Mary Peggy Moore (“Mrs.Moore”) and Lee Roy Wiley (‘Wiley”) appeal their respective convictions for conspiracy and for making a material false statement in connection with the purchase of a firearm. Wiley allegedly bought a firearm as a “straw man” on behalf of Mrs. Moore’s fourteen-year-old son, Bobby Moore (“Bobby”). Mrs. Moore allegedly was liable as Wiley’s aider and abettor and coconspirator in his making of the false statement.

In an attempt to overturn their convictions, Mrs. Moore and Wiley tender three arguments. First, they contend that Mrs. Moore as Bobby’s parent consented to the acquisition of the firearm, thereby rendering the government’s proof insufficient as a matter of law either to constitute a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922 (a)(6) or to establish the existence of an unlawful conspiracy.

Second, they' argue that the district court failed adequately to submit for the jury’s determination the question of whether the alleged false statement was material, advising the jury instead .that if Bobby and not Wiley was the true purchaser of the firearm, then Wiley had made a material false statement in connection with its purchase. In support of this contention, the appellants direct us to United States v. Gaudin, - U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 2310 , 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995), in which the Supreme Court held that the materiality of a false statement offense must be decided by the jury, not by the court.

Third, the appellants assert that the Gun Control Act as it relates to this case is constitutionally vague (1) on its face, or (2) as applied.

Mrs. Moore alleges separately that the district court erred at sentencing in refusing to give her a favorable adjustment for acceptance of responsibility.

Because we conclude that these claims have no merit, we affirm the district court. 1

I

A.

The Facts

On September 2, 1993, fourteen-year-old Bobby Moore saw a .25 caliber handgun in a pawnshop which had a federal license to sell firearms. When he showed interest in the weapon, a clerk shooed him off the premises because his age rendered him ineligible under federal law to buy it. Undaunted, Bobby set out to find a way to acquire the handgun for himself. He approached his mother to buy it for him, but she turned him down. Bobby’s friend Jason Marks witnessed this discussion. Jason’s unchallenged testimony about the discussion established not only that Mrs. Moore refused to buy the gun on behalf of her son, but that she explicitly told him he would have to “get someone else” to, get it for him because she “didn’t want her name on the papers”:

(emphasis added).

Mrs. Moore then pawned Bobby’s CD player and gave him the cash she received from the transaction. She did so knowing that he intended to use it to purchase a firearm.

The next day, Bobby went looking for someone else to help him acquire the weapon, as suggested by his mother. He took the cash to Wiley’s residence to see if Wiley would assist him. The neighborhood knew Wiley as “Grandpa,” and he frequently did favors for the neighborhood children. The record reflects that Wiley is a man of limited intelligence. Wiley was neither Bobby’s parent nor guardian, nor was he related to him in any respect whatsoever.

Wiley balked at first, but Bobby persisted; and with the promise of money as a sweetener, Wiley relented and agreed to purchase the gun on Bobby’s behalf.

Mrs. Moore then drove Wiley, Bobby, and Jason to the pawnshop. During this trip, Wiley asked Mrs. Moore if the purchase of the gun was all right with her, to which she replied that it was fine.

When the group arrived at the pawnshop, Mrs. Moore waited in the car while Wiley, Bobby, and Jason went inside. Wiley asked the clerk to see the handgun Bobby had spotted on his earlier visit. Because the two boys were present, the clerk inquired for whom Wiley wanted to purchase the gun. Wiley responded that the gun was for Bobby, but that he Wiley was Bobby’s grandfather, and that he was going to hold it for Bobby until Bobby was 21 years of age. Both of these statements were false and were intended to facilitate the transaction. On cross-examination, Wiley conceded that the only reason he was in the pawnshop was “to stand in for Bobby to get that gun.”

The clerk responded to Wiley’s representations with an inquiry about Bobby’s parents and whether they knew about this purchase. Bobby said that his mother was outside, and he went to get her. In short order, Mrs. Moore appeared briefly in the doorway and, without prompting by Wiley, said to the clerk, “His grandfather is buying a gun for him. He’s going to hold it until he’s 21, and everything is fine with me.”

Satisfied by Mrs. Moore’s representations, the clerk had Wiley sign BATF Form 4473 as the “transferee (buyer),” accepted the cash Bobby had given to Wiley for the transaction, and turned the gun over to Wiley. Back in the car, and contrary to the intentions he expressed to the clerk, Wiley gave the gun to Mrs. Moore, expecting that it would go to Bobby. As Bobby intended from the start, he then took the firearm as his own possession.

