good morning morning i'd like to reserve three minutes of my time mr hurd was convicted of attempting to entice a person who he believed was a seventeen year old pageant contestant to have sex with him a crime for which he was sentenced to just over ten years in prison to be followed by a term of supervise relief release for life the sole issue in this appeal is whether mr hood was entrapped as a matter of law by a government agent who by locating and manipulating his particular emotional vulnerability persuaded him to commit a crime when otherwise he would have gone on his law abiding way in the st serious procedural posture of this case the question for this court is whether any rational juror could have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that mr hood was ready and willing to commit this crime way once she blocked him from facebook and that conversation did not have any sexual connotations and when she blocked him because she didn't want to text him separately he didn't try to contact her or there's no evidence at all that he did any she blocked right but he could have as you know her facebook page was public it was known many things about her were known and in theory he could have gone about he could have taken that opportunity to find other ways to contact her for example he could have followed her on instagram which he did actually try to do later but he didn't do that when she blocked him he he did go on his law abiding way it was only when the government agent agent evans twelve days later  went back to him through facebook reopen the conversation and offered to text him on a separate phone that he then started to talk to her again so at that point i think it's fair to say that the government agent did approach him and initiated the conversation and that conversation from from very early part of the conversation was clearly replete with mr good's emotional interest in having a conversation with her and when he found out how old she was he also made it clear that he was the kind of person who was willing to wait until she was eighteen for anything other than conversation to happen it was the agent who recognized and manipulated mr hood's emotional vulnerability and started to pray upon that well of course she also in the conversations stated several times that he was afraid of getting caught i wanted to make sure she wasn't he wasn't being set up it is it's a completely acceptable reason to not want to cross the line into criminal conduct for that to be why you're reluctant to go further in the conversation so the fact that his concern was that he might be being set up or that he might get caught  which might have caused him to be reluctant that's a perfectly valid reason to be reluctant to commit a crime in this in jacobson the supreme court specifically said that it is one of the reasons why we have crimes at all is to protect the moral order but that brain locked in stuff that necessarily have to come from some innate sense of morality has to be because you don't want to get caught and you don't want to get prosecuted that's why we have the criminal justice system so it is not that the question is not whether  mr hood you know sort of abstractedly would never have considered wanting to have sex with a seventeen year old the question is whether he was reluctant to actually cross that line in the conversation with the agent during that time just a classic issue fact and that's why we have juries do to decide what the facts are and you make a good argument well that's not necessarily this or not necessarily this it's for that i mean isn't this just a classic issue of  as to his predisposition so entrapment the question of predisposition is in fact a classic question of fact however it is not always a question not always i mean if the evidence is so overwhelming no reasonable juror good rule otherwise but well mr hood's position is that this is just that case the government has not cited a single case in which all the factors we in favor of mr hood the way that they do here is true that  the key factor factor for st of all i thought i'd like to just sort of say i want to make sure i say it is that each of the each factor weighs in favor of mr hood the place obviously that there's some question which in our position is not enough to go to the jury is where or he exhibited reluctance that was overcome by government persuasion and it's not just the amount of persuasion or the force or of the radical nature of the persuasion it's the fact that the government agent was able to in this case quickly identify mr hood special in our ability his emotional interest in having a love relationship and tap into that in a way that kept him coming back for more when he judged clay when he kept coming back with his entreaties it was because by that point he'd already been he already felt that there was a an emotional connection the agent had already said things to him like your sweetie i like you i love your words i love your poetry i have feelings i'm interested she indicated that she was interested in a relationship and that is really what mr hood was was interested in so by that time he had already gotten emotionally connected and you know you may  that was the point he had already been trapped by the agent and you know the very st case that the supreme court recognized the entrapment defense sorrells versus united states in one thousand nine hundred and thirty two it recognized that entrapment can actually happen in a single conversation if the government agent is skilled enough to to tap into the particular vein of vulnerability of the defendant then you can have entrapment and in that case the government agent pretended to be from the same division of the military and had been in world war one veteran like the defendant and all you had to do was tap into that vein of military