down to the fact that the lower court abused its discretion when a wrote erroneous lee made evidentiary rulings that unfairly diminished the credibility of our client mr rowlands that shielded the government's main witness from an attack on his credibility which ultimately violated mr owens is due process and denied him his right to it was an attack it was one line of a time his credibility economy of the truth that often accompanies such matters yes your honor so i mean obviously mr sharp you were referring to is the as the as the government's main witness was cross examined so to that extent his credibility was explored and it and examined by by the trial attorney who engaged in that but that should not preclude the defense from being able to cross examine a witness like that of all factors question him about a marital affair how did that how did that deprive you fair trial here where i mean you know the idea of the marital impropriety is essentially you know evidence of mr sharpe's deceit but i do want to make clear that that the marital impropriety alone does not end the discussion so if i understand your honor correctly read it out by saying that you were denied the opportunity to impeach hear because in this case we're talking about a lot more than just the marital impropriety that the marital impropriety was essentially the inception of our examination but what the marital impropriety what was underneath that marital impropriety to the heart of the particular case the case really what it boils down to despite the fact that it took several weeks to try was that this is essentially a case of he said he said which mr rollins is saying that he had the permission and authority to acquire the funds that mr sharp is saying were stolen mr sharp is obviously the individual we're talking about the impropriety here is essentially the fact that mr mr sharp had this particular affair mr rawlins was involved very deeply in brokering a deal that was that resulted from the affair that there was now a company and the issue that had to now be  mr sharp that he marital affairs or that the jury is just as likely to rather than focus on the need to see to that might occur some of the jurors might just say well i don't why anybody who engages in a marital affair period and therefore you know pox on that witness for that reason and that's not credibility that's just a bias or maybe you're going to be appealing to a bias and that and the court in a court exercising its discretion is perfectly capable of saying what that's that's pretty far afield we're not going to get into that and i understand your honor and i think those are good points and i think that's exactly why maybe a curative instruction it you know is necessary perhaps in that situation but the idea is that in order understand what followed from the marital impropriety and the the discussions of the divorce settlement how it pertained directly with the company at issue how mr sharp devalued the company in order  draw its own inferences about why didn't i give you everything you need it for purposes of motivation here like i said i mean i think that in order to  it began in this particular case was essentially that he was unfaithful and he had an affair and that that deceit and that lying to his particular or his violation of the marital oath in that particular aided into this divorce settlement and as a device as a result and part and parcel of the divorce settlement mr sharp continued that deceit and continued lying about the company with the help of  so i think it would be unfair your honor if the court said we're just going to allow you to talk about the divorce and not talk about what led into that only because the whole crux of the cross examination or the and the attempt made to cross examine mr sharp was based on the idea that he was lying and he was lying about his relationship with mr rawlings and lying about the permission and authority that he says he didn't give mr rowland's and to understand mr sharp as a whole we believe that the that the affair was relevant even though i understand your honor is to say that in and of itself it may not be and it's tawdry and it's prejudicial as your honor as has said it helped tell the narrative as to why mr sharp was lying which was the critical aspect of the defense but the earth is in our opinion your honor didn't stop there so i am mad if it did i would concede that we have an extremely difficult chance to succeed at this at this stage but we believe that the court continued to make a wrong use rulings that was an abuse of her discretion we mention the lack of ability by the by the lead counsel to go into a  reviewed the answer is not correct well that's right the representation was made by the government and with all due respect to the government their representation was that mr shorten did not review it and i think the court as your honor correctly points out relied on that fact and said so therefore we're not going to allow you to get into it our understanding based on our own you know investigation was that that was hard to understand and hard to comprehend that this one hundred percent so owner of a company when they are sued and then an answer follows in that lawsuit does not review the answer sign off on it or speak to their attorneys about it so it was our feeling that that that that we least needed the  ability to the latitude to cross examine this particular witness about that answer and at least get to the bottom of whether or not he did review or did sign off on and if he didn't you know what did he know about it or how how how how could he not and so the decision basically cut the knees out from under us before we were able to get a chance to cross examine him about statements that he made and again get this off plays into the idea that these were statements made by the main witness who is alleging that mr rowlands did not have permission and authority to a to obtain these funds i'm very much into my time now thank you so much may please the court my name is assistant united states attorney entered a full episode i represented the government in the district court i your honour's very briefly on the issue of mr sharpe's extramarital affair the affair itself was a collateral matter which courts have said has quote meager probative value in assessing someone's credibility what really was relevant to the trial and to the issues before the trial or fact in the case was the divorce and mr rawlings role as a hired mediator between mr sharp and his ex wife and that subject those subjects were subject to full examination on direct examination and cross examination and gave the jury a full opportunity to hear mr sharpe's version of the facts mr rowlands version of the facts and to weigh the credibility of those witnesses the jury was also before the jury and he remarried within a short period of time it was your honor in fact rawlinson self testified that shortly after mr sharp finalized his divorce i believe it was within a period of of a month or so he married someone else from