Mrs. Moore’s reluctance to buy this weapon for her son and to put her name on the papers was well founded, and her worry about Bobby hurting someone with it was prescient. On January 20, 1994, Bobby used it to shoot Ronald Wade Feldner, a New Plymouth, Idaho police officer, in the face. Officer Feldner died, leaving behind a wife and minor children.

B.

The False Statement

In 18 U.S.C. § 922 (a)(6), Congress made it a federal offense

In the same statute, Congress also rendered it illegal for a licensed firearms dealer to sell or deliver “any firearm or ammunition to any individual who the licensee knows or has reasonable cause to believe is less than eighteen years of age,” or to sell or deliver a handgun to anyone less than twenty-one years of age. 18 U.S.C. § 922 (b)(1). Thus, federal law made Bobby Moore ineligible to purchase a firearm from a federally-licensed dealer.

The government’s theory of its case against Wiley, and against Mrs. Moore as an aider and abettor and eoeonspirator, is straightforward and simple. As charged in the indictment and as explained to the jurors in the jury instructions, the government alleges that the true buyer of the .25 caliber handgun was the ineligible Bobby Moore, and that Wiley acted merely as his disguised agent-in the parlance, as a “straw man” purchaser. Thus, goes the government’s argument, when Wiley the straw man agent signed his name on Form 4473 as the “transferee (buyer),” he made a false statement because the buyer was not Wiley, but Bobby himself. The manifest materiality of this false statement, says the government, stems from the law’s prohibition against Bobby buying a firearm.

The appellants, on the other hand, contend that Mrs. Moore consented to the acquisition of this firearm by Wiley on behalf of her son. They argue here, as they did to the trial court and to the jury, that such consent rendered the sale lawful per se, and accordingly, that any false statements that Wiley and Mrs. Moore made to the clerk were flatly immaterial. To support this argument, the appellants assert that, at the time of sale, transferring firearms to minors was legal in Idaho, so long as the minor’s parents gave consent. 2

The respective positions of the government and the appellants were carefully set forth by the district court in its instructions to the jury:

(emphasis added).

C.

The Straw Man Doctrine

The straw man doctrine, which is nothing more than a long-standing construc *1461 tion of the relevant statutes, holds that a person violates section 922(a)(6) by acting as an intermediary or agent of someone who is ineligible to obtain a firearm from a licensed dealer and making a false statement that enables the ineligible principal to obtain a firearm. As we said in Perri v. Department of the Treasury, 637 F.2d 1332, 1336 (9th Cir.1981), “sham or ‘strawman’” purchases occur “when a lawful purchaser buys for an unlawful one.” See United States v. Lawrence, 680 F.2d 1126, 1127-28 (6th Cir.1982) (defendants who purchase firearms for ineligible foreign citizens violate section 922(a)(6)); United States v. Ortiz-Loya, 111 F.2d 973, 978 (5th Cir.1985) (same). In Lawrence , for example, the Sixth Circuit found determinative of straw man status that, like Wiley, the transferee (1) acted under the direction and control of the ineligible buyer, (2) purchased weapons selected by the ineligible buyer with the buyer’s money, (3) took a commission that showed agency, and (4) had no intention of keeping the gun for himself. 680 F.2d at 1128 ; see also United States v. Howell, 37 F.3d 1197 (7th Cir.1994) (“The jury was entitled to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mrs. Howell was no more than a straw purchaser, an eligible purchaser who is acting as an agent, intermediary, or straw purchaser for someone who is ineligible to purchase the firearm directly.”) (internal quotations omitted).

In effect, this doctrine is merely an application of a principle that dates back to the time when the legal profession relied regularly on maxims expressed in Latin to illuminate the law: “Qui facit per alium facit per se,” or “He who acts through another acts himself.” In this context, it is a construction of the statute that directly serves the primary purpose of the Gun Control Act, which is “ ‘to make it possible to keep firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background, or incompetency.’ ” Barrett v. United States, 423 U.S. 212, 220 , 96 S.Ct. 498, 503 , 46 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976) (quoting S.Rep. No. 1501, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 22 (1968) U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1968 p. 4410).

D.

Analysis

In an attempt to avoid the implications of the straw man doctrine, the appellants’ sole defense was that Mrs. Moore consented to the purchase, and that because of her consent, Wiley and Mrs. Moore committed no crime, period. The defense argued that Wiley was her lawful agent implementing her lawful decision; he was not a straw man, and thus, Wiley and Mrs. Moore did not violate the statute. In the defense’s view, the grandfather ruse was immaterial and irrelevant.

