a substantively on reasonable but offend him committed three exceptionally serious offenses in just three years participated in a plot to bomb a crowded bar in downtown chicago solicited the murder i agent and he assaulted a fellow inmate attacking the inmate as he slapped repeatedly stabbing him using makeshift weapons that the defendant had fashioned out of toothbrushes and razor defendants pattern of criminal conduct reflected his steadfast and escalating commitment to violence against innocent people whom he viewed as enemies of islam yet the district court in that he did not see that he did not view these multiple offenses as being aggravating of one another and despite a guidelines range of life imprisonment the district court imposed a the defendant committed that st offense just in and of themselves that pattern over citizen demonstrates the substantive on reasonable ness of the district court sentence but also the fact that the district court dramatically discounted or really just regarded be aggravating aspects of defendants recidivist pattered that decision fundamentally undermines key other key aspects of the district court's sentencing rationale so the district courts gave the teenage boys do and the fact that the defendant planned these two murders with no involvement from the undercover under his purported influence also contradicts the district court's conclusion that the defendant had somehow been co would simply quote age out of his criminal conduct so ultimately that is if the district court lived with this case for quite a while and head multiple occasions to observe the defendant to assess the defendant and her sentence here really seems driven by what she said that she was a bit sure she had bad judgment he grew up in a tough environment where violence against his religion was often referred to by americans why isn't the district court in a much better position to make that assessment than we are given the really years that she had to evaluate and assess the defendant in this case judge the government understands of this as a deferential standard review and yet at the end of the day the government firmly believes that in light of the record  district court sentenced the defendant based on what the nd circuit would have called a sterilized account of the record before it and so it made it looked to particular factors of the defendant and yes for example h yet eighteen years old is old enough to know that murder mass murder is wrong and these are not impulsive crimes these are not the kinds of crimes that we would typically say oh well a teenager committed this crime in the heat of the moment because they don't have a full appreciation of the consequences each and every one of the offenses that the defendant committed were deliberate premeditated it took course over as you can if you can period of time and it just  diminish the defendant's culpability for his action she talked about the fact that the defendant was directed to solicit the murder of an f b i agent by his cellmate pascal and yet the record does not support that idea the defendant this was the defendant's idea the defendant brought it to pascal and it made sense that the defendant brought it to pascal because it was rooted in a long held at vs that the defendant had that he needed to commit violence against outside of the control of the defendant she talked about how he was unable to control himself yet the full facts that were in front of the district court showed the defendant of this attack on hancock was again deliberate premeditated and consistent with the defendant's long held ideas his commitment to the idea that he needs to commit violence against enemies of islam hancock in particular because he had hancock and drawn image of the prophet muhammad  defendant targeted hancock for that particular reason he created these makeshift weapons and he lulled hancock into the reading of the two inmates these two men who had had a prior history when the defendant had st assau biggest part of what we're talking about here is emphasis what how much weight the district court places on certain items both in the case and with regard to the of offender him or herself  the standard here a substantive are reasonable this it's a it's a it's a broad term how do we know that too much emphasis has been placed on one item in the case for one item of the defendant versus deferring to someone who sat through what four days of the sentencing hearing it took the alford plea it cetera where do we draw that line is too much i can judge i really i  think the district court's words speak for themselves if you look at the sentencing hearing transcript there's approximately nine pages a typewritten a typewritten transcript the vast majority of those pages at least seven by my count are dedicated toward mitigating regarding the pretrial conditions of confinement the length of the pretrial detention there is just a number of that the drastic focus of the of the district court was a notice factor there was very recognized that the offenses were severe and yet that factor did not carry through in the court's analysis and so judge brown and when you ask you know where do we draw the line i think we really what we're left with are the  sentence of at least sixteen years or crocs meeting sixteen years the fact that the district court imposed a cumulative centimes of sixteen years for these three violent premeditated offenses and the government's view is substantively and reasonable says at the very beginning of the sentence a court goes through each of the three crimes and notes the seriousness of each of the three crimes the attempt was a violent and heinous act to kill or harm others it clearly disserves possibility of a prolonged sentence we have said in the past that courts don't have to go into detail on all the three thousand five hundred and fifty