[00:00:00] Speaker 00:
This case on calendar for argument is United States versus Cisneros.

[00:01:07] Speaker 03:
The four level enhancement for bribery offense involving an elected public official or any public official in a high-level decision-making or sensitive position

[00:01:27] Speaker 03:
is the only enhancement in the bribery guideline that's based on the rank of the person being bribed.

[00:01:32] Speaker 01:
That assumes that the modifier modifies both high level and sensitive position, correct?

[00:01:42] Speaker 01:
I mean we have, we've got a grammatical problem.

[00:01:45] Speaker 03:
Yes, and I'll get to that but just to make the point, for someone of high rank, this is the only enhancement that you're getting them on account of their rank.

[00:01:53] Speaker 01:
But the problem is that the sensing commission amended the guideline in 2004, dropped the increase in levels and then says the reason that we did it was that we wanted to include all law enforcement officers.

[00:02:09] Speaker 03:
says in the commentary, which we are supposed to disregard unless the language of the text itself is ambiguous.

[00:02:17] Speaker 01:
Right.

[00:02:18] Speaker 01:
So we first have to find the ambiguity, which gets me back to my grammatical question.

[00:02:23] Speaker 03:
Yes.

[00:02:24] Speaker 03:
And I'll get there.

[00:02:24] Speaker 03:
But I did just want to make the point that this is, if you have a corrupt senator, a corrupt cabinet secretary,

[00:02:29] Speaker 03:
This is the enhancement you're going to get them through.

[00:02:32] Speaker 03:
This is the only enhancement that's going to apply to someone of a high rank because of their rank.

[00:02:37] Speaker 01:
But you're not disputing that as a sworn federal law enforcement officer for HSI, he has access to very sensitive information that the general public can't access on the tech system.

[00:02:50] Speaker 03:
It depends what you mean by sensitive.

[00:02:52] Speaker 01:
Well, ongoing investigations, who's the target or subject of an ongoing criminal investigation?

[00:02:57] Speaker 01:
That's pretty sensitive stuff.

[00:02:58] Speaker 03:
I would argue that it's not, that that's not what sensitive means within the meaning.

[00:03:06] Speaker 01:
But wasn't that in part the purpose of the bribe in order to find out whether the bribe offeror was the subject of any open investigations by HSI?

[00:03:15] Speaker 03:
That was one of the bribes, yes.

[00:03:16] Speaker 03:
But I mean, again, if it was just enough to be the subject of the bribe to be subject to the enhancement, then everybody who was bribed would be subject to the enhancement.

[00:03:25] Speaker 01:
Well, except that law enforcement officers occupy a unique position of trust in our society.

[00:03:30] Speaker 01:
We give them powers that the rest of us don't get to have.

[00:03:35] Speaker 03:
We do, but they're still everyday powers, and they are not.

[00:03:38] Speaker 03:
So I think, Your Honor, that this will

[00:03:42] Speaker 03:
We're coming through this sort of, to my mind, backwards.

[00:03:44] Speaker 01:
Through the back door.

[00:03:45] Speaker 03:
I'd like to talk about why it has to be high level.

[00:03:48] Speaker 03:
I'd like to talk about what sensitive means.

[00:03:50] Speaker 01:
Well, let me ask you a question, and maybe you can work it into your answer.

[00:03:53] Speaker 03:
Sure.

[00:03:54] Speaker 01:
As I understood it, the court called for additional briefing on remand to basically consider the text, structure, history, and purpose of Section 2C1.1B3.

[00:04:11] Speaker 01:
Anything else that you believe the court should have done or had before it and making its ruling on Ambiguity and and what the legislative history was before it.

[00:04:22] Speaker 03:
I'm not sure done.

[00:04:23] Speaker 03:
Yes quite a bit I mean the what more should the court have done I'll explain so

[00:04:29] Speaker 03:
Kaiser and Castillo require the court to use the tools of statutory interpretation itself to determine whether there's any ambiguity and then also to determine the zone of ambiguity.

[00:04:41] Speaker 03:
They say even, two things there, one, even if it's ambiguous in some way, the court still has to use those same tools and identify the contours of the ambiguity, the language they use, zone of ambiguity,

[00:04:53] Speaker 03:
Or at least establish the outer bounds of permissible interpretation and what I'm struggling with is I see labels I'm trying to figure out what those tools are I mean what screwdriver or Hammer does the district court have to textual analysis your honor to start with in structure and the court what the court did was none of that the court said it heard out the parties said I basically

[00:05:16] Speaker 03:
I can see arguments on both sides, therefore this must be ambiguous, therefore the commentary applies.

