just this morning good morning may please the court counsel my name is sean connelly i'm with the office of the state of power defender and i represent calvin williams mr williams was convicted after a bench trial of two counts of predatory were numbered in the briefs rather issue one involves the trial court improperly closing the proceedings issue two involves ineffective assistance of counsel related to mr williams is right to a jury trial after a significant change of circumstances but of course i i am prepared to talk about those issues if your owners have any specific questions on the closure issue i personally found the law on this issue a little confusing when i started so my goal today is to try to simplify things for you this do we have to start with the axiom that where the u s supreme court has specifically ruled on the point of rod we have to accept that ruling over any contrary rulings  quality georgia from the united states supreme court we cited earlier cases in later cases that waller is useful because on the list of classic structural errors wallace the source  now that the us supreme court wall or in these other cases that set out standards that have to be met whenever a trial is close and under those cases those standards must be mad strictly there are four elements first up the party advocating for the closure must send out an overriding interest likely to be prejudice by a public trial the closure must be narrowly tailored to protect that interest alternatives to closure must be considered and the trial court must make findings on the record sufficient to support the closure now where things get a little confusing is with the  and there is two problems the first is section one fifteen dash eleven of the code of criminal procedure which allows for limited exclusions of certain parties from certain testimony in certain types of rosalee because that section does not require that exclusions to explicitly meet the wall or standards the illinois supreme court has differentiated between wallet closures on the one hand and one fifteen dash eleven exclusions on the other hand our position is always been that what happened here was a wall or closure as opposed to an exclusion now the state obviously disagrees with that and believes that one fifteen dash eleven applies to this case and our response to that disagreement is that the distinction between these closures and exclusions no longer it is particularly relevant and that's because after the illinois supreme court held that that section was constitutional that's people be phallus or the u s supreme court v georgia that at the exclusion of a single courtroom observer with out meaning the wallace standards was waller error and so regardless of the nature of what happened in this case as far as i'm aware but but again presently is basically remunerating the holdings of prior u s supreme court cases saying that all of these were substantial compliance with waller so for example in people the whole day the illinois supreme court looked to the record as a whole for a specific facts that would justify the closure  doesn't necessarily or doesn't only apply or it supposedly applied to the first three what you can what you could think of as substantive waller elements but also to that last element that everything has to be explicitly put on the record and that's because the lack of the record hampers review of the issuing it's a very critical right that we're talking about that needs to be protected in them and those protections are undermined by not allowing a full review  the answer to that is that i would disagree that it was invited in this case now if it had been invited that would be a different a different analysis but if we're talking about a straightforward sure as opposed to an explicit waiver this is structural error it cannot be forfeit so our position is you know in this case what's happened is council remained silent as this procedure when forward that is not an act we have since the procedure there's no firmly back on the part of the defense approving of the procedure and it appears that this is don it was a it was a sort of the minimalists consideration in this case as if it were sort of done as a matter of course at and so i would disagree in that those circumstances indicated an ac right again i think under under pressley for example it it really doesn't matter the the extent of the exclusion whereas the way that i would i would prefer to frame it would be to say that we have to follow the u s supreme court as opposed to the illinois supreme court on these precise issues and that's just a matter of of the rules of  improper under for example whole that because i don't believe that the record makes any showing that there was specific or worse specific facts chambers and then obviously there are other statements in which she identified the defining that were also ok if there are no other questions i'm just very briefly talk on the about shackling issue in terms of the air i think it's very it we can get rid of that very quickly there's no valid argument or and even if you question yeah but instead there was a policy the fact remains that mr williams was shackled without a hearing for a large portion of the proceedings and so the only question is whether it's reversible error that this is this appears to be standard operating procedure in this courtroom and i think it's difficult to expect counsel to object to the local rules in the middle of the proceedings and then also here to exclude the public right of the trial during the victim's testimony i disagree i don't believe that the second prong of plain error is equivalent to or simply now it gets to the structural error and that issues currently in front of the illinois supreme court on this particular issue case is ultimately site waller and so if warrior exists there is no other showing necessary it is for say reversible as structural error clearly this is not an absolute right council is absolutely correct about that however a wall or any other u s supreme court case is set out the standards for determining whether or not that that  rights has been violated and those are the standards we have to follow because those standards are coming from the u s supreme court and so our position is based on those standards which require those those four elements on the record explicitly on the record that based on those four elements we have a error here  made or i needed an analogy in the in the briefs to the notion of of a trial court to nine councils with this meaning and how outrageous that would seem to us odd since that point of wrong has been established for that these that these policies are not they are not to be allowed and we've known it for a long time and it should not be acceptable to us that these policies continue that being said even if that distinction between this case now isn't isn't convincing we do have evidence on this record that the particular style of shackling involved in p did the defendant's ability to assist williams had difficulty handling his notes while he was shackled and overall difficulty participating fully in the proceedings and there's no reason to think that that difficult thing was not they were during the trial as well