may please the court counsel elizabeth pollock on behalf of the defendant appellant maurice collins in this matter on may fourth of this year mr collins who was under stupidly a criminal history category of one and who had never before in his adult life into prison was given a ten year mandatory minimum sentence by the district court in this case and the reason that he was given the minimum sentence is because the district court found he did not qualify for safety valve eligibility the only factor was actually a very narrow case here today that we're considering is whether or not the district court made a mistake when it found that he should qualify for the manager or supervisor enhancement under the leader organizer guideline it is our contention that that was a blatant error and that the case should be remanded to address that so that mr collins can receive the benefit of the safety valve the district court actually did everyone a really huge favor here in the transcript and actually addressed this court in his ruling saying if this goes up on appeal and they wonder if i thought this was a more than one time occasion i will find based on his own statement with no contrary evidence from the government it was simply on this one occasion that he directed him and in this court case law it has been specifically stated that a one time transaction where you're directing a coconspirator to do something is not sufficient to qualify for the enhancement the language that this court has used in previous cases involving leader organizer is hierarchy control ongoing supervision multiple people multiple transactions multiple involvements between these individuals were somebody actually has a level of control over somebody else none of those factors are present in this case and the government has not addressed the argument that how it's possible that a one time direction of someone can qualify for this and handsome it the same language is being reiterated over and over again will he told them where to get the drugs and he told them what to do with the money well sure on one occasion and that is what the district court specifically found and that is all that the evidence showed at the district court level there is simply no further argument found on the face that a single transaction was sufficient we objected to that paragraph in the pre sentence report we said that they were not related and that it was not mr collins vehicle that was being used on that date but we never got to put any evidence on of that order the government put in evidence non that because the district court found as an additional matter a single transaction regardless was perfectly acceptable so we also had there were a lot of other objections to the pre sentence report in this case concerning obstruction and acceptance of responsibility and drug quantities and none of those were ever address were aware of the situation we had adjusted the language of the supervised release conditions and they were acceptable to all parties so there was no issue regarding supervised release but you know the only issue here it's a single transaction the court said it the government admits that it's not enough for a lead thank your army please the court is public i think it's important to go back to what the supervisor manager the leader organizer enhancement the whole thing is designed for it's designed to assess relative culpability between multiple participants in a criminal activity and here the district court did not clearly err in finding that maurice collins was more culpable than the two individuals he recruited to participate in the drug deals he purposely recruited mr palmer to go to mr khan's especial us to get the drugs he told mr palmer where to deliver the drugs and he told mr palmer where to return with the money he likewise recruited mr galloway to distribute the crack cocaine to the c e o s later that year your honor i would with respect to the what do we make of a meeting your cousin again that's on the recorded call i understood the relationship to be we're not saying that they really were cousins but the district judge said he's basing the screening room one and he said he was basing it on both the november twenty first and he said there was only one between palmer and collins and the april sixteenth i think that it's also we need to go back to weaver which i believe judge flom you wrote and that's the clearest statement on a one time transaction between equal participants and again that's the key thing here i believe is the equality between the drug dealers i don't believe there is a quality or there's any reasonable dispute that collins and palmer were equals here it was collins a show he pulled the district court look i'm a one man show i'm an overextended drug entrepreneur and as happens with entrepreneurs they need underlings at some point to help them expand their business and that's what happened here we believe that the district court did not clearly err in finding and that this court has said that it's the district court who's in the best position to judge the relative culpability and here we don't believe the district judge erred so what should we do then with the language t for instance is not enough i think again it goes back to one off between equal participants equal coconspirators here and it is clear that it was mr collins who directed  palmer and i think judge the for the factors the seven factors although there's been so dispute as to how helpful those are in this context but one of the factors is the nature and scope of the activity and certainly even if it was a one time shipment of let's say one hundred kilos and somebody the drug dealer got people to help him and told him where to take the drugs i think that would be sufficient to say yes look he's more culpable we're talking about the culpability assessment between two people you still have those two people have to be involved together in order for one to be managing the other in a criminal enterprise where skeete the only evidence that the district court heard in this case was mr collins own statement that was his proffer statement where he described the lack of relationship that he had with mr palmer where he said on this occasion i was out of town i asked him to do me a solid he did it that was it there was no other evidence presented to the district court involving these two having any kind of substantial relationship whatsoever there's the you can't it's the government's burden here you can't have no evidence and then just you to assume that ok well because there was a phone call or a set and i mean the dude in the same place again what if they were meeting for beer what if they were meeting to watch a ballgame that there's no evidence that there was a relationship involving drug distribution between these two people to do for him on one occasion so you know when we're talking about the multiple kilo distribution on one occasion well in a case where there's multiple kilos being transported there's likely going to be at least a shred of other evidence as to how those people were related to each other how that communication occurred whether or not anything else happened previously i would find it very difficult to believe that you have a multiple kilos transaction where someone out of the blue calls their buddy and says hey can you drop off fifty kilos the heroin for me and hey thanks drop the money back off when you're done that's not a similar type of situation this is a one time transaction the case lies one time cannot constitute a leader organizer disguise