[00:05:22] Speaker 03:
Kaiser says you're not allowed to do that.

[00:05:24] Speaker 03:
It says very specifically you're not allowed to do that.

[00:05:26] Speaker 03:
It says it's not enough to casually mark as the court did here that both sides insist the plain regulatory language supports their case and neither party's position strikes us as unreasonable.

[00:05:36] Speaker 01:
So we're back to my question.

[00:05:37] Speaker 01:
What more should the district court have done?

[00:05:40] Speaker 01:
What else is out there that the district court failed to consider

[00:05:45] Speaker 03:
Sure, so the analysis of high level and the analysis of sensitive, as we go through them in our briefs, and I can go through those now if you'd like.

[00:05:55] Speaker 03:
In terms of high level, we have this series qualifier canon, which tells us when there's a straightforward parallel construction, a pre-positive or post-positive modifier normally applies to the entire series.

[00:06:07] Speaker 03:
And here we have a qualifier at the beginning, high level,

[00:06:10] Speaker 03:
We have the ultimate category in question, position at the end.

[00:06:13] Speaker 03:
We have two options for what positions could be in the middle, decision or sensitive.

[00:06:18] Speaker 03:
And so overall, I read this as saying a public official in a high-level position that is either decision-making or sensitive.

[00:06:25] Speaker 00:
This fits with- How many items are there in the series?

[00:06:30] Speaker 03:
More than one, Your Honor.

[00:06:31] Speaker 00:
Well, I think it's more than two.

[00:06:34] Speaker 00:
That canon applies.

[00:06:36] Speaker 00:
If there's a series, and if you look at the definition of series, I think it's more than two.

[00:06:42] Speaker 03:
I don't have the definition in front of me.

[00:06:44] Speaker 03:
I can tell you, in common speech, we say things like this all the time.

[00:06:48] Speaker 00:
If I said, I want to hire... We're supposed to be using the canons of construction, not common speech.

[00:06:54] Speaker 00:
So if that canon of construction applies to a series and we only have a duo, does that really apply?

[00:07:03] Speaker 03:
Again, Your Honor, I still believe a duo can be a series and if I can just get to the common speech, I think it does, the examples do make sense.

[00:07:10] Speaker 03:
If I were to say I want to hire a high achieving science or math student, no one would think I wanted a high achieving science student but a D math student.

[00:07:20] Speaker 03:
If I were to say I'd like a toasted poppy seed or sesame bagel,

[00:07:25] Speaker 03:
Hopefully nobody would hand me a cold sesame bagel.

[00:07:28] Speaker 03:
And other examples abound, a small ham or turkey sandwich, a ripe green or red pear, a sunny first floor or second floor apartment.

[00:07:36] Speaker 03:
In all of these, just as you would expect from the series qualifier canon, the initial modifier is applying across the board.

[00:07:45] Speaker 01:
So the answer would be different if the drafter had included an article like A or NE.

[00:07:52] Speaker 03:
Exactly, your honor.

[00:07:54] Speaker 03:
So if the drafter had wanted to break these out and say, a high-level decision-making position or a sensitive position, obviously, high level is now bracketed away by the heart of it.

[00:08:08] Speaker 01:
You'd have a different problem.

[00:08:10] Speaker 03:
Right.

[00:08:10] Speaker 03:
But here I don't have that problem.

[00:08:12] Speaker 03:
And again, I think if we look at that plainly, the enhancement

[00:08:16] Speaker 03:
If high level applies to sensitive, can't apply to Cisneros, he's not a high level.

[00:08:21] Speaker 04:
What would be a low level sensitive position?

[00:08:24] Speaker 03:
Sure, A, like a filing clerk in a nuclear department that has some like classified information.

[00:08:31] Speaker 01:
How about a juror?

[00:08:34] Speaker 03:
A juror, I mean, to my mind, and this gets to sensitive, you know, I look at the definitions for sensitive and I see a lot of discussion of national security,

[00:08:44] Speaker 03:
policymaking, highly classified.

[00:08:48] Speaker 04:
You find that in dictionary definitions?

