rom ten years to five years or induction is guidelines range from a low and that and a one hundred and twenty months to a low end sentence of seventy months a difference of more than four years that he over served before the st step ac we routinely allow district judges to issue alternative rulings so for example a judge says i don't think there are subject matter jurisdiction here but just in case the case goes up on appeal of the court of appeal thing some wrong let me go ahead and rule on the merits of the complaints so there's nothing inherently wrong with doing that we allow judges to make evidentiary rulings in the alternative we allow them to make marriage rulings in the alternatives why shouldn't we allow that to happen in this sort of scenario and i think of course that logically interceding error is teed but here like there's not the risk of there's not the same risk of taint right where the court at step one just says i'm passing over and i'm going to step two there's no error at step one i one nothing happened it's tough one so we're talking about step two so it just seems to me that the two are different you can imagine if there was an error at step one that we might think well that error might have sort of bled over into step two but here there's nothing to bleed over right understood that mr green's evocations and river related back to his is two thousand and six covered off and so it doesn't show that it considered that that his guidelines changed  understand all of the relevant considerations in exercising its discretion and so without understanding what that discretion as it can't really understand what what what it can  supervised release i'm not going to because of all of these factors and i think you also does it as if that in a way show that the district judge understood the extent of his authority in other words knowing authority in reducing the dependence and remained is warranted and as i say that here that because the district court didn't mention the overt service didn't mention the guidelines changes didn't mention any bang other than the post release conduct it's at best ambiguous as to whether the district or understand its authority i think that you also see that what the district court did here is is not sufficient when you look at not only the th circuit decision but also the th circuit decision and in united states for instance boy which is another re back and there the district court also assumes that the defendant's motion and assume that the defendant was eligible for a reduction in sat and and and the th circuit affirmed but in doing so noted that the questions about i guess your reliance on the language of the statute complete review of the motion of the merits and by indirection the seven circuits sort of race about language i guess i have two questions and i'll just put them out there in the let you respond to them as you as you see so one i mean that language doesn't it at least the way i read it it doesn't explain how motions sort of have to be reviewed in the st instance it just describes the consequences on a nd motion in the event that the st motion wasn't subject to complete review so it doesn't really explain to you as a as an initial matter or you know sort of require complete review of the motion on the merits and then separately what why is there any inconsistency between even if you assume that it does require a complete review of the motion on the merits why does that translate to complete explanation in the order of the court that you know sort of a jump through both steps one language in c does require a complete review of the motion on the merits in the st instance how is there any inconsistency between that and what the district court did here i mean he said he reviewed the motion all you're saying is that he didn't write down an order it please the court michelle taylor for the united states judge jordan as you pointed out it's a firm alternative rulings like this all the time and they promote conservation of judicial resources they're often inappropriate exercise of judicial restraint when the eligibility question might be difficult or laborious and the discretionary call might in fact it really easy so there was nothing wrong with the district court exercising its discretion here to say even reduce it and it didn't just skip over eligibility it actually assumed it in the defendant's favor and we know that the court was correctly informed about the appropriate penalties in the statutory framework because of the defendant said it out in his motion why and its discretion given the very serious conduct by which the defendant violated the terms of the supervisor at least it was not going to reduce his sentence as i did later let me play devil's advocate with myself so to what extent to what extent do we take into account the fact that the government and the probation office both are if you at least at the district court level that mr green was ineligible for committed no error at all that was free to decide you know what there's this is you it's a difficult dispute i don't need to resolve it because i know given the nature of this supervised release eilish and which was a brutal beating of a pregnant woman in the presence of a minor child it did not want to reduce that sentence and it was free to do that so ask you a quick question his business judge newsom so what would the would your argument be the same if the court here instead of just skipping step one had said i've heard the government's argument i've heard probations argument for the following ten reasons i really don't think this guy's eligible but even assuming he is out then i would deny him really is the just the same argument  involve situations where were two of them are ones where the court actually was wrong and eligibility because of the reading already and even though the court made actually a mistake of law there that the state of law basically doesn't matter given the alternative holding that even assuming that that he time is a misnomer as is this idea that is now subject to these lower energies you remain subject to the penalties that apply there's just discretion to grant relief and here the court correctly decided that that that discretion was not it going back to judges and what you mentioned about that language about the success of motions bar there's nothing about that language that work that makes the st step that proceeding somehow different from original course the language simply bars excessive motions it doesn't require any procedure additional procedure to decide eligibility st can i ask you a quick question so i guess i view the seven circuits responses and i'm just curious like do you have anything other then the th circuit got it wrong well i think if you look at corner corner itself recognise the possibility that in some cases these sorts of errors would be must but porter said that in that case that was just the bare bones decision with insufficient explanation so i think in our case you know we have actually i think a really good order by the district  where the district court has thoroughly explained it at the word i do think the coroner was wrong in taking that for of course the language out of context but i think even warner by recognizing that these sorts of errors could have that harmless was was you sort of unfair to the district court decision and i don't think the district court decision warner really thought that their sentencing at penalties were irrelevant but to the extent that that was true and warner it's definitely not true here the district or understood  step back had done to the defendant such trade penalties the united states had agreed that you know that when two hundred and eighty seven we had acknowledged that this changed the penalties on his underlying offense and all those consequences then flow from that so there offense the covered offense is the underlying offense what we are wrong about is not realizing that it was part of that or the underlying offense so the covered offense year is is his original violation he is still serving part of his sentence for that original  that because mr green was serving us and it was imposed after a supervised release violation the the argument was that that sort of separate from the covered of authority to reduce this supervised release term of imprisonment it understood that to take into account what mr green is that it took into account which is dating back to two thousand  was still relevant to the discretionary decision whereas that's not what occurred here with a legal error is that the district or did not consider mr green's entire covered off answers it's just the supervised release component you know that affects the discretionary decision particularly if you look at the decision in royster which is cited by the government it goes into everything that the district court did you i thank you both very much we really appreciate it all right