morning mr maher farland ready when you are and i found numerous not necessary through the trial but also through the threat of hearing and so forth and i found numerous red flags that indicated that he may not be competent to stand  here and it caused great concern for me and one of the issues was mr de martino had already interviewed a psychologist before this and he felt that there were some incompetent issues involved but it wasn't brought up it wasn't brought up because he was representing himself when i got involved i noticed that the threat of hearings there were several major major things one of the things was so  a saying that because it was something that would indicate his own incompetence even though he had the evidence he wouldn't use yet he was diagnosed as having to lose that what you're saying i did know run that by me again i didn't think you the question is whether your position is that this is something that your client kept from the district court because it was something that reflected badly on him even though it was important with respect to the issue that was before the court and a way you're right because he didn't he he did not want to believe that there was anything wrong when he went to the fred a hearing and claimed that he was like abraham lincoln and he also claimed that he knew more about this case than anybody else he knew the truth nobody else did and he made this statement this court he asked the court does this court follow the connecticut and federal rules of civil procedure that to me that gave a clear indication and having taught him i'm not one hundred percent sure that he knew that he was in a criminal court he didn't understand it he would lose his license insurance license over this and i have represented people in the sovereign citizens before and usually i can reason with them but with him i could it was he just didn't want to admit it and even his family today even tell me they don't understand why he government for giving it to us because it does it doesn't apply to mr de martino but it does serve to illustrate the very arguments i made in the in the breeze the st thing is is that the  trying to claim that she didn't have been xrayed because she belonged to a group the supreme court has made it clear that you can't using belong to group either for criminal or for innocence and this is exactly what the judge did  in their arguments it the so called a doctor here and they were saying because he belonged to a group he had to be competent the problem is the psychologist was trying to say he was incompetent that's why he joined the group it wasn't because he he joined a group that he was incompetent which is what your case is trying to say he was in he joined a group because he was incompetent and in that research i also found out that i couldn't find any cases that indicated that the dahlberg hearing innocent rule seven o two hearing could be used to keep me just from looking at red flags if used to keep evidence from a jury or  red flags not to keep it from a jury or from a finder of fact and the last thing i want to make make it clear is if seven o two is used why wasn't it used against the countered countering dr he used an article they had no scientific basis whatsoever it was just an article conglomerating thing he used that is so called scientific evidence to show that if mr de martino belong to a sovereign group he must be i don't think you can do that and i think the supreme court would be in fact in brandenburg years as a high on just belonging to a group does not make one innocent nor does it make one guilty and that's what the government was trying to do they were trying to say contrary to what the psychologist is saying they were trying to say he blundered rupie must be competent but with psychologist was trying to say he was incompetent that's why he joined a group and i see only have twenty competent the government argues that his or sorry the government argues that his membership in that group is relevant to a competency determination and i submit that the red flags most of the red flags listed in defendant's brief relate to his membership in that organization his filings his supposedly nonsensical filings his claims for inflated refunds his arguments about the i r s being a private corporation all of those are taken directly from sovereign citizen materials the record makes clear that he learned about those arguments and those tactics at various seminars that he attended he paid another member of the subculture to prepare the two thousand and seven returns that claims fraudulent refunds so we're not arguing that just because he was a member of this group means that he was competent we're saying that you can in considering his competence you must also consider the nature of the movement his involvement in it i would also argue that the record does not support the assertion that he joined the sovereign citizens of culture because he was incompetent have a rule that these sovereign citizen beliefs i'm not sure that this court has specifically addressed that question of the court ten other courts have the th circuit in united states versus neil which we say in our brief health that you know that was a case where the defendant was a sovereign citizen who defendant otherwise function i think there may be an unpublished opinion from this court which we cited in our brief i think it's united states versus ag i would want to confirm that but i think that was a case where the defendant was making sort of unorthodox arguments i believe they may have been sovereign citizen arguments and this court held that those arguments by themselves don't establish a lack of competence and that was essentially the th circuit's holding and neal and the th circuit holding in the james case which we also say in our brief the just because a defendant is making these arguments about jurisdiction or sort of your typical sovereign citizen tax protester arguments those do not necessarily indicate a lack of competence that you have to look at the defendant's conduct here as in the neil case we have a seven day trial transcript where the defendant represented himself and demonstrated a rational and factual understanding of the proceedings against him he mounted a good faith defense he understood that the government needed to prove willfulness and a corrupt intent and he argued to the jury that he had a good faith belief that in the legality of his actions he explained his legal research it was ultimately unsuccessful  suggests that he did not really believe that he didn't own them but a person who didn't know the taxes might also know that the government is going to make efforts to collect two responses st of all the issue as to whether he had a sincere belief that he didn't owe taxes that was the question before the jury and he made that argument to the jury and they did not credit his testimony they rejected that argument the fact that he was you know disregarding these notifications from the i r s and hiding his money from the i r s suggests that he didn't misunderstand what the law was but rather he disagreed with the law and that was something that the district court found significant in analyzing d misers opinion because dr myers lawyer failed to consider the alternative hypothesis that mr de martino knew what the law was but disagreed with it and was taking these actions in order to avoid paying taxes and that that hypothesis was at least as plausible as the idea as the theory that he was suffering from a delusional disorder and the question before the court here is whether the district court properly exercised its discretion in its evaluation of defendant's motion for a competency hearing and the record demonstrates that the district court very carefully considered dr misers opinion the court used the framework for rules of a no two and daub or to evaluate the reliability of that expert opinion and that was a proper exercise of the court's discretion and both the transcript from the dobber hearing and the just records very thorough opinion explaining why it was rejecting dr misers conclusions demonstrate that the court took its  took its duties seriously and you know was considering everything before it i would note defense counsel now argues that it was improper for the court to hold a job or a hearing in order to evaluate dr that the court should conduct the rule seven o two dobber hearing before analysis excuse me before turning to the reasonable cause question that's at the heart of the statute here whether there was reasonable cause to question defendants  competence the district court as i mentioned earlier this was a seven day trial where the defendant represented himself the district court had ample opportunity to observe the defendant throughout the trial and during the ferretti hearing and the district court relied on  observations in reaching the conclusion that no reasonable cause existed and the court's decision determination the dr misers opinion was not reliable and did not create reasonable cause was entirely proper if the court has no further questions never pronounce his name right that article gave the false impression that just because a person had a sovereign citizen believe it was facing a criminal trial he was not delusional and the big question in here is what was the incompetency evaluation not to present in front of a jury and as a result of that the red flags and i listed like six different categories of red flags that happened throughout the thread a hearing in my interviews and trial and so forth and probably the biggest ones was this gentleman this is not something i have ever found in the sovereign citizen group where he took a four hundred dollars car payment and converted it to a twenty two thousand dollar painting i can't find that anyplace but that's a normal procedure for anybody and everybody i talked to said that's insane and the psychologist was trying to point out he was incompetent long before all this stuff started and he joined the group because of his incompetence he wouldn't perhaps it was just an act of contempt pardon apps that was just an act of contempt for the i r s what yeah because money because of his income money here is your money yeah so but he was  often it's not in certain areas of his lies delusional is what the what the doctor said and to kicking out dr misers report and ignore all the red flags indicates the judge didn't really want to know whether he was a cop of the or not all he wanted to do was to just ok his trial and you agree with you what happens part of it goes back it goes back to have an evaluation you're not asking for a new trial because i believe you'll find that he was incompetent  and in the examination he wasn't able to show he was incompetent this when i i'm almost positive they will because of the actions he did before you've gotten involved in this and it's history indicated he was having