karate and the defendant within an hour said yes i'll go get the half gallon of whiskey for you and he was convicted of violating the prohibition laws so it doesn't matter that it wasn't a long time it was that the agent was skilled enough to recognize in the early conversation that mr hood had an emotional vulnerability and was able to keep coming back to that and manipulate it so that he was willing to cross the line when otherwise he would not have been he had no criminal history whatsoever he now had never done anything of the sort the government presented no evidence that he had done anything like this or even exhibited an interest in having sex with minors before he was approached by this agent when you say about the fact that the trial judge or the government's objection did in fact put entrapment question before the jury what that means is there was sufficient evidence for the for the jury to find both that he was induced by the government and also that he had a lack of predisposition so what the what the judge did was sent it to the jury to begin with however even so you can still find this court can still find entrapment as a matter of law the jury freshly considered whether he was entrapped and found that  u apparently obviously found that he was a so you are and the jury sat through the trial and hear about the evidence and you would have us substitute our perspective on  made a mistake that there was a patently clear absence of predisposition that no rational juror could found find that mr hood was predisposed to commit this crime but what about the government's evidence that he had a say bookmarked of junior young miss nudist pageant pics i mean that doesn't show that he's got an interest in young girls that are naked for sexual interest i don't know what else would be jacobson which is you can have predilections you can have fantasies and for all we know those who are eighteen and nineteen year old teenagers in the book mark we don't know but you can have fantasies about taking certain actions or even know well instant jacobson the supreme court found entrapment as a matter of law when the defendant also exhibited what you might describe as an interest in i think sex with young boys i i'm not remembering exactly what it was but you can exhibit you can have a fantastical interest in something and that doesn't mean you're actually going to cross the line to commit the crime and it is possible for the court to find entrapment as a matter of law even with that kind of evidence having a bookmark of teenage nudist pageant is not criminal it doesn't mean you're going to commit a crime any more than  actually leads me to another point i'd like to make that is partially in response to you judge clay which is this this fictional minor was seventeen years old this this fictional minor one she was fictional the agent was pretending to be this minor was really was a minor right and then the the agent took over for right but the conversation he had in which i mean there really is a seventeen year old here and yes but he don tacked at the seventeen year old and then at a point the agent took over and started communicating on her behalf right yes he did contact and she actually got back on the line later to yes she was put back a sort of there's not a fictional seventeen year old there's a real seventeen year old the real seventeen year old that he spoke with there was nothing about that conversation that would suggest he was trying to have sex with a minor it was when the agent was pretending to be her starts all i mean when i say fictional mind i'm not saying there was no minor i'm saying that the person with whom he was speaking w a character that the agent created to him to persuade mr hood to cross that line so i guess i'd like to just sort of like and with pointing out that again i know that the question about whether it's fictional but this person that the agent was pretending to be was not a fourteen year old it was a seventeen year old who was dangling the possibility of an actual emotional relationship with someone who clearly had an interest in a love relationship so wit may please the court my name is brian samuelson and i represent the united states who believe he was talking to a seventeen year old girl and he said i love you and i want you that's text three hundred and thirty six dollars that text i love you and i want you was the culmination of previous messages and text messages about ages beauty about boyfriends about dating about i have to be careful because you were seventeen and in that context the only possible way to interpret his statement i love you and i want you is that he had a nd leg and from that evidence a reasonable jury could conclude that he was predisposed to commit the crime and that the government did not him to commit the crime now as i mentioned that that text did not stand alone so even if we look at the initial facebook conversations with a real seventeen year old girl before any police contact we can see evidence of predisposition from which a jury could reject the entrapment defense in those initial facebook messages he called her beautiful comments on her looks he asked whether she has a boyfriend he has about her age he asked what she was doing that evening he tries to disarm her and she says i'm not trying to flirt i'm not trying to hit on you i'm safe from christian you can background check me and when it's clear that she has stopped responding in a stern with a conversation he tries to meet manipulate her emotionally making her feel guilty for not continuing the conversation all of that happens until almost three o'clock in the morning from that evidence with the real girl before police conduct the jury could conclude that this was a man who  predisposed to commit this crime of enticing a young minor for sex now the court and the jury