may please the court my name is jesse siegel and i represent the woman known in these these proceedings as juvenile female at the transfer hearing in this case juvenile female presented overwhelming uncontroverted and frankly uncontrovertible evidence establishing that she does in fact have great potential to be rehabilitated in fact that the process  rehabilitation was well underway she provided a medication report that had a lot of information from our teachers at the sojourn high school as far as was abuse of discretion by the district court or absolute disregard considered all these things ready to sort of reach a different conclusion than you're arguing for right i think he overlooked something well i think there's there's there are two answers that question one is that the court weighted the various factors incorrectly in my view which i'll explain he weighed them improperly well i don't think so i don't think that this is a situation where i'm urging the court to look at the same factors in the same court and draw different conclusions and i guess my question is very simple are you saying that judge overlooked certain facts that there were things in the record that he didn't consider or didn't lie and all i would say i cannot say that are i believe he felt could not be adequately accommodated by the juvenile justice system well notwithstanding all that the other items that you point potential for rehabilitation which i think this may be true is that the court gave him proper weight to the evidence of the seriousness of the crime the g a g a d p a does not make its protections of juveniles juvenile what i want to know is do you agree that the i think worst that could happen to her in sentencing is that she would spend five years in custody being rehabilitated is that correct that is correct and she was arrested at age seventeen and a half or something like that a little bit less seventeen in about four months well yeah ok so in two and a half years after that arrest she will turn twenty one dollars and what is your understanding of if she is treated as a juvenile what happens to her at age twenty one ok so st let's think it would be  juvenile facility which is where she is now which by the way is an absolutely terrific this movie which has gone a long way towards rehabilitating her into an adult facility that is saying that it is in effect and the district judge's decision is this a person capable of being rehabilitated the question is is this a person who is capable of being rehabilitated by the juvenile justice system if she is committed to that system and so what you're saying seems to me is that it would be an abuse of discretion for the judge to decide that given the engaged and given the history that you emphasize about her neglect and abuse over a long lifetime that three and a half years in a juvenile facility to do great and she's going to get out after that three and a half years plus a year and a half committed to the tender mercies of the adult justice system when she gets out she'll be fine and if the judge and the judge had to think if we're looking at the consequences i ask you is treated as an adult which is transferred to adult custody adult treatment under the existing charges against her if she is convicted of those charges she would be subject not to five years of detention three and a half and one and a half in adult prison she would be subject to a sentence of life i believe that that a life sentence is unconstitutional imposed on a juvenile under miller in montgomery and that line of cases unless the juvenile and between what happened in the juvenile system and what happens in the adult system means it's not much of a middle ground american thing one right well the two juveniles sentenced in the same case so far i've received sentences of fifty transfer motion which was issued in about june of two thousand and eighteen at that point juvenile female and spent about a year or so or close to a year at the essex county  facility she's continued to have the same tremendous progress in the years since then or more than a year since then and she would now have another year there if she was transferred to adult determination as to how long the sense would be within within you know it could be ten years to two to life if she's transferred to adult status that's correct and i'm not saying i'm picking ten years  crime and their offices it's in a crime and there's a distinction between the roles that each individual plays we were never afforded the opportunity to find out what my client did in this case it's clear decision and making a decision because i think that the transfer process is flawed fundamentally when we deal with gang crime because it does not allow for individual evidence or or require the prosecutor to present individual evidence the prosecutor answered in his brief we didn't have to but i asked the court that we do that especially when my client has been designated apparel and there was a conflict as to whether that means he's actually in the gang or not in the gang but it certainly indicates that he's a low ranking member if it's a member at all when we and why this goes to the heart of this it goes to the factor of the nature of the chronic and the nature of the crime the court held that is the most important  about most importance in making the decision as to whether or not to transfer and of course you have a girl crime here so the court ways that the defendant should be transferred but i think that  of discretion for district court not to require the prosecution in a group situation to not require the prosecutor to give the defense attorney some indication as to what this person did other than to say he's a member of thirteen because he's the parent and he committed a crime i think that i think that it's important because if the goal of the juvenile act is rehabilitation how could you murder that the judge should have assumed that he was guilty of the least act you could possibly do that would make you an accomplice to this crime i would think that th charged but it lays out six factors at the what is the where but they apply to the individual except for the crime the crime doesn't in a group setting doesn't apply to the individual but the judge has to make an individual terminations and make an individual assessment as to whether the juvenile act should be applied but the transfer should not be granted i'm not but how can he do that if he doesn't know all the facts and how could defense counsel properly attack the the transfer request but you're what you're saying and i take i'm not sure i found this in the brief but it's an interesting argument when you're saying is assume that all the other factors line up in favor of your client except for the severity of the offense the question would be very different i s the defendant had had a very very minor role that technically made him an accomplice to murder then if he had been the one who planned it organized it and then showed up with a machete and a hammer and beat somebody and stabbed somebody to death someone in the