good morning ladies and gentlemen our first case for this morning is united states of america against shaft jones fifteen thirty five forty seven so  and your honors may have pleased the court this case is about you know the prosecution stretching i think of very little evidence to go a very long way could you speak louder please informant why is that not competent evidence you know if a person says when i say when i hear the word eggs i realize in this context somebody's talking about cocaine why why do we need more than that well cocaine her or whatever the substance was at the time here it's never confirmed i mean we've got the detector you know we've got the informant who says it's that he's being paid by the state we don't have i mean he could come in and you know make it a range would be out maybe here's the problem i have the whole thing was all set up and then when they get to the car why jones shows him all the scans in the  backseat right and if i go in the right people and everything i mean is so it's not just these conversations some of which have recorded some and not recorded but the ones that are not recorded are certainly bolstered by the ones that are recorded and consistent with the and then after they get the warrants another two hundred twenty one thousand in these various accounts and i mean well we certainly i mean he certainly was carrying a lot of cash and that is that suspicious  think really so did the three hundred fifty to three hundred thousand dollars and unloaded coal him for assault rifle right next to it and several loaded magazines for the rifle with night vision scope and a loaded pistol in his waistband right you know those are all legal facts yes and frankly if you're carrying back kind of cash you would probably want to be armed but it's the whole story i think that's the thing  it's not that they just sat there in the i hopped in talked about ethics which maybe if they had gone to their apartment and entertained that afternoon perhaps might go your way it's putting all of these things together they had this discussion there is the testimony they drive rather carefully they go to the car wash in a rather peculiar way of driving jones swerves down the alley and then the other things that judge williams is talking about so it don't we have to look at the whole picture is the jury would well i think it was you know does it appear that he was acting suspiciously yeah i think you can reasonably say that can you say that beyond a reasonable doubt that's a tougher question but can you say that this is cocaine that he is hiding here it could be drug it could be some other crime it could be something he doesn't want wife to know about tour the bottom of the page that's six lines of the c s offered to bring quote twenty eggs close quote but jones responded no no i'll just come in to talk so that's where i got the number from and then the december fi the only thing that says it's cocaine is the police informant who has never seen shaft jones purchase drugs from somebody else but why can't the jury credit that testimony surely it was aware that maybe that recent reason supposed to be a very large drug operation and the prosecution did not find any regular accomplices they didn't find any drugs yeah there's no real evidence of a distribution operation it's all based on this informant and he shows up with you know questionable but legal things i mean you know i certainly don't walk around with yell three hundred thousand dollars  now there is also evidence that he is a boxing promoter which i would think would be a cash business unusual why a boxing promoter yeah there's there's a number of these there's a number of references i mean there is that it wasn't maybe emphasized as much as i would have liked a trial but you know so let me ask you if you wouldn't mind to turn to your challenge to the sentence to the spread a bit over time that essentially ninety to one kilogram deal and if that's ok then there's nothing to say about his sentencing range then there's the other possibility of taking the amount of money and reasoning backwards for what that would convert to but even if that's flawed why isn't the ninety kilograms enough by itself and have you really preserve that well both of them both of them were earlier the same thing i mean both of them are looking back you know they're completely different approaches well they're both looking back at well he's been dealing and whether it's the statement by the informant that  your arguments is that the money can't even account for fifty or whatever that the number was that doesn't get you over fifty the debt but if the ninety's in there what with the problem fine the problem with both ways of getting there is that there's no evidence of a conspiracy prior to this warning deal the hook that they tried to use is that well this broke her who set up this deal also set up the last deal but there was more evidence to jones told the informant he'd previously acquired ninety keys to brokers and jones tells you foreman he's been in business twenty six years without pr he's like bragging about it and then jones tells a cellmate he never mess with anything under one hundred thousand one hundred thousand dollars in cash the brokers telling the informant the jones always paid on time and the searches that was part of the same plan and the only evidence that suggests well what do