could stop there but it but it doesn't need to stop there so i'd like to take a look at some of the early text messages after a evans took over the case who had repeatedly tried to escalate the encounter he tries to call he suggest meeting in person he asked for a selfie he asked for video chat the common thread between all of those is that these are ways for him to verify that the person he is talking to is in fact a minor he it introduces dating he tells or you need a new boyfriend he asks her about her ideal date those are not things that are consistent with a platonic relationship with a seventeen year old girl and rd he says i have to be careful you are seventeen and he he texts at six thirty in the morning you know with no prompting from agent evans you swear you are not setting me up a reasonable jury conclude the only reason he's worried about her age the only we're seeing the only reason he would say he needs to be careful because she's seventeen the only reason he's worried about being set up is because he knows that he intends to do something criminal with this underage girl and finally of course he says i love you and i want you and those words i want you are simply inconsistent with the defense theory that he was looking for a platonic relationship with a seventeen year old girl now as i understand of his argument about the alleged inducement that starts around the time that agent evans starts to ask could sort of clarify his intent about what what mr hood wants with the court has held that being receptive to a defendant sexual advances advances is not entrapment that's to help in case taunting a defendant for being boring in person you know what was on the table is not entrapment that's hackworth pressing the defendant to tell me what you want is not entrapment as a matter of law and that's the martin case simply giving the defined of the opportunity to commit the crime is not entrapment as a matter of law and that is all that agent evans did here in fact this case looks nothing like those cases where this court has or the supreme court has found entrapment as a matter of law there was no real life lasting relationship or at least the jury could find that there was no meaningful relationship is this unfolded over a couple of days there were no repeated requests to engage in sexual activity mr hood certainly did not repeatedly refused to engage in sexual activity even if he was a little vague about his intentions the government merely lets could know that jade was open for the possibility of sex and giving that opportunity is not entrapment as a matter of law summation i'd just like to point out that this is a fact based question the entrapment defense is a fact based question that is most appropriate for the jury the jury rendered its verdict on these facts and i urge you to affirm that well i'd like to address the two cases that came from the circuit that are similar to this case that my friend has brought up health and hackworth and mr this case is actually although helton and half or th of both appear to be superficially similar to this case they are in fact different from this case and in material and important ways and hackworth for example it was the defendant who initiated each chat session after they  ended and that the court found to be significant in looking at this can text question this fact based question that was at play in that case and that didn't happen here in our brief we outlined the four or five different times that the agent went back to fish for mr hood when he when he wasn't responding quickly enough to bring him back into the conversation in the very st time that the agent did that was after they had signed off for the night and the agent said wait can i ask you something and start a conversation that was designed to try to elicit sexual conversation from mr hood and it was the beginning of the sort of heightened pressure to take the conversation where the agent wanted it to go in happier as well  there was no it was completely devoid of romantic or emotional discussion between the parties the entire conversation in hackworth a set forth in the appellant's brief and if you read it you will see that it was really a kind of me and crude and sarcastic conversation between two people this conversation was different the agent intentionally and very carefully said love you're sweet you're nice i like you i have feelings for you i care for you and nothing like what happened in hackworth happy with as well it was the defendant who st suggested sex whereas in this case it was it was the agent who pressed the conversation to be about whether mister hood wanted to have sex with her and made it clear that they had had gained his trust enough to make him feel comfortable doing houghton is different as well and helton the defendant was very quick to move the conversation to two sacks and most cru the defendants credibility was in question helton and that's why it was a jury question because there was a question of his credibility about whether he was actually willing to have sex with a fourteen year old there's nothing like that in this case because mr mr hyde didn't testify there was never any question about his credibility we have undisputed evidence from which the court can conclude that it was a patently clear absence of predisposition on his part the other thing i'd like to say about helton is that the government seems to try to draw  rule from helton sherman jacobson and mclernon which is there has to be a long period of increasingly escalating pressure from the government in order for a trap and as a matter of law to to hold that's in tension with  sorrels where the entrapment happened in a single conversation in less than an hour and a half so with that i just asked the court to reverse the conviction and with instructions to dismiss the indictment thank