the district court abused its discretion in admitting evidence regarding the nature of mr moses prior convictions for illegal reentry because let me ask you me like he was trying to tell the court i already did my time for my crime and now the government is just persecuting me over and over again and i want the jury to know that and that's seem like a p with mental capacity mental why the judge had to order in that circumstance your honor if that were the strategy then i agree with you there would not be a things from me you see what i mean they're hiding things from me and i believe also there was a pre hearing a pretrial motion hearing where he talked about in excuse me talked about people keeping things from him or or not being clear when the judge asked him you know it seems to me the only person who really articulated that that could have been a strategy was his lawyer at the eleventh hour after repeatedly saying to the district court you know i can't tell where this guy's coming from i can't the district court said to mr lopez look you do not want to talk about your prior assault with a deadly weapon the jury's going to hold that against you he said i don't care if they hold it against me they need to know the truth so i i understand the concern i'm sure why is there a signal that he might still i mean this is the third time that he's been camped for a prior crime and he still continues to say what does that have to do with anything just so don't understand the legal process well your honor that would be incompetence if he's not able to understand the legal process well i mean there's a different meaning there's a line there the well part of it is i mean it doesn't have to be you know you know a lot of people don't understand the legal unable to there was no evidence of any kind of mental problem no your honor and that's not a requirement no i understood but  probably a very important factor though well it kind of puts a client like mr lopez in a catch twenty two we don't know what happens the lawyer would say hey judge i really think there's a problem with this guy let's do a competency evaluation that would help your honor and you know most think that the evidence cherry argument is quite strong and i want to address that because i think your honor so far afford to evidence that the government introduced over mistake and they put these prior offenses before the jury and it was not harmless we see from the record and if you look at the jury record as a whole including the jury questions and the jury deliberations it's clear that they were very interested in this issue they asked three questions what happened to the friend you were with hunting was their offense and when did you know you were in the united states they asked those prior to the government introducing these priors on  morning orders please the court my name is chris brown i'm with the united states attorney's office in tucson arizona there are two three issues in this case the first one as has already noted is whether the district already noted in during the during the presentation of defendant's argument there was no medical history in this case and after doing some research i look at most of the cases that i saw involved at least some medical history now the case law says that that's one factor to consider but it certainly looks like an almost every case at least the ones that i reviewed there was medical history defense counsel statements regarding at the evidentiary hearing following the trial whether or not there were any competency issues and the defense attorneys said that there weren't there were no there were no issues with competency he said your honor i know i know what you mean i evidence on the fact that he had been convicted and a couple of times before and he thinks it was unfair and i think that's very similar to the sovereign citizen case that was cited i mean he just believes he doesn't believe in the laws of the united states he thinks he should be able to tell the jury are standing in a lot of central americans are deported by being dropped out of mexico and they have to find their way from mexico to central america in arizona and they take them there and then they wash and get off the bench and they go to mexico and they're supposed to make their way back to central america i don't know what the documents just basically in this case but the documents do indicate there was a change passed if they were if they were spending on direct examination said that he was talking snakes in mexico and ended up in the united states so i tried more the prosecutor asked the judge if she could now and sanitize the prior convictions they've already does because the defendant has to be found guilty of knowing involuntary entry and those facts have to be proven on a prior occasions so if he was if he had really entered voluntarily and knowingly on a prior occasion it's much more well it wasn't propensity evidence like the assault with a deadly weapon conviction we were trying to show that the defendant was a bad person and therefore you should convict him of what we are the government was seeking to show was that he had the government prove that the defendant had entered the united states with that without permission there were limiting instructions given in this case the government reminded the jury of those limiting instructions during closing argument there was evidence that the defend had been deported to nicaragua the defendant provided a false name to the border patrol agent showing consciousness of guilt at the time answer to that question but i do believe that we have if there is another crime for entering or or attempting to reenter there is another crime for attempting or it's correct and it looked to me like this was from that rather than the founding i'm not sure about that last that i think is what's generating our questions to you about whether it's a defense or an element who does the defendant have to prove mistake or the government prove absence of mistake it's kind of confusing here maybe the forms of change to i don't know the government i built to the answer that question for our position is that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly and voluntarily enter was found in the united states  however even if there was error in that regard the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt without that evidence speaks of the overwhelming evidence against the defendant in this case he had been deported h clearly trying to do something improper