[00:08:49] Speaker 03:
I find those in dictionary definitions.

[00:08:52] Speaker 04:
As a reasonably adept user of the English language, I look at the word sensitive and it is about as vague and ambiguous as I can imagine.

[00:09:04] Speaker 03:
And I see that there are different meanings.

[00:09:06] Speaker 03:
I have sensitive skin, Your Honor.

[00:09:09] Speaker 03:
But I see that there are different meanings, and that's where this other canon that, again, I think the district court should have been looking at, this nosodere isosis, or the rule against the perfluities, those come in as well.

[00:09:21] Speaker 03:
And those tell, certainly starting with nosodere isosis, that tells us to look at the words around it.

[00:09:27] Speaker 03:
And I think of like the Yates case, which is the Supreme Court case about fish and about whether a fish is a tangible object.

[00:09:34] Speaker 03:
Obviously a fish is a tangible object.

[00:09:36] Speaker 03:
But if you put it on a list that starts record, document, or tangible object, the Supreme Court tells us it is not a tangible object within the meaning of that because it's cabin by the other words around it.

[00:09:47] Speaker 03:
And it's the same thing here.

[00:09:49] Speaker 03:
Sensitive could could mean something very broad Here it's next to elected officials and high-level decision-making officials And it is it is supposed to not be a term that's vastly broader than those when we make Excuse me Council, but what do we make of the fact that as part of the amendment?

[00:10:07] Speaker 04:
the Commission chose to reduce the enhancement from eight levels to four while also broadening its application and

[00:10:14] Speaker 03:
Well, broadening its application only in the commentary, and I think you make nothing of that fact unless we get to ambiguity.

[00:10:21] Speaker 03:
You make nothing of the broadening in the commentary unless you get to ambiguity.

[00:10:24] Speaker 03:
In terms of the eight to four, I'm running low on time.

[00:10:27] Speaker 03:
I want to say this quickly.

[00:10:28] Speaker 03:
In terms of the eight to four, you get

[00:10:30] Speaker 03:
You know, the only signal you're getting outside of the commentary is that it dropped from eight to four and that may just be that they thought it was too harsh.

[00:10:37] Speaker 03:
Four is still extremely harsh.

[00:10:38] Speaker 03:
Here it raised his sentence by 50% for other people.

[00:10:42] Speaker 03:
It would have doubled their sentence depending on where they started and what else was going on in the case.

[00:10:48] Speaker 01:
What if we interpret sensitive position to mean a position involving public trust?

[00:10:57] Speaker 03:
So I have

[00:10:59] Speaker 03:
Again, I think that one problem with that is that it would totally eclipse and render meaningless the other two, because every elected official is a position involving public trust.

[00:11:13] Speaker 03:
Every high-level decision-making official is a position involving public trust.

[00:11:18] Speaker 03:
So then you're running into the rule against Serpouf.

[00:11:22] Speaker 03:
So I don't I don't think you can interpret it that broadly with these other words here Morning your honors may please the court Juan Rodriguez on behalf the United States

[00:11:52] Speaker 02:
Defendant was a corrupt Department of Homeland Security federal agent and he was bribed because of the information he had access to and the power he possessed.

[00:12:04] Speaker 02:
In other words, because he held a sensitive position.

[00:12:08] Speaker 02:
Whether this court agrees with the parties that the term sensitive position is unambiguous, or whether the court agrees with the district court that it is ambiguous, the upshot's the same.

[00:12:20] Speaker 02:
This court should affirm because there are no factual disputes.

[00:12:23] Speaker 02:
And on these facts, defendant held a sensitive position.

[00:12:27] Speaker 02:
He could get someone who was otherwise inadmissible into the country via his power.

[00:12:33] Speaker 02:
He could arrest people.

[00:12:35] Speaker 02:
He wielded the power of the state.

[00:12:37] Speaker 04:
He could get somebody into the country to assist in a criminal enterprise, correct?

[00:12:41] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:12:42] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, and to the extent that we're going to talk about dictionary definitions and things that affect matters of national security, getting someone who's otherwise inadmissible into the country, not knowing or caring why they're coming in, that is a matter of national security.

[00:12:57] Speaker 01:
But he doesn't get to make that decision, does he?

[00:12:59] Speaker 01:
He can ask his superiors.

