduced all the authentication features that could be considered to be on the document and in doing so he did a more serious thing just presenting a false identification because he made it more difficult to detect what he had done by altering the thing the university would use and making it difficult to see that he had done this but if you step one in terms of the calculation of the sentence under the guidelines which is then plugged into step three hundred thirty five fifty three gets a for then sorry but we got us on this back we got to start you've got to have start with apples and apples you know measuring out holes rather than something that is so significantly higher than what it otherwise would be  said i would have done the same thing and gave no additional justification at all here it was both perfectly clear what the alternative guidelines range would have been the court went through a very careful calculation of the guidelines range of the st originally and then when he was appointed alternative sentence it took out the six levels but everybody in the courtroom understood what the alternative guidelines range was but the most significant thing the court did which is different than right and it's different than smally which right was citing was that it gave this extensive justification which the defendant has not shown in any way to be insufficient or on reasonable and this justification that the court gave distinguishes it from right and  circumstance yes where the where the district judge clearly understood what the guidelines range was as did the parties and this court has no doubt about what the alternative i once read was there's no ambiguity about what he would have done if it was handed back to him without this and han range i think the court did correctly compute the guidelines range and i don't think in reviewing the sentence of this court can have and you have any concern that the court didn't correctly compute the guidelines and it didn't create some ambiguity in the record about whether it would have station that he already understood from his conversations with his friend that she had secured the house on five eleven she confirmed to him after he had instructed her on five nine to nail the door shut she confirmed on five eleven that she did that and then on five thirteen she says keep the police out and the district court judges and title to infer that what he meant when he was doing that wasn't just keep them out from wandering in or doing something illegal but keep them out in a way that she a way that is obstructive and is meant to conceal evidence and the district courts that inference well perhaps you could reach another inference yourselves is entitled to deference as long as it's not the void of minimum evidence or support and here the evidence in this case shows in the court's listening to the person's conversations all of them or reading the person's conversations and listening to this conversation and infers that he means two things and that is not devoid of minimal evidentiary support and he has a track record of obscuring his identity and making it difficult for the police to detect what he's done and his nineteen aliases that he's presented over the course of time when he interacts with police so the court is looking at the overall picture and i think this provides the minimum evidentiary support to support the court's inference that he wasn't just protecting his property if you're coming up what if what about the argument that he pled guilty to a them so he stated that he was jamie shepherd and he's not and the court can then say that that id that said jamie shepard would have been tossed out from the get go if it had a correct expiration date but you alter that so it was no longer correct and therefore that is id  ok and that taking the document that he presented in order to be among other things to be allowed to be a census taker was a document that modified in a way to help him along with his scheme and therefore there can be an enhancement in this particular case because without the correct expiration date no one looking at that id would have believed it to be well first of all i disagree with the government's assertion that he pled in the alternative and that and  what i would say is that he pled guilty to violating three one thousand and one counts by making false statements those false statements were his word the name jamie shepherd and were the false birthdate of seventy two brother elements of those statutes but on as to the ten twenty eight count which was count thirteen he gave a very specific factual allocution and that was he pled only to having altered the expiration date and that's in the appendix at page eighty four where the court specifically asked about the ten twenty eight count which focused on the balance in county id with an expiration date of nine twenty twenty levon and the sole basis for having violated the ten twenty eight statu was having added the expiration date on to the bronson county college part without the approval or knowledge of burlington county and that was the sole basis for the ten twenty eight count i also would like  here eighty four eighty four eighty four and i would also reference appendix at thirty three which is the factual stipulations that he pled guilty to in the plea agreement which was to have presented a false browbeating county i do and i can read the exact stipulation fact when when this court reads judge hellman's ruling you can tell he is solely focused on the expiration date he didn't it wasn't considered by him that dreamy shepherd was possibly an authentication feature which perhaps could be another argument but that was not the focus of his decision and i would also dispute that the name jamie sheppard is a sequence of letters that is used by the issuing authority to determine if the idea is real because in this case they genuinely had issued an identification card in an engine shop or that's how he was and rolled there so but he did admit to what he did do which is falsifying the expiration date thank you very much thank you to both counsel for a