latter circumstance it might well be a reasonable judgment that in spite of whatever else is narrowing his record he should be transferred to adult custody but someone who was charged with the former was just being the most minimal possible accomplice maybe should not be transferred to adult custody and on this record we don't know which is your client  judge in the district court for a long time you know that not every defendant in a coconspirator case is treated the way the same way they get different they get different sentences and all i'm asking is that my what the statute does talk about interest of justice the interest of the justices is to apply to an individual if that's the interest of justice that we're dealing with and if we're talking about the nature of the crime we're talking reserved union your honors please the court paul scotty on behalf of the government your honour's the district court here issued a very detailed and lengthy decision granting transfer and that decision carefully analyzed all the overwhelmingly in favor of transfer as does the age just from the starting point the ages of both of these appellants both at the time of the murders juvenile male was just two months shy of his th birthday as well as the age of the juvenile female was almost seventeen and a half years old both of them were over eighteen at the time of the hearing now the court the court is entitled to weigh these factors as it sees fit the case law is clear on that it's also entitled to place more emphasis on the seriousness of the crime it is very difficult to imagine any crime any set of circumstances or are factual allegations that could be more serious than this but the court still didn't stop there in contrary to what  appellants are arguing this was not a bright line test at all judge bianca went through painstaking detail to go through each of the other factors and in fact determined that the social background as well another important factor for both of these  the st sign of rehabilitating responding to the briefing or post decision rehabilitation no your honor i'm rebutting that since she's been in custody at the juvenile facility that she has demonstrated to you that then are on the record are appropriate for us to consider i apologize didn't mean to presume i mean to say that i was going to discuss anything beyond the court's decision this these work and these are these were facts that the court did consider again as i said before the court considered all of these mitigating arguments which included from the juvenile female that she was doing very well in school she had that she had positive reports from all of her teachers and those are all things that the appellant argued show that she was being rehabilitated but what the court looked at and what is reasonable here is that if she really was being rehabilitated here the st step or evil attention after committing a crime like this would be disengagement from the gang that is something that came out of the hearing she did not do she maintain contact with her and this thirteen boyfriend while she was in school so while she was performing well in school that is evidence that she's very smart that she's very bright but it's not necessarily evidence of rehabilitation after committing such a horrific crime that you think would startle someone after participating in that in especially now being in the situation she was in to turn her back on that boyfriend during her who is an active member of the gang under federal charges and is still a loyal member of the gang you would think she would turn her back away from that but she has not she has she has maintained that connection which the court district court as a did was entitled to to view as her continued allegiance to the gang and a lower likelihood of rehabilitation so just with respect to that with juvenile female there there was ample evan and the court permissibly did consider her to be a low likelihood of a rehabilitation based on the evidence that was at the hearing it's not uncontroversial at all in fact the evidence weighs in favor of the fact that she's not a chav a good likelihood to be rehabilitated a question about mr dick here is argument  i take it he's suggesting that it would matter to the exercise of discretion whether one of these juveniles played a minor role or a major role in the offense and that confused me a little because i thought that mr siegel's brief was anyway maybe it was a mistake in areas breeze that there was an argument that the court should not consider at least what the government says was the person's role in the offense but should merely consider that the person is guilty of the bare bones element of the crime and not look  assessing this is it to say well it's murder and that's all i have to think about or should the judge be taking into account what at least the government says or what some evidence that is in the record of what the person actually contributed to the outcome very much about the other but yes your honor i would start with addressing mr de here is and i would point to the point made by your honor before this today arguments are more appropriate for sentencing after either conviction or trial these are all kinds of horrible things as a bad character and is very dangerous or is this somebody who did something in a moment that was uncharacteristic and they're capable of being rehabilitated from some of the evidence there is  a determination of where the proper forum is here and one of those factors is the nature of the offense and one of those factors is that the the key i thought was the ultimate decision is is the juvenile justice is it purely a question of the abstract offense you wouldn't ever say to a judge in this circumstance look at what this guy did he did somebody to death with his bare hands while the person was pleading f mercy and that shows that this is the kind of crime that demonstrates that this is not a person who's appropriate for juvenile treatment we would make that argument wouldn't you i would your honor but i would i would point out to the court that what the court does not appropriate for the defense to make the argument that this person elevation is they knew that somebody was going to to participate in a murder and they drove that person to the scene of the crime under some emotional or psychological or even physical pressure but yeah they're technically guilty of murder they're not allowed to make that argument but this person did so little that that weighs in favor of juvenile treatment your honor what i would say is in this particular case and in this particular appellant juvenile male what the court has been provided was facts in evidence that with with facts or factual allegations that he was and associated with the amas thirteen gang he challenges the strength of that evidence was also discussed by the district court of the argument that judge range suggested that that the defense lawyer could make i'm looking at page eleven where it talks about the defense counsel's argument about the lack of any evidence any participated in the