[00:13:01] Speaker 01:
I think the decision has to be made by the port director, doesn't it?

[00:13:05] Speaker 01:
to parole somebody into the United States.

[00:13:08] Speaker 02:
That is correct, Your Honor.

[00:13:09] Speaker 02:
But the fact that he can go to his boss, the assistant special agent in charge, in fact, he did go to his boss and he convinced his boss that this was part of a legitimate operation.

[00:13:19] Speaker 02:
He was essentially one person away from being able to parole.

[00:13:23] Speaker 02:
And the fact that he was unsuccessful doesn't actually change the analysis.

[00:13:27] Speaker 00:
Counsel, may I ask you, did the district court comply with the mandate from this court?

[00:13:33] Speaker 02:
I believe it did, Your Honor.

[00:13:34] Speaker 00:
So the court was mandated to exhaust the traditional tools of statutory interpretation before determining that the guideline was genuinely ambiguous.

[00:13:46] Speaker 00:
So where in the record can we look to determine that the district court exhausted the traditional tools of statutory interpretation?

[00:13:55] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, there was briefing.

[00:13:57] Speaker 02:
That's part of the record.

[00:13:58] Speaker 02:
There was briefing by both the government.

[00:14:00] Speaker 00:
Where did the district court articulate

[00:14:04] Speaker 00:
its application of the traditional tools of statutory interpretation.

[00:14:08] Speaker 02:
The district court did not articulate.

[00:14:10] Speaker 00:
So the district court didn't follow the mandate.

[00:14:12] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, I believe the district court did follow the mandate, because it considered the arguments.

[00:14:16] Speaker 02:
And the court should have and could have been more verbose.

[00:14:18] Speaker 02:
But ultimately, it read the papers, it considered oral argument, and then it made the decision.

[00:14:24] Speaker 02:
And this court's instruction was to remand so that it could consider, with the party's briefing, in the first instance, whether.

[00:14:30] Speaker 00:
But it didn't say consider.

[00:14:32] Speaker 00:
It said exhaust.

[00:14:34] Speaker 00:
the traditional tools of statutory interpretation.

[00:14:37] Speaker 00:
That's correct, Your Honor.

[00:14:38] Speaker 02:
And I would argue that the parties did that through their briefing and the court can tell.

[00:14:42] Speaker 00:
Did the court do that?

[00:14:43] Speaker 00:
It wasn't for the parties to do it.

[00:14:44] Speaker 00:
It was for the court to do it.

[00:14:46] Speaker 02:
I believe that the fact that the court read and entertained oral argument on this very subject, again, the court could have been more verbose and on the record made that finding.

[00:14:55] Speaker 02:
But I believe the court did consider and did comply in any event if this court were to disagree with that.

[00:15:01] Speaker 02:
This court could in the first instance do that analysis should it believe that the term is in fact ambiguous.

[00:15:07] Speaker 04:
Well, there's no doubt is there that if the commentary is available to the district court,

[00:15:15] Speaker 04:
The defendant easily qualifies for this right okay, and I'm trying to There are parts of the sentencing guidelines.

[00:15:27] Speaker 04:
I haven't applied for quite a while But I don't remember a provision more ambiguous than this one as to high level decision making and sensitive

[00:15:44] Speaker 04:
Maybe you can point me to more ambiguous ones than that.

[00:15:49] Speaker 02:
Candidly, nothing off the top of my head, your honor.

[00:15:51] Speaker 02:
Again, to the extent that the court does find that the term is ambiguous for the reasons the government articulated in its brief.

[00:15:57] Speaker 04:
What do you see, counsel, as the purpose of the enhancement in the way it's structured here?

[00:16:05] Speaker 02:
Well, your honor, I think that the commission made that clear, and the court in Hill

[00:16:09] Speaker 02:
found that an inhale that said that the enhancement was Mismodified and that the levels were brought down the commentary was changed because it intended to encompass within its ambit more In more law enforcement officers, which is why it removed the word supervisory.

[00:16:25] Speaker 02:
It intended to broaden its application To weed out and to punish these public officials.

[00:16:31] Speaker 02:
So that that is the intent is to broaden and encompass more and

[00:16:39] Speaker 01:
So let me ask you the same question I asked your opponent.

[00:16:43] Speaker 01:
If we did send it back down, what more is out there that the district court should have considered or is it simply a matter of the district court would need to do a better job articulating what it was thinking behind its reasoning?