three a factors it's clear the court acknowledged it why isn't that sufficient here not sufficient jobs because after acknowledging those factors but just record then went on to discount them to say that the the bombing plot the defendant wasn't fully culpable for it acknowledgement of the severity of the offenses and yet when you dial into the stop sins of the district court sentencing rationale from the government's perspective that substance simply does not give full treat such a long time since i've been in the position of having the standard of review so strongly in my favor and i have to say it's nice to be back in that position  i think the questions have been right on in terms of exactly what happened this is a district court judge a very good district court judge on my dad who's been on the bench ten years she's a former assistant state's attorney and former assistant u s attorney former circuit court judge an appellate court judge in the state of illinois and if you read her reasoning it is incredibly solid the truth of the matter is is the government just doesn't like her decision and that's because the government only the government interpret this case the way they do because they don't want to accept the fact that they set up a young mentally unstable we don't have to argue whether he was insane but the fact of the matter is this record supports everything and judge coleman did in terms of just what the government caused discounting the seriousness of it mr durgan let people ask you a question about that mental illness issue here because it's something that is i think running around the case and obviously you were present at the sentencing hearings and you were trial counsel it seems chronologically the events occur of course in late two thousand and twelve this competency issue gets raised somewhere around two thousand and fifteen mr dowd gets sent to the facility he's placed psychotropic medications competency is restored and we get back to a position of two thousand and sixteen he ends up entering the alford plea is it a defense argument here that the mental illness stretched back such that it would impact on responsibility for the crime or is it just with regard to his competency during his pretrial detention look at the report from but here it's government exhibit i mean it's one of our defense exhibits they they they find the possibility of schizophrenia and they specifically find in this is the doctor at butner that he stuff it from a mental illness  what we what we do argue and that's why i was careful with my words earlier what i what i'm arguing is mentally unstable if you listen to the tapes and this is what this is what the government cannot accept the government cannot accept the fact that this kid was goofy whatever you want to call it doesn't rise to the level of a mental disease or defect in two thousand and twelve i don't think so because he was never examined he does have a brother however who points out how in appropriately he would giggle if you listen to the tapes he's constantly giggling at a time when it's supposed to be serious he's a laughing she points that out the government doesn't want to accept that they've never accepted it but everybody who's reviewed this from the crest on so as whoa what was going on here in vets what they don't unstable absolutely was he exactly what judge called him and called him impressionable young naive easily led absolutely and if you listen to those tapes that's all you need to hear but that's what the government doesn't want to accept the government has portrayed this case from the beginning as one of its classic war on terror achievements and and i'm not saying that i've said this in the arguments if you look at my argument to judge coleman and i really don't want to argue any of that it didn't want to argue with judge coleman other than at the time a sensing other than the government just kept beating this horse of how awful it was that he was going to blow up about a one thousand pound bomb and he was going to take out a whole quarter of a city block and that's what they wanted to do and yet if you listen to everything going up to them it 's insane to think that this kid had that idea even their own agent testified that he did not have a plan to blow up a bottle that an eight a bomb in chicago that was clearly the government now we don't need to debate whether that's a good tactic or a bad tactic i want to get into that the question is is same question i asked judge  coleman what do we do with an eighteen year old with a with a kid the spending an american citizen who was locked up for seven years who had been reached or to good health what do we do with him in that's where i think she fashion an incredibly reasonable and well documented bull decision now going back to the mental health it certainly was an issue in the hancock attack and that's another thing the government doesn't want to acknowledge the record shows that he believed they had it st they were friends then there's the cartoon with the prophet and i don't he want to describe what the cartoon was about it wouldn't be appropriate but in a public setting but the fact of the matter is they had a fight and then they got to be friends again but somehow deluged looked out the window of the m c c that night and he saw the church the machinery the chair from his magick the mosque outside his window and he took that as a message from allah that they have had to be vindicate incarcerated for the attempted bombing of the terrorist activities there isn't anything in the record at that point saying that he was delusional or are having some of the other mental health struggles that he was at the time of the rd crime the court didn't have much to say about that and the defendant in this allocution certainly didn't express any kind of remorse for that how can we tell that that crime