within the company and so a juror certainly could have surmised that there was an affair although there was no direct testimony to that effect and so for all of those reasons because the jury had an extensive record before it including numerous defense character witnesses who testified to mr sharpe's credibility including e mails that corroborated mr sharpe's accounting of events and the testimony of another c e o for a related company in florida who was closely involved in the events of both companies for all those reasons the jury had an extensive record on which to evaluate mr sharpe's credibility and the absence of testimony on this prejudicial and potentially inflammatory issue would not have affected their view of mr sharpe's credibility as the evidence known to mr sharp or others within the company for example the company's general counsel allison harris testified to that effect the company's bookkeeper renee haywood testified as to the means and methods that mr rawlins covertly withdrew  funds the testimony of dr jasser money i take it that there was also testimony that this was not done open in their tour this in certain respects that there was concealment involved here that's curry that's correct your honor there was testimony about a particular bank account that mr rawlins covertly activated without the knowledge of the c e o or others at the company and used it to siphon funds out of the company and perhaps most importantly there were e mails from mr sharp to mr which in which mr sharp once there was some with some awareness that he might be stealing funds instructed him to stop and subsequent bank withdraws that showed he did not and so in fact indeed work there are situations  roland's admitted to having taken certain money improperly as long as it was a stay in the house and they could resolve it that way there were your honor and there was one particular he wasn't he wasn't protesting that wait a minute you authorized me to take all this  money that's correct your honor and there's one particular instance that multiple witnesses testified about a trial in which mr rawlins was essentially caught in the act spending company money on personal expenses and it was discussed and he promised he would never do it again  so again a combination of witness testimony documentarian evidence e mail evidence and in fact the sheer scale of mr wall rawlins with rolls which the credit card records showed were used for personal expenses all of that belied his assertion that these were authorized withdrawals and in fact in addressing the sentencing enhanced meant for obstruction a judge nathan found quite compelling the gulf or the gap between the accounting reflected in the e mails and the accounting that mr rowlands gave on the stand the judge nathan also properly exercised her discretion in ruling on a number of evidentiary matters relating to other victims mr rowlands for awd and we lay out in our brief why in each factual circumstance that was the case these were all matters that fell well within the judge's discretion and that fell well within the standard for direct evidence for example the these these admitted as independent separate benedix or were they made it as part of the scheme they were admitted as part of the scheme as direct evidence your honor a but with an instruction before the jury during the charge  typical similar acts evidence that if the jury were to find that particular acts were similar to the charge conduct but not a part of it it resided the standard jury instruction on that point and so the government's admits that there could have been no prejudice regardless of  if there was then you know mr sharpe's permission or lack of permission may may may be may be less important if there was other corroborating evidence but i think that the court should should look from the from mr sharpton and view it as it all flowing from mr sharp and that and what i mean by that is that the theory of defense was always that sharp rawlings complete authority to do what he did and on top of that because there was this overt criticism of mr rawlins by mr sharp in the to the rest of the company that this was in in the defendant's point of view a way for mr sharp to keep up appearances to show that he was objecting to mr rawlins his behavior showing his company that he that he disapproved of his conduct one of them to stop but that the underlying understanding between mr sharp and mr rawlings was that it never the less he had the authority and the permission to do that where i was the where was the evidence for mister  of evidence with respect to that your honor and that's a lawsuit that was filed against prime health following this particular alleged conspiracy and that's actually part of have a lawsuit later on yeah but when it's raised i mean there was there was a record something up to two million dollars worth that he he didn't object he didn't object to their claiming that this was money that he had improperly receive to disagree i'm not not sure there was ever any indication from mr rawlins that it was ever improperly received by mr rowlands at any point like i said in fact that this lawsuit that he ultimately filed against crime health was that this was this was a part of an oral contract that he had with mr sharp and that any compensation that he received was authorized and permitted so i'm not familiar with any occurrence where mr rawlins agreed that particular  agreed i'm saying he didn't he he is course of conduct was to was to restore money back to the company at least initially as long as it was kept in the house and they were going are going to come up with that and then and  he would agree to cooperate and he'd look for other things that might have been might have been mistakes and so forth and he corrected on that basis so you know if that if that's correct i would i would i would argue that that that's not mutually exclusive with the idea that from the from the get go that there was an agreement between mr sharp mr rawlings that that the the bulk of the money the bulk of the money at least that the government is claiming was illegally gotten was permissible and authorized by mr sharp so i were improper and irania we would we would respectfully disagree with that and argue that that could that could never be harmless that that especially if your honour's agreed with the argument that that that we needed a latitude in order to cross examine mr sharp to establish the permission and the authority of mr rawlins taking that particular money and i'll just end by saying that if we were able to explore that and also at the same time have news of judge nathan not allow several instances of prior bad acts or direct evidence that occurred after the conspiracy that it's very possible that the jury could have viewed this a close call and had some type of reasonable doubt or mor e that the jury felt that mr sharp was lying and that mr rowlands was not guilty because the government didn't instant didn't provide sufficient so thank you very much for listening to take the matter and