tom became angry when blended reunited with bill she got an order of protection against tom in may of two thousand and ten a bitter custody battle over the three youngest children sued in june of two thousand and ten tom brought his three children to detective burns with the allegation that brett put his hand on j j is mouth the children denied it detective burns family allegations were untrue and tom was angry that burns did not even call brad in for questioning after that the at least as charged the the offense is a lying by the the events underlying counts one through three were alleged to have occurred in october of two thousand in may of two thousand and eleven gain for a third time to detective burns and this time they all say the same the threat made them such as we detective burns of course can't just pass this one off as an unfounded allegation has to look further he brings in young and brooklyn who are also interviewed cold with no where and who cold with no warning as to why they're there and they deny that they ever saw their brother do anything they think happened to them including at times when brad's convicted of five counts of predatory criminal sexual assault and i believe in a somewhat troubled judge imposes the mandatory life without parole sentence that would be required under subsection b to a predatory criminal sexual assault statute which simply two or more victims regardless of anything else in this case i believe there were some serious trial errors in this close case which i believe was also a credibility  centrally one side of the family versus the other the state's case rested solely on the statements of tom's three children two of the counts the last two on the word of each one tom plainly had a history of bringing the children in to make false claims and there's no confession from brett however the state improperly attempted to convert brett's denials into a sort of confession with a human lie detector argument that brett was lying because of his body and the prosecutor contrast of brett's body language of five younger siblings also even though broken was interviewed the same day under the same circumstances and she denied brett skilled and she was interviewed just as the  s three children were and he was interviewed for tape that he was taped when she testified at trial the prosecutor cross examined her on the on the topic of she wanted brad to come home she was trying to protect  sensually buying that she had had a motive to fabricate when defense counsel sought to play brooklyn's video he was denied the opportunity to do so of course the best counsel one of that video and for the same reason the prosecutor wanted in the video of the three of tom children and that you have a child being interviewed is a powerful image for the jury see i believe that a new trial is warranted for those two rows however in the alternative sentence of life without parole this is in contrast to homicide offenses which was no overseas alabama where they can just cannot be mandatory so in this case the court as charged right was seventeen years old subsection b one point two a predatory criminal sexual assault statute at issue here which has the mandatory life without parole term there needs to be two of it so in order to use that statute in order to make brett eligible for life without parole is more typical when someone gets a life without parole sentence based on repeated criminal misconduct so we have essentially in order to uphold i think for this for this court to uphold an eighth amendment grounds a life without parole senses and counts four and five the court would have to i think disregard the diminished culpability of youth that's underlying graham and miller and use conduct that was supposedly committed less than a year earlier and just you know and then use comic just months after the after his eighteenth birthday allegedly and with no intervening convictions in the meantime i believe this would be a super rigid interpretation graham to allow that kind of that kind of reaching back to juvenile conduct in a case where there was no intervening conviction the proportionate penalties analysis which are raised in subsection c or argument c of the a supplemental brief has an even wider a slightly wider reach under clemens one of the proportionate penalties not only of course to reconsider the seriousness of the offense but there's also the individual circumstances of you know in addition to the things that apply to the eighth amendment now assess bret was you know allegedly seventeen or eighteen at all times had no prior convictions was a high school graduate was supposed to enjoy it to join the army he was the oldest kid so i guess the to the task of babysitting fell to him in contrast to mr huddleston who is a natural life for predatory criminal sexual assault and it's still more victims was upheld by the illinois supreme court was thirty six a professional educator who preyed on his elementary school students get a prior indecent exposure conviction and he kept a cabinet full of foreign in his in his desk or in a cabinet in the school after subsection one point it was an act of the effectively changing the law for purposes of the age of mammoth and now prohibiting life without parole sentences for juveniles who commit not homicide offenses here the trial happened you know a few years after graham no one gave any indication that they knew that the that it mattered that eighteen was the launching point for natural life versus the ordinary term of years for predatory criminal sexual assault the jury was instructed on that they were instructed had to be at least seventeen because at the time that was the bottom age of the offense so in terms of any dates in flocks it didn't matter to the jury he just had to be seventeen for that and i believe that this case is analogous to cases where there is an enhancement factor based on the victim's age which can be harmless you know that in the classic case you have a seventy five year old man wh says i was beaten about a public way and they forget they failed to give a jury and instruction that he gets an extended term we find that he's over sixty but where nobody's disputing it and it's not close and it's not in flux it's harmless in this case we have alleged conduct it's that is biased by the charges allegedly just months after he turns eighteen it's uncorroborated from uncorroborated testimony from a single victim at i do believe that given the closeness of the events in time that this was both playing air on the close the balance problem and also one of the substantial rights prong given that no one in the courtroom seemed to know that it mattered whether he was seventeen or eighteen for purposes of a chance to get out from prison or being warehouse for the rest of his  i'm not saying that having committed this having a prior conviction is always going to be aggravation as a reason to use subsequent conduct to give it a higher sentence within the range i don't think it's i don't think there's any immunity from that as part of gra klein i'm getting older i hear it's not as good i never know that doesn't happen i just record so if you could put your voice up here i would argue that this was not a close case there was remarkable consistent reciting of factual circumstances in the details the testimony in the statements by the three victims were were almost identical they were corrupt the statements were corroborated by the opportunity to commit the crime presented in the defendant's statement in the testimony defense witnesses and their responsible defendants changing story indicating a consciousness of guilt and status arguing that this was not a close case by any means and in the air in evidence evidentiary arguments defendant has raised are harmless the first argument is whether the prosecutor's closing arguments commenting on the credibility of defendant was proper and status maintained it was based on evidence and