Whether the defense is correct, of course, depends entirely on the facts. It was for the jury to decide whose agent Wiley was and whether Bobby was the actual buyer of the gun. If the jurors had a reasonable doubt about whether the buyer was Bobby, they would have acquitted. They did not. Read in the light of the indictment and the instructions, the jury verdict establishes conclusively that Bobby was the buyer, not Wiley, and that Wiley was merely Bobby’s straw man agent for the purchase. Clearly, the jury attached no factual merit to the claim that Wiley was the buyer of the gun.

The appellants’ argument echoes the failed argument of defendant Somogye in the Lawrence case. 3 680 F.2d at 1127 . Somogye admitted that he and Lawrence knowingly purchased guns for an individual who could not legally buy them in his own name, but claimed that because they entered the store and paid for the weapons, as a matter of law they did not he when they registered themselves on the transaction form as the buyers of the weapons. The Sixth Circuit dismissed this now familiar argument as novel, but “specious.” Id. at 1127 . The court explained that:

Id. at 1128 (emphasis added).

In the instant case, the uncontested facts presented to the jury did not as a matter of law establish a defense to the straw man doctrine. Nothing in the statute, the case law, or the rules of statutory construction suggests that a parent can either (1) render an unlawful straw man purchase legal by consenting to it, or (2) override the clear prohibition against making material false statements in a firearms transaction. Appellants ignore the specific rules that apply when someone purchases a firearm from a federally licensed dealer. Their suggestion that Idaho Code § 18 -3302A “empowers” a parent to arm a child is misleading and a non sequitur. The fact that Idaho law permits a weapons transfer to a minor under 16 years of age with parental consent does not “empower” a juvenile to purchase a firearm from a federal dealer through an intermediary who falsely identifies himself as the buyer. The gravamen of the charge against Mrs. Moore and Wiley was the allegation that they made a material false statement. The district court properly explained the charge in denying the appellants’ motion to dismiss:

There is, of course, ample evidence in the record to support the jury’s verdict and their conclusion that Bobby bought the gun for himself through an intermediary. Mrs. Moore turned down Bobby’s request to buy the gun for him and refused to go on the papers. She told him he’d have to find someone else. He found Wiley.

Wiley was an archetypical straw man. He was recruited and compensated for his role because Bobby could not buy the coveted firearm and because his mother would not buy it for him. Wiley testified that the boys asked him to do “a favor for them,” that they picked it out, and that Bobby gave him the money for it. Wiley’s own testimony is dis-positive of his role as a straw man purchaser in this matter:

(emphasis added). Wiley’s involvement in the transaction is the smoking gun that proves both the illegality of this purchase and the existence of the conspiracy. Under the circumstances and given the jury’s verdict, Mrs. Moore’s words spoken in the pawnshop in support of the grandfather ruse serve primarily to connect her both to the false statement offense and to the conspiracy, rather than to provide the appellants with a defense. In her cameo appearance in the pawnshop’s doorway, she did not reveal what was actually happening. Instead, she lied about the transaction in progress, and by so doing, purposefully enabled Wiley to make a material false statement on BATF Form 4473 and thereby consummate an illegal purchase. Her precise misrepresentation about Whey’s status as Bobby’s grandfather and about who was going to control the weapon can hardly be called “consent.” What the record demonstrates that she said and did does not square with the appellants’ characterization of it. Thus, the appellants’ argument that the evidence is insufficient to sustain these verdicts is demonstrably without merit.

In conclusion, we borrow again from the Sixth Circuit in Lawrence :

680 F.2d at 1128 .

II

The Instructions on Materiality

Moore and Wiley argue that the district judge violated the Gaudin rule through its instruction to the jury. See United States v. Gaudin, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 2310 , 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995) (holding that the materiality of a false statement is a matter for the jury to decide). Specifically, they challenge the judge’s instruction that:

Jury Instruction No. 14 (excerpt). Because the defense lodged no objection on Gaudin grounds to this instruction, we review for plain error pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b).

Gaudin involved allegations of criminal false statements on federal loan documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 . The problem in Gaudin arose because the district court handled the issue of the materiality of the alleged false statements — which is an element of the crime — as a matter for the court to decide, not the jury. Unlike the instant case, the trial court instructed the jury that “[t]he issue of materiality ... is not submitted to you for your decision but rather is a matter for the decision of the court. You are instructed that the statements charged in the indictment are material statements.” — U.S. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 2313 .

The Supreme Court held that such an approach to the issue and such an instruction violated both the Fifth and the Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which together “require criminal convictions *1464 to rest upon a jury determination that the defendant is guilty of every element of the crime with which he is charged, beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 2313 (emphasis added). The Court concluded by saying that “[t]he trial judge’s refusal to allow the jury to pass on the ‘materiality’ of Gaudin’s false statements infringed that right [to have a jury decide].” Id. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 2320 . The rule of this circuit is that if such a constitutional error occurs, it is both “structural” and “plain” and therefore requires reversal. United States v. Gaudin, 28 F.3d 943, 952 (9th Cir.1994), aff'd, - U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 2310 , 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995).

