and should be set aside for two reasons first the board's decision rests on an incorrect reading of the federal misprision statute according to the board a conviction under eighteen u s c section four necessarily involves in every case the defendant's specific intent to conceal a crime but everything from the statutes plaintext to relevant judicial decisions to real world convictions under the statute confirms that that's not the case nothing in section fo requires the government to prove that the defendant acted for the specific purpose of covering up a crime or hindering investigation you can accidently conceal a crime and still be guilty of the felony of misprision of a felony no your honor our position is not that that it's enough to accidentally conceal the crime and the act has to be voluntary in the sense that for example if somebody knocks over evidence and destroys it that's not enough to constitute misprision but it doesn't require that the defendant be acting with the conscious aim of concealing a crime and that's the key distinction though if my son comes home and says i committed the murder last night and i say wow that was pretty bad i think you should think about turning yourself in i'm not going to squeal  but you should think about it and then i do the laundry and in the laundry there's a bloody shirt and i don't even think about it i don't even notice it but i do the laundry only guilty of misprision of a felony no because i think in your hypothetical the key factor is you said you didn't even notice it i think if you hadn't noticed the bloody shirt and still down the laundry in that case i think that would under that under the language of the statute and under the cases applying it would be enough of an if coupled with if you know it in the hypothetical if coupled with the act of washing the sure i think that highlights the the key distinction we're trying to draw which is that is enough of an act of concealment but it's not a crime of moral turpitude because it's not necessarily which if the defendant is acting if the defendant is acting with the specific conscious purpose of covering up the crime in that instance it would fall i believe within the corrupt mental state that that constitutes a crime of moral turpitude was good to protect the son you're conceding that i think it's pens on it depends on what that it depends on what the what the defendant's conscious motivation is and so if that i suppose it is you don't want to turn your son you don't want to see your son go to jail i mean it is so the the motivation is understandable that a father would not want to turn and use it is none the less a crime moral turpitude that's the motivation matter that in that scenario are that if the defendant is acting for the soul if the defendants if all the defendant cares about in other words is is for example protecting their family member or avoiding you know harm to themselves from the defendant then their conscious aim wouldn't be to conceal i think it's also important to remember though that it is or it isn't a crime of moral turpitude i believe it would not be i think it's also important to remember that this is a case under the categorical approach and so the question is what is the minimum conduct minimum conduct it's criminalized bisection full at uses concealed in this concealment not i'm some kind of fraudulent intent and effort to hide it does not your honor the language of this statute contrasts sharply with language that congress has used in other statutes to express the require an intent to conceal the element we cite examples at page six of our reply brief and some others at page forty seven forty eight of the principal brief where congress has written into the statute sometimes even using the words intend to conceal and so the statute is different and doesn't use that analogy to the common law crime of battery which requires physical contact physical contact where that contact is harmful and offensive the defendant has to do the physical act voluntarily but if the battery a common law is a general intent crime you don't have to intend to cause the harmful result in section for example isn't it so i intended to do the laundry i didn't accidently do it i never accidently do it but i intended to do the laundry and i accidently concealed the bloody shirt so i'm guilty of misprision according to you right there the key fact in your hypothetical was that you said you didn't even know the shirt was in the laundry i don't know it's in the laundry and so it just a general intent or crime requires you to be aware all the relevant facts in the universe on the ground this is the music i'm looking at sand and i looked at sand before you got the letter because that's what i've taken misprision of felony please before and so it's as the defendant deliberately took some affirmative step to conceal the crime that's you agree that that's an element right yes ok and so the defendant deliberately took some affirmative step which was doing the laundry and that concealed the crime by hiding or destroying the bloody shirt why is that not sufficient i think it's a general principle in in cases involving general intent that that the defense has to be aware of all the relevant fact that  makes the conduct unlawful and so an example where you're not even aware that the shirt is in the laundry you're not aware of all the pertinent facts that make your conduct unlawful so that's fine but if i am aware of the pertinent facts and i know that what i'm doing is going to destroy or rendered useless a piece of evidence isn't that the type of fraud that is contemplated for a crime of moral turpitude is not the kind of the seat that's contemplated for a crime of moral t under this statute no your honor because the statute doesn't require any proof that the defendant acted for the purpose of hindering the investigation you may you may know that your act is is having the effect of concealing a crime but the statute doesn't require proof of that specific mental state and that makes sense it would be it would be grabber difficult for the government to prove that a defendant was acting for the purpose of covering up a crime as opposed to say for the purpose of hoarding retribution  think the the bottom line point is that this statute doesn't require that type of proof everything from the language of the statute to the way the supreme court discussed the statute in its branzburg decision to real world charging decisions like the government's charging decision in the lace field case the nebraska gun case that we talk about in our brief or even the facts of this case none of those circumstances does anything point to a requirement of proving specific intent t my name is linda gone or and i represent the government this court should deny them some position for a view for two main reasons first the border reasonably interpreted the term crime involving moral turpitude to include offenses that require intentionally taking an affirmative step to conceal and second apply and they focus primarily on one of the other the other convictions in that case i wouldn't i would say that the board reached the proper conclusion and mr and matter of m and then the the parent is