[00:17:00] Speaker 02:
It would be the latter, Your Honor.

[00:17:01] Speaker 02:
It would be just being more verbose on the record and explicitly stating that it's following the defendant's analysis or the government's analysis and stating that after exhausting the canyons of construction and other methods, it finds the term ambiguous.

[00:17:20] Speaker 01:
So it seems from your answer that we could simply look at the record that was before the district court including the briefs and the arguments made by the parties in answering the question if we're not satisfied with the adequacy of the court's explanation.

[00:17:40] Speaker 02:
That's exactly right, Your Honor, which is why I opened with whether the court agrees with the parties, that it's unambiguous, or whether the court ultimately finds that the term is ambiguous.

[00:17:50] Speaker 02:
On this record, the court should affirm, because there's no factual dispute.

[00:17:54] Speaker 02:
It's very clear what the defendant was bribed for.

[00:17:57] Speaker 02:
He had access to text, a sensitive law enforcement database that had covert investigations into individuals.

[00:18:05] Speaker 02:
He's a Department of Homeland Security federal agent, and he tried to pull someone into the country.

[00:18:10] Speaker 00:
You're asking us to do what we directed the district court to do to the extent of the court were to find that the term is ambiguous But you're asking us to find it it's ambiguous when we directed the district court to do that

[00:18:26] Speaker 02:
to determine in the first instance whether it is ambiguous.

[00:18:30] Speaker 01:
Well, he did find it ambiguous, right?

[00:18:32] Speaker 01:
But on the record, he found it ambiguous because the arguments made by both parties made some sense to him.

[00:18:41] Speaker 01:
And therefore, it was hard to choose who was right.

[00:18:44] Speaker 01:
Therefore, it must be ambiguous.

[00:18:46] Speaker 01:
That's how I read it.

[00:18:48] Speaker 01:
Did I misread it?

[00:18:50] Speaker 02:
I think certainly that's a way it could be read.

[00:18:53] Speaker 00:
How else could it be read?

[00:18:54] Speaker 02:
that the court read the briefing, entertained oral argument, and then after hearing that, the court ended up finding.

[00:19:01] Speaker 00:
There is no way you can say that the court said it exhausted the traditional rules of statutory construction.

[00:19:08] Speaker 00:
It did not say that at all.

[00:19:10] Speaker 00:
That is correct, Your Honor.

[00:19:15] Speaker 02:
Unless the court has any other questions, I'll submit and ask the court a perm.

[00:19:18] Speaker 00:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:19:21] Speaker 00:
Let's have a minute for rebuttal.

[00:19:23] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:19:24] Speaker 03:
Just a couple quick things.

[00:19:25] Speaker 03:
In terms of getting someone into the country illegally, there is a separate enhancement for that before, which was applied to Mr. Cisneros already.

[00:19:36] Speaker 03:
So it seems unlikely that that's what sensitive means, since that's a two-level enhancement for getting someone into the country.

[00:19:42] Speaker 01:
Well, I mean, that's a big deal to parole somebody and sort of jump into the head of the line.

[00:19:49] Speaker 03:
I agree, but again they give it they give a specific to level enhancement for this at before and so to say That applies to the lowest level border guard right exactly We don't get into high level with it with the with the number for an opposed to an investigator sorry as opposed to an investigator who has direct access to the

[00:20:08] Speaker 03:
He has no direct access to the director of the port of entry.

[00:20:13] Speaker 03:
He had to ask his boss to ask someone else who made a recommendation to the director of the port of entry who denied it.

[00:20:21] Speaker 03:
I mean, he's a supplicant in this.

[00:20:24] Speaker 03:
Position and it totally failed which is an indication of how little That's a great And just so I know I'm out of time one last point on that in terms of coming in to commit other crimes I just refer the court to the cross-references which again if you're worried that somebody lower level is getting away with big crimes this way and

[00:20:47] Speaker 03:
There's a cross-reference section that says that if the purpose of the bribe is to commit some bigger crime, then you get bumped over into these more serious guidelines for those bigger crimes.

[00:20:57] Speaker 03:
You steal nuclear secrets, you don't get this.

[00:21:00] Speaker 03:
You get a treason.