you think the same plan means if it's not this well other the cases say it needs to be yeah you're planning in the same area and maybe using the same people you know those sorts of things that maybe he was but we don't really know how then fact one one significant thing right there unusual for people to be walking around with three hundred thousand dollars in cash for it but i mean the thing is he was charged you know we've seen that before know when people carry that much money they use it on show it to yourself i don't really know but i mean it comes up in these cases but cash is actually disappearing so it's i suppose becoming ever more uncommon for somebody to have that much just how young things cash it all and the other thing is yeah although it was a lot of cash it was not enough to complete the transaction but but then let's look at his lon lane home where they got a warrant six thousand and cash two handguns a stun gun a digital scale people it proved yes a money counter in the garage three hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash well and if he was not and frankly your honor those are conversations that probably were had in a jury room in august of two thousand and fourteen in fort wayne indiana which is where these arguments should have been made and were made and they were resolved and if the jury would result in mr jones favor we would not be here but talk about the brokers this is a three count indictment count one is a conspiracy count so i'm not worrying about the attempt or firearm count right now you have to have the brokers is still part of this transaction don't you to get a conspiracy count because you can't conspire with governments you can't conspire with martina's right i believe that they were still part of the transaction although i don't know that they had to have remained part of the transaction as long as there's i mean that you know in those cases one is there's an agreement to further the deal whether or not that ever goes forward there that is it's a loan sufficient to establish a conspiracy conviction and agreement before he's got to get ninety kilograms before and who is involved in the deal and who in my opinion he does stay in the deal and there's certainly evidence if you look at government appendix forty this is the discussion the day of the transaction before they meet and he says you know i want them to still make a little i just i'm worried that designer guzman is a blabber mouth and so i don't i don't want them physically present the deal i want to deal one on one but you know he even says there is where i was going to let them do the five yes yeah they're still talking about how they're going to do the five because what i was going to do i was going to i'll let them you know do the a five then just you know give them the as i'm no longer working with them but as we point out as well your honor that this deal happened because of that they were a part of the deal and if at the end of the day they get screwed out of their share of the money that doesn't mean that there wasn't a conspiracy and a handshake agreement between serato d s and jones had an agreement that said serato d s is going to go out and is going to go and get fined a big time drug supplying for jones the fact that this is the end of the day as sometimes happens in the in the drug business  as doesn't get his money that's that's for sure out of d s and jones to work out later doesn't mean they didn't conspire and they didn't agree to commit a federal crime they certainly did and again that comes from and i agree with mr grenade that most of the evidence in this case say anything on the tapes about cocaine but if you look you can see i mean just read martinez his testimony martinez testifies that he held himself out as a cocaine dealer martinez says on page three ninety one of the transcript that serato diaz quote they were looking for a major drug supplier for two different clients and in fact and i didn't we didn't get into this very much in the brief but the first client was another guy named reynolds and they set up a deal and met with him and he was agreeing to be involved with cocaine  martinez says i held myself out as a cocaine dealer and held myself out as a boxing promoter and myself out as a meth dealer i held myself out as a cocaine dealer and they're talking about cooking eggs into omelets i mean you know i think everyone of course had enough of these drug cases you know you cook powder cocaine into crack cocaine that's a very common thing to say and the jurors could listening to martinez and listening as well to the agent who gave some brief interpretation testimony t allowed by this court the jury could listen to that could say that they're not talking about going to buy two dozen eggs or short of two dozen eggs they're talking about buying twenty kilograms of cocaine he took more than sufficient steps to to further the  deal we acknowledge he didn't have one hundred percent of the money but all of the reasons that the court has already set forth i think pretty clearly show he had almost enough at the end of the day i do think yes one of two things would happen they would just call it even said we're going to start in  long deal transaction will make it up on the back end that frequently happens or if martinez has stood his ground and said you know you said three ninety i'm holding back two or three