aware that his possession of that amount of marijuana is a felony because we can't divorce the the knowledge of the felony from the act of concealment and i think that's  and and he tells him to destroy the evidence i think that is if he's in if he's detached if he's telling the sign to destroy the evidence for the intent to conceal his possession of that amount of marijuana then that is mr president and and he's he's intending he's telling him to destroy the marijuana for the purpose of a crime moral turpitude and yet he dismissed prison i agree with would it be would it be something that's inherently bass vi case i think knesset necessarily entails the act of giving the false impression that the felony never occurred the parent is encouraging this child to cover up a felony and that is inherently dishonest and deceitful  the government about a different hypo let's say someone's walking down the street and sees a murder or shooting with this is it starts walking away police officer comes over and says did you see it and the w i think united states versus king and you as his forces protect point out the distinction between ten and motivation that i understand i understand that but mike my question is first with that hypo constitute miss present of a  felony and if so would you say that that is a crime of moral turpitude i would say it would not because you're saying that the reason that he did not the reason he lied to the officer was because he didn't want to get involved in the crime so he's not knowing any want to get involved in the proceedings or he's afraid remains the same but i think at bottom at bottom i think that that lying attempting to cover up a felony and making statements that have that that hindered the discovery of the f as long as the person is making the statements or engaging in the act with a specific intent to conceal the felony yes i think that i'm sure i understand this hypothetical i mean it seems to me that the crime has occurred the police officer knows the crime has occurred so the crime has not been concealed evidence has been withheld that's not that's not miss prism a felony right right under his hypothetical though he was saying he was making the same as for the specific person purpose to conceal it but so yes i agree with you that if he's and i do think that this that this type of offense can lead to just and the sworn men of hypotheticals that may potentially or may not potentially lead to a conviction under miss present but none of these hypotheticals i have find any support in case law when you look at the cases in which miss prison is is charged and prosecuted the underlying felonies are you know we're not a common court so we don't circuits have recognized that the concealment of crimes is inherently morally turpitude in this i mean the concealment of crimes has long been condemned throughout history and i think it remains a badge of ever sponsible citizenship this isn't something that courts treat principles if it's included in the ministry of record which it's not in this case that it's evidence outside the record is not to be considered by the court and the judgment of conviction is in the record and what  suggested earlier conduct which shocks the public conscience and her home base of violence cetera very strong language but then there's also a whole law that says if it involves fraud or deception then it's a crime  the two definitions are not necessarily a mind or or thing but i think the supreme court first looked at fraud in the context of a c m t enjoying verses to george and they recognize that friday is kind of the because i don't think the act changes if it's a parent if or a random stranger on the street the act remains the same and the intent remains in the act and the intent have to remain the same otherwise they wouldn't be able to be convicted in the statute the the parent is in telling the child to destroy the evidence with the specific intent that that evidence be destroyed for that to cover up the phony than they have the same intent versus king was the defendant received money from a robbery that his brother and his brothers two friends had had committed the brother received the money and the court refused to uphold the conviction based on the fact that there was a sufficient evidence to establish that the brother received the money with the specific intent to conceal the felony there could have been a whole host of other reasons that he accepted the money his brother owed him money from a previous loan so the court focused on the fact that  divert the police for the obstruction of justice or he was withholding evidence or making false statements to police officer that would be one thousand and one under title eighteen right or if it was a federal officer one thousand more right and that is another possibility i mean the bottom the fact the matter is this prison are charged with more serious crimes and they plead down to miss prison so thank you you're honoring the government's answer to a number of the hypotheticals the government built in a specific intent requirement that's not in the statute the government said if done with specific intent and i'd like to talk about two factual scenarios that i think highlight why the statute doesn't require a specific intent and so why it would fall outside the definition of moral turpitude the first is the one discussed by the supreme court in branzburg supreme court in branzburg discussed a situation in which an individual witnesses a crime does not participate in him or herself and then goes to a journalist and says i'd like to share with you what i know but only on condition that my name be kept out of it that i be kept anonymous the supreme court said that that violates section four we know that that's conduct that violate section four but nothing about that conduct necessarily entails excuse me a specific intent to cover up a crime the other factual example is the one that's involved in this case and the lace field case the nebraska gun case cases in which defendants talked to the authorities shared some of what they knew but not all of what they knew so in the lace field case the defendant disclosed what he knew about a crime that a had committed but did not disclose what he knew about the crime that b and c had committed there any of number of reasons why that might have been the case reasons that are highlighted in your honour's hypotheticals of fear for retaliation a desire not to get involved nothing in the charging documents in those cases nothing in the plea colloquy in those cases nothing in the record in those cases suggested that those acts were undertaken for the specific intent of concealing it sounds like you're inferring from those cases that there's no requirement of specific intent it's a case that addresses that explicit it would be a fatal it would be a fatal defect if the allegations weren't there if it is the government's was just an element of the crime that talks about whether specific intent to conceal is required or not where i would point to the ninth circuit's case which which discussed this in the moral turpitude context and the supreme court's discussion of the fact pattern bransford thank you thank you your honor