crimes and that he is further asserted the evidence of defend its membership in the gang is solely based on on the word of operations decided they were going to kill these rivals handed out weapons and he was present when they went in and approach it was there were a lot of people involved it was at night so so when the appellant says that there's no way of knowing whether he had a machete or whether he had a club or whatever he had the point is in the analogy evidence is he was there at the meeting where they decided to kill people he then after the weapons are distributed with the people to the scene of the climb and he's there when that's taking place as a part and he participated he he participated whatever that to the extent that is to require the government to establish that hearing which transform it from its intended purpose which is to determine proper venue and what a palin is asking for here are disclosures akin to pretrial disclosures which is not invasion by the statute and really not appropriate given the context judge and then with respect to i know that the court also addressed the other argument and whether there's one thing about disclosure that's one issue the other issue here is is the challenge of the evidence and certainly the case law here is is well settled that not only is a court in title two and supposed to assume the charge crimes as having happened but also the underlying factual allegations for the exact point the court that the court indicated you need to know more than just the statutory language so the case law on that is clear your honor i see my time is up unless the court has any think the phrase that was missing from all of that is burden of proof the government has a burden of proof with a transfer hearing to establish that transfer is appropriate and while the case law as far as i know simply says that a court is to assume the defendant is guilty of the crimes of which he is accused it doesn't mean that the court should also simply accept everything the government says about perhaps an aggravating role in the offense in the same way if the government wants to say not only she guilty of this crime but she also did x y and z that make her give her an agg role well then put on a witness at the transfer hearing where witnesses are put in some evidence after all it is a transfer hearing it's not a transfer oral argument is the problem the way it was presented to the court that situation as far as your client was because her aggravating role this was quite evident from at least from the judge's opinion but the judge but i would say that the judge the judge didn't have a factual basis to do that thing that isn't the case law is and it's in this court's case law as well as other courts is simply that the judge shall assume that the defendant committed the crime of which he or she is charged but nothing beyond that nothing about assuming other facts delineated point to which is that and as a matter of fact i put the government and the court on notice of it at the transfer hearing so this this this this is an argument i've been making all along and if i could just briefly address the the question of my client's contact with this of this other member of the m s their team what the record will show  first of all in the discussion the social history is probably her introduction to these people was when she met with this person by the name of jeffrey amador and what the record will show is that for some period of  time and judge bianca was made aware of this for some period after of time she sent him some love letters the government had had the opportunity had intercepted the letters and read the letters and conceded that that's what they were for love letters so to say that that somehow militates against the objective proof of her rehabilitation but i thought i thought the part of the point of the psychological report was this is a young woman a girl who had very little in the way of family support and sort of drifted into this gang because it and its members including this boyfriend provided her with a family environment that made her susceptible to the influence that led her to this crime and if we're talking about rehabilitation what's wrong with the government and i believe  if she goes right back to this boyfriend she's going right back into the the world lead her to the point of committing murder and if she's not prepared to cut off her ties with the person who's providing her with the substitute family that she needs and that person is a gang member who already and they got her into doing this murder where's the rehabilitation that matters ok i think it is a fair point to be made but i don't think it carries the weight that either the government or the judge gave it i mean let's really this is a seventeen year old girl who has essentially wound up in this situation in the way that your honor just described and to say that like if she doesn't immediately cut off contact with that person she's not rehabilitated because on the question of what happens when she goes back on the streets it's one thing to say when you're in a facility and now your job is to please the people in that facility maybe you do that to the best you can i don't think it's done hypocritically or it's done to make it look like you're rehabilitated but you're conforming to that environment is that you can and the question is what are we projecting down the road why are we taking this as evidence of some rehabilitation that makes evidence of rehabilitation i appreciate your point and i appreciate the point that you know i think the judge credit is well that she's doing well in this structured environment in this  that the reports from the facility are extremely positive and the district judge recognized that right but as i've argued did not give it the weight that it deserved thank you thank you mr siegel when i hear from  de care for human i think it may be helpful to just point out to page seventeen of the government's brief and i'll just read this short paragraph as to the nature of the some people you give a very lenient plea bargain to why because they're there they're minimally involved in the office i think that when you when you make it is minimal involvement in a gang of twenty people  around five people and then beat them to death where that was the plan and you go along with it and that's that's a very different thing than being the getaway driver or somebody who says in a meeting yeah ok that's fine with me and then ducks out the back door and doesn't show up problem judge is that because of the lack of disclosure we don't know what he knew when he know it and what he did we just don't know that and the whole story and the answers to those three questions could could sway this case one way or the other as to whether or not this person is rebuilding paid or not he also as my record shows has done excellent in the in the program but it just describes his role is participating in the conspiracy by luring them to a pre around prearranged location in the woods because that's that's what they that's what