reason or inferences therefrom during the recross examination of defendant the prosecutor asked defendant  in the interview that was you surprised a defendant says i don't show emotion very often the prosecutor asks and your reactions to him telling him telling you what your little sister and little brother told him happened that w you not surprised to find answers i was not surprised i was in shock then during closing argument the prosecutor played a portion of the defendant's interview and question whether defendant was shocked being arrested the prosecutor as for the other evidentiary air race defendant concerning brooklyn's prior consistent statement as rehabilitation evidence the state would argue that any motive for brooklyn to there for that purpose the interview was not rehabilitation evidence can the court properly ruled on them moreover brooklyn was allowed to testify that she told the detective what she had testified in court just not the as for sentencing the state concedes that the in my brief i conceded also that the first three counts of predator criminal sexual assault committed when he was a juvenile the sentences alleging predatory criminal sexual assault are valid as he was committed those offenses when he was eighteen years old and therefore as an adult the court properly considered the two other victims even though those offenses against those two victims were committed when he was seventeen and sentencing him to natural life on counts four and five in roper v simmons the court drew a line for adulthood at the age of eighteen the court stated that the qualities that distinguish juveniles do not appear disappear when an individual turns eighteen by the same token some under eighteen have already attained the level of maturity some adults will never reach however the court stated a lie must be drawn and the age of eighteen is a point where society draws a line between childhood and the dolphin in the broker in that case the court concluded that that was the age at which a person could be eligible in this case the fact that there were only consideration you know such as juvenile traits not being fully formed are no longer apply once you turn eighteen they didn't diminish culpability if you is not a consideration since he's now an adult as for defendant argument giving him a chance to reform and therefore like needing a conviction the legislature way that rehabilitated potential of offenders and determine that multiple victims two or more justifies natural i sense the legislature determined that the fact that there are multiple victims indicates a tendency toward recidivism and a lack of rehabilitative potential the legislature determined that prior convictions are not necessary to find a decreased rehabilitative potential the punishment reflects the tendency of sex offenders to repeat their fences and the frightening and high risk every citizen in how will certain the sex offenders the court stated sex offenders are much more likely than any other type of offender to be arrested for a new rape or sexual assault and i also add that the constitution does not require that the possibility of which concerning the distinction between repeat offenders who are convicted and those who just have multiple offenses but no prior convictions the court stated that defendants argument ignored the tendency of sex offenders to repeat their offense and the frightening and closely bounce master the age of defendant or the dates of the offenses in fact they are when you interview he admitted he was eighteen and he was born gave his birth date h testified that one incident occurred on her birthday her birthday was june sixteenth the other incident occurred at their new house in fisher the family had moved to do three months prior to her interview which occurred on on jan warren two thousand and twelve so the timing is  mitigating circumstance justifying excluding youthful receipt of this from under the harsh penalties this was not an aggravating factor in the sentencing scheme or statutary factor i think  if this court would find in a printed violation that would mandate proof of everyone's age in every case otherwise they might be a juvenile defendants sense also does not violate the proportionate huddleston our supreme court has already ruled on this issue and held that the mandatory life sentence predecessor to this section involved in this case did not violate the  cases of follow to punish the juvenile but what he does is an adult how do you i mean how do you make that second victim someone who was a if it was seventeen years eleven months and twenty nine days the same argument would apply just as it does in the statutes of limitation if anything that draws a line the line is there and you you're sentencing for an adult offense and that one was drawn eighteen so he's an adult so it's and hurried yeah but the victims who are part and parcel of the substance of the france are victim on victim as an adult multiple victims as you know that's aggravating but does it meet the standard of the statute two or more victims i is i suppose probably going backwards chronologically for the states arguments if we're looking at the cole statute that called statutes awesome constitutional part plainly under ground because that statute said doesn't have any limits allows a seventeen year old to get natural life there's two more victims when you're seventeen i don't think it's enough to say but the legislature has a judgment when we're talking about a constitutional issue also life without parole for not homicide that's for juveniles and saddam's son which says any fact that increase the maximum in this case because of gram the maximum get can get increased if he chooses at least eighteen and i disagree that this would mandate a pretty reversal in every case it would almost upright a man your personal almost no cases because like the example i gave with a seventy five year old guy who got hit and we're expecting a sixty you got a thirty year old person who says they didn't prove i was eighteen it's going to be harmless if you go and look at the age factor cases back when the president was the big issue in the early two thousand and they're all the stone i apologize back on the apprentice you the state second prong argument is that there's never that it's not plain error the second prong forever or under any circumstances based on nits which does not hold that they never issued a blanket ruling that the finding of brutal and heinous there by a judge was not harmless or was not second prong plain air and i believe the case involved fairly brutal murder that's a that's that's the seventy five year old guy on the cut off of sixty when it's was when it's not close like it's close here but it's not close it's going to be harmless error and the vast majority of times it's going to be instruction given would not have fixed this problem because a jury being told that arguments are not evidence does not mean that arguments can't be persuasive especially when i hear the arguments not based on any evidence there's no evidence contrary to and as for the error in not playing video brooklyn's interview the state basically claims a a basically from birth preexisting motive to cover which is extremely convenient for the state because that means if you have a group of children some of whom implicate the defendant and some of whom exonerate the defendant only the ones who implicate him get played because everybody else you know isn't isn't you know doesn't qualify under one fifteen ten and then you can always say their video doesn't come in because they are present mode to cover so it's like it's like a natural filter that favors the state even when you have to two interviews on the same day from the same siblings are equally reliable circumstances if not i would say more reliable brooklyn's case because i don't think she had a parent that was coaching or there no question for the questions or honors say thank you