the morning of may please the court in this case the district court my name is meredith s and i'm here on behalf of the order of the bar and in this case the district court applied the two level sentencing enhancement for obstruction of justice without making the applied as a result of a defendant's election to go to testify in his own defense at trial and the reason for this is because of the important sixth amendment concerns involved in facts in done again the supreme court specifically identified a situation where a defendant presents dressed or coersion defense as one of the circumstances in which specific findings are particularly important the findings that the court was required to make was that there was a false statement under oath concerning a material matter and that there was a willful intent to provide false testimony and again and this court's precedent this is the tenth circuits requirements are actually more stringent than those outlined and done again and requires that the district court identify with particularity which statements are actually false the district court did not do that in this case all the district court said was that the requirement in this particular context in my reply brief i did say that this donnegan seems to imply that whenever this objection is is lodged there sort of an automatic trigger that happens that requires  district court to make these findings again because of the sixth amendment concerns and because there is this temptation to apply the obstruction of justice in hands that when the defendant goes to trial and testifies in his own defense it's it's unclear whether  ball i guess i have some confusion about this subject is opposed to a procedural objection i think yes but i have some confusion about the difference between substantive and procedural objections because there is some language in this court's cases that say any objection to a sentencing enhancement is a procedural objection and so i think the difference is whether the objection was preserved as a matter of i guess substance is sort of a think as a sort of a prudential matter sure but as a matter of law i don't know that that the cases are entirely clear on this point what was the nature of your objection again there's a little bit of confusion about that here based on you know that the defense counsel didn't believe that there are ways of perjury perjury is testimony in his defense and the p s r writer says i'm going to a accept the court's findings as to that point and course that the government said that mr sherman did commit perjury and did provide false testimony so there were a couple of different things going on but it it's pretty clear that this objection was present below well the court did say i find that obstruction of justice is appropriately aired which i find was unfounded in fact and was that your objection that was the district court cited you know ok and the court also said that the whole defense want to say that when you said x that was perjury yes and when you said why that was also perjury yes so if you say everything you said was a lie would that be sufficient no because there are things that the district point didn't sharon's testimony was about his drug addiction and how that played into his getting into coming onto the attention of the drug trafficking and those things it's pretty clear from the sentencing transcript the district court did believe and so i think the problem is we don't know exactly which statements specific when we did see he said he specifically talked about the facts that the defendant offered to support the  thought was perjury which was basically everything he testified about the terms of the duress defense and i think that that's that's the tension here i mean i don't think a judge can just say everything you've said was wrong really wasn't very much said and that was the judge's problem is he hardly had any facts to offer he didn't say who threatened his wife and children when did that happen what exactly happened how did it happen that's what the judge said there is no detail and that's the problem with the defense and why you believe it was  mean i think that again there's a sort of a difference between an uncorroborated and vague defense and something that's that's far from you know big again i think that the judge just needed to be a little bit more on particular aspects of what he said in order to apply the indians and then compare those to the dining in factors because i think there's a big difference between something that's uncorroborated and something that's willfully materially false the judge said i mean i think he did he did that and he basically said if this were true the cartel were threatening his wife and his children in the way he says they were very generally he would have specifics about he would you know he would remember he would thought that those findings were actually applied to the obstruction of justice and hanson because the structure of the sentencing was pretty clear it's the structure of justice and then whether he got acceptance points then the rejection of the  view is that mr sharon took that wouldn't stand and actually committed perjury how much more explicit must one be i agree that's very explicit but he says in my view it's not like a legal finding and so i still think that there's a little bit of in the community there that say he has to say make a specific number finding of fact a find and then conclusion of law my conclusion of war based on me and b is that i think in an ideal in an ideal world maybe yes i think that that's what i think that's what the cases are asking courts to do and i and the jury rejects that defense maybe as a matter of law maybe the jury doesn't believe that the defendant proved the omens of duress or core coercion but this is one of these areas where it's particularly sensitive and that's why i think there's a one point saying he's a liar and then another point saying he's not a complete and total liar i do think that i think the way i read that part transferred to us a judge will say you got to give him credit he said he thought as he got his lawyers were leading difficult to interpret statement from the district court about you know things come on by the attorneys seeming to want to lead him into talking about facts and yet he didn't he didn't go there he didn't think that he lied in response to defense and uses the word defense and if you look at this in context the word defense is not an absolute this is a single count indictment in a single count trial and there was a single defense this was the only defense a trial the only thing is art the jury was i should be acquitted because i was forced to do this because of threats you might have a problem and you just didn't put this part of the table you might have a problem in a different case in which there were multiple charges there are multiple defenses arizona doesn't mean he was coerced and it doesn't mean he wasn't course so it would have been part of the defense he also testified that he was a drug addict we're closer but whether he's a drug addict it doesn't mean he was torched and it doesn't mean  keeps coming back to that word and i don't think it's an accident he's saying what your defense was falls everything that was tied to the elements of coercion fit and if it wasn't it wasn't and that's how you can draw a line against government's statement of facts the government stating the facts as sharon testified to support his defense in the direct examination he testified that he was addicted to heroin and sometimes delivered drugs to pay off his debts there's no we don't know if they destroyed or didn't credit that statement it seems pretty uncontroversial but that it was probably true mr sharon to testify that he had a few years earlier been caught by police while attempting to deliver drugs again it's pretty clear that that's true no one really contested that and this is all encompassed in the idea of mr sharon's defense he said that when he couldn't pay fors said that then he goes into questions about the cartel that when he couldn't pay a guy named should we gave him drugs to sell that he couldn't pay off that was not the particular statement that the court took issue with we don't know i mean and then the statement of facts kind of goes through and gets more and more specific as it goes along but again there are parts of the defense that were true and that nobody was contesting and that there were parts that were untrue and that the defense was the defense lawyer was presenting as part of the defense and again i just don't and i think that's our last case for the day so we appreciate your hospitality here in salt lake city good to be in recess though until tomorrow morning at eight thirty