[00:21:01] Speaker 01:
You don't disagree, though, that when in 2004 they did remove the term supervisory and

[00:21:09] Speaker 01:
Broaden the scope of the application in the commentary.

[00:21:13] Speaker 01:
Yeah.

[00:21:14] Speaker 03:
Yes, I agree with that and and to me that that that you know shows the ad hoc nature of what the I'm out of time.

[00:21:22] Speaker 03:
I'm happy to talk about what's wrong with the commentary questions, okay I'm very happy to talk about what's wrong with the commentary.

[00:21:29] Speaker 03:
I mean the commentary is I

[00:21:30] Speaker 03:
is just very ad hoc.

[00:21:32] Speaker 03:
You take the same language, sensitive position, and one time you interpret it as law enforcement, all law enforcement, and another you interpret it as supervisory law enforcement.

[00:21:40] Speaker 03:
The commission, it's not reasoned, and it has to be reasonable.

[00:21:42] Speaker 04:
If you were on the commission council, how would you write a sensible instruction along these lines?

[00:21:47] Speaker 04:
Of this?

[00:21:50] Speaker 03:
Yes.

[00:21:50] Speaker 03:
Well, I would start by including the notion of high level, which falls entirely out of the commentary.

[00:21:55] Speaker 03:
The commentary doesn't say anything about high level, it just talks about direct authority.

[00:21:59] Speaker 04:
Do you think that's clear, high level?

[00:22:01] Speaker 03:
I mean high level, so you could find an ambiguity in high level.

[00:22:05] Speaker 03:
You might find some undersecretary of whatever and is he a mid level or is he a high level?

[00:22:11] Speaker 03:
But you can look at someone like Cisneros who has a million levels of supervision above him and you can say quite clearly this is not a high level guy.

[00:22:21] Speaker 03:
He's got all these people above him telling him what to do.

[00:22:24] Speaker 01:
But isn't the answer to Judge Hamilton's question that you could solve the problem by just inserting an article in front of sensitive position?

[00:22:31] Speaker 03:
You could if that's what, if you meant what the government wants it to mean, that sensitive position is not a high level, then you can insert an article.

[00:22:39] Speaker 01:
I don't understand what the commission could have been considering if they gave examples in the commentary that includes a juror, for example.

[00:22:47] Speaker 03:
But I don't think it, so they're, even if it's ambiguous, as you know, their interpretation still has to be reasonable.

[00:22:54] Speaker 03:
I don't know how you reasonably get from the language of this to saying a juror, a law enforcement officer, these people doing important things but everyday things, not high level things, not on the level of classified, policy making, the kinds of things you think of.

[00:23:10] Speaker 01:
Well, if the juror is sitting on a criminal case to which your life liberty or in the pursuit of happiness depends, you know, that's a pretty sensitive decision to be made and you are the decision maker.

[00:23:22] Speaker 03:
It's an important decision, but whether it's sensitive within the meaning of this, whether it's sensitive, like does a juror for the days of service become the equivalent of an elected public official or a high-level decision maker?

[00:23:35] Speaker 01:
We don't want offerors bribing juries.

[00:23:37] Speaker 03:
We don't and any juror is already getting I mean there this isn't again.

[00:23:41] Speaker 03:
This is an enhancement This isn't right.

[00:23:43] Speaker 03:
This isn't the statute of conviction.

[00:23:45] Speaker 03:
So they're already getting receiving the bribe Yeah, so he's getting you know he's for for taking the bribe He's already at 14 the amount of money pushes him up further.

[00:23:55] Speaker 03:
You know it for mr. Cisneros who think of it this way he He's a it pushes it up to an 18 if it's below if it's below right and so you you're getting you know a

[00:24:05] Speaker 03:
Well, sorry, that's if you're doing the enhancement.

[00:24:06] Speaker 03:
But even without the enhancement, it was my argument, is you're still getting a serious sentence out of this.

[00:24:12] Speaker 03:
And so the enhancement is just, is there another level of person who, by virtue of their position, because they're a senator, because they're a high-level aide to the Secretary of State, deserves an even higher sentence?

[00:24:25] Speaker 03:
And I'm way over.

[00:24:26] Speaker 03:
Thank you for the indulgence.

[00:24:27] Speaker 00:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:24:27] Speaker 00:
Thank you to both counsel for your helpful arguments.

[00:24:30] Speaker 00:
The case just argued is submitted for a decision by the court.