was appropriately factored into the sentence attention or address the mitigating factors on that particular crime like she did on some of the others how can we tell that that one was was properly considered well i think if you look at the very beginning of her explanation  exhibits and there including the exhibits judge are the tape recordings between paschal and the defendant the government makes a lot of hair when they say well it was the defendant's idea but the only one who can tell them it was the defendant's idea was passing got miraculously let out on bond he was a classic jailhouse informant and there was substantial evidence in that record homo sexual of it was a negative description he said yeah but you don't want to drink or have sex because you're a homo sexual unquote and there were pages of pages of this kind of talk which is why i referred you to what she said she had reviewed before she read all the government's evidence on the government for better or worse and i think it helps us they put all their evidence in as if all her trial exhibits in here along with all the health evidence right there from atia paschal on tape recording you need to be an institution this isn't a tape invented admits though to following through on some of the steps that supported his conviction just the terms as despicable as paschal is the need to foster respect for a long horseman is an important all light sentences for any attempt to interfere with it is putting that risk they even he cannot be excused so i mean i you know on the issue of the alford plea obviously they're rare we don't see a lot of them the government objected to the alford plea ultimately the district court accepted it could you speak a little bit without getting in to any attorney client privilege communications of course could you speak a little bit to the position of the alford plea here i think mr jonas says the transcript this should be documentary three  seven page four hundred and three strike at page forty three mr jonah says and as the government set forth in its response to the defendant's motion our objection is because the public has to have a belief  that the judicial system works that someone's not pleading guilty just because they feel like the weight of the government is against them that's not something we like to see here is that the reasoning behind the alford plea or what is the reasoning behind that no i'll  back from butler and when he started taking the medication he was a different person and he is a truly different person today he was a different person at the time of the sentencing and the reason that dad suggested the the last minute was that we were fearful that he was going to deconstruct that the stress of the trial was beginning to upset him be used to do things before he was on medication he would pace around the room he drove us crazy this is i think in the record we would tell this judge coleman he would you would start pacing like he couldn't sit still and he would pace around in a cell we'd said he's would you just back we got talk to you and him and he would start circling around the room i was afraid that was happening again that's why we did it and you know and aside from the fact that if anybody realistically thinks they can win a jury trial in this day and age defending a muslim accused of her i'd like to get some advice on how to do that but it was it was not because we were afraid of the evidence judge i can tell you that this this was from a lawyer standpoint this was a trial case there were there were issues here that could have been li outset the standard of review in this case and of course the government recognizes that this is the deferential standard of review but it cannot be that a district court judge by virtue of their experience and it might at least ask the judge here is experience unstable is troubling because at the end of the day if he's mentally unstable and in that in that condition is plotting to bomb downtown chicago and soliciting the murder of an f b i agent district court's confidence that medication and i'm going to treatment would assist that you know once he's outside the structure of the confines of the institutional setting where he has that kind of structure to support his mental health treatment and that's something that the district court should have more strongly considered and finally there is discussion about you know the language that or the tone i'm sorry the tone that the defendant  conversations with the undercover the fact that he was joyful or giggling well the undercover testified of the sentencing hearing that in his experience that was an indication that someone was in fact the radicalized mindset that they were excited about considered and did not give sufficiently to and more than the tone are the words the words the defendant use in his conversations with the undercover and what she expressed pleasure at the size of the comfortable with the idea of a one thousand people dying talked about judge could i ask for thirty seconds to bring up one thing that i didn't have time to say if you do i will also give us alex sockets thirty seconds as well mr durcan that's what i wanted to address the fact that judge coleman also impose forty five years of supervised release fee and a very remarkable fact was that she asked us to agreed to come back a year before his release which is something i really think shows how well thought out this sentence is and there will be eggs by accident in combating violent extremism condition and of a supervised release and there will be a program for that and i  briefs but you know supervised release is not interchangeable with the prison sentence so the goal of supervised release is rehabilitation but really what we're talking about here is a disregard for the need for punishment and incapacitation and this violence extremism housing