kilograms that could have happened to he really had to prove that he was conspiring with intent and here is trying to get twenty so two or three got held back that wouldn't affect the conviction in any way on that on a different note why did the government use a recording device that it knew was faulty i'm just curious the only way we reason we knew that it was faulty your honor was we the record incorrect date for it frequently that's the only part of it that we knew was faulty we did not know that it was going to run out as far as the time the batteries died out and this deal took a long time the meeting took a longer time to develop because jones went to the wrong place or tina's when somebody went to the wrong place they were going to i hop they were two different i hopes and as i guess happens when you have two big drug dealers they kind of got in a little bit of standoff about who's more powerful and who's going to move or not so that added like over an hour i believe to the time and why did they do it i mean well we shouldn't be as one with with the incorrect date but it's not as easy in the government sometimes to get equipment as quickly as you want and i don't know that i can say anything else about that  six the defendant reiterated that jones told me he's got it he's gotten through serratia us through this same broker before ninety kilograms no more than five at a time that's why he wants me because i can get twenty at a time and that is evidence money how can you use the three hundred fifty three thousand that he's got with him for increasing relevant conduct since that's actually already money that's dedicated to the twenty that he's going to buy aren't using it twice i don't think we are you're i think the idea was this is all of this money this cash is money that has come from prior drug sales so he's previously sold this is his current pool of money that is drugs the district court and i think the idea was every every dollar out of us eight hundred ninety four i think the did the judicial made some discounts that even if we took a certain portion away came from drugs i mean the three hundred fifty three thousand dollars there was testimony this was his smallest bills these were old ones and all the fives and all the money you want to get rid of the hundreds in the fifty's were mostly were in the car or in the in the car in the garage so he's trying to get rid of it all is do they try to get rid of the smaller bills because they take up more space and or work less so i think there's pretty strong evidence that that was money that came from the sale of drugs ultimately out of the we don't think it makes any difference because at minimum what it shows is when when the defendant is saying hey i've got a ninety kilograms before the fact that he's got thousands and thousands of dollars in cash tends to lend credence to that that this isn't just him puffing and lying to the agent trying to write to the informant trying for the first time his life with my drugs did this government introduce evidence that there was no other obvious source from which this money could have come or we did introduce we did introduce some evidence about at the sentencing that yes there was no obvious additional sign of evidence we offer to introduce his his tax returns we need to get a poorer for that who just report said she didn't feel that she needed it because she felt that there was enough sufficient evidence from his own statements he's been doing this for twenty six years and the lack of additional evidence that there was anything of that nature i think your honor especially because the threshold point is fifty and he said he's previously bought ninety plus we can add in the twenty so he's at one ten he's he's doubled what he needs to be that even if there are some minimal puffing or something going on here and that doesn't even include any other suppliers any other drug dealing he's done in the fort wayne community over those twenty six years which is really like a big time middle man it's sounds like he was yeah i believe he may be the second largest drug dealer we've ever prosecuted in the fort wayne area  and four wins a pretty is a hub for a lot of of drug dealing at the intersection of the toll road and interstate sixty nine so it connects chicago to cleveland and detroit to indianapolis so it's it is a hub area so yeah this was this this was a big time drug like very careful drug dealer and i mean the defendant wants to say well you know he would have had all these people around him but drug dealers are careful they're secretive and there may have been other people involved who just weren't present but the more you keep things close to the vest in the higher up you are and you can do lots of case law that says you can't just do it with a buyer seller relationship even if martinez wasn't the current government informant i think you still want to be a conspirator in this case because all he did was try to sell drugs working for jones is very sketchy now do they have a prior relationship with jones yeah i mean jones mentions that he had trained the one guy to be a boxer you know i mean they knew about him they made that their arrangement i think you need more than that to be a conspirator you would get the you know the broker cases there are almost all against the broker and almost all of her conspiring with you know the brokers conspiring with