The question we must answer, therefore, is whether the instruction of which the defendants complain withheld the element of materiality from the jury in violation of Gaudin’s rule. Our answer is that it did not.

Unlike in Gaudin, here the court did not withhold the materiality element from the jury. The court expressly instructed the jury that materiality was an element of the charged offense, and that the government had to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt:

(emphasis added). The court also instructed the jury that “[t]he burden is always upon the government to prove guilt by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

It is also noteworthy that when the court discussed the instructions with counsel before reading them to the jury, no one objected that the instruction now complained of violated the Gaudin rule, a rule established first by a three-judge panel of this court on June 22, 1993 and then affirmed en banc on June 21, 1994, more than two months before the trial. Moreover, the district court offered to enhance the instructions on the materiality element by giving an additional instruction offered by Mr. McCabe, counsel for Mr. Wiley, but Mr. McCabe withdrew the instruction. The exchange between court and counsel during this conference sheds light on this issue:

(emphasis added).

Mr. Nevin, counsel for Mrs. Moore, also addressed Instruction No. 14 in this conference, and he too did not object on Gaudin grounds. What he said about the disputed language was not that it withdrew the materiality element from the jury’s consideration, but that it was “a comment on the evidence.”

From these exchanges and from the transcript of the proceedings, it is clear that no one believed during the trial that the disputed instruction withdrew the hotly disputed element of materiality from the jury.

The Gaudin issue arose for the first time in a motion for a new trial after the chosen defense had failed. Counsel for Mr. Wiley argued to the court that “materiality is al *1465 ways an issue that needs to be submitted to the jury ...to which the court responded, “I did submit it to the jury.” To prove his point, the court then read the same instructions to counsel previously quoted in this opinion. Counsel’s response was.

Nevertheless, counsel made the same point that they make here, namely that the language in Instruction 14 had the effect of withdrawing consideration of this element from the jury’s consideration. The court discussed the matter with counsel and then disagreed, denying the motion for a new trial. The record viewed as a whole supports the court’s conclusion: the question of materiality remained with the jury.

This leaves us, however, with the question of whether the jurors were misled or confused by the disputed language in Instruction No. 14. They were not. During deliberations they sent a question to the judge inquiring about the interplay in the instructions between intent and materiality. This is the question:

[signed]

One can conclude from this question only that the jury understood that the element of materiality was theirs to decide, and that they were attempting to decide it. There is no sign they believed or did otherwise.

More importantly, however, when the court answered the jurors’ question, he told them again that this essential element was on their table for decision:

(emphasis added). If the earlier statement in Instruction 14 might have been a problem, this certainly cured it.

Thus, when we view the instructions “as a whole in the context of the entire trial to determine if they were misleading or inadequate to guide the jury’s deliberation,” United States v. Perez, 989 F.2d 1111, 1114 (9th Cir.1993), we see clearly that they do not suffer from this defect.

There is an explanation, of course, for Mr. McCabe’s withdrawal of his enhanced materiality instruction, as well as for both counsels’ disinclination to get too close to the materiality issue as framed by the prosecution. As Mr. McCabe candidly admitted at oral argument before the three-judge panel, he did not want the jury precisely to focus on the materiality of the admittedly false statements made by Mr. Wiley for fear that such a focus would distract the jury from the substance of the defense, which as described earlier in this opinion, was that none of the statements made by Wiley and Mrs. Moore could qualify as material false statements because no crime was being committed in that Mrs. Moore approved of the purchase. As Mr. Nevin says in his excellent brief,

(emphasis in original). This tracks exactly the argument Mr. Nevin made to the jury at the end of the ease, demonstrating also that everyone involved in the trial considered the materiality element to be in play and not to have been preempted by the court. In fact, materiality was the essence of both defendants’ defense. With this in mind, it is pellucid beyond a reasonable doubt that the court’s disputed statement in Instruction No. 14 read in context and measured against (1) the evidence, (2) the substance of the defense, and (3) the verdict, was completely harmless. See Perez, 989 F.2d at 1115-1116 (holding that jury instructions were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt where the jury was told that “carrying” — for purposes of establishing the offense of carrying a firearm in relation to a drug trafficking offense — was shown conclusively if the firearm was within the defendant’s reach). In context, the error, if any, certainly was not “plain,” and the disputed instruction did not affect any substantial rights. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732 , 113 S.Ct. 1770, 1776-77 , 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993).

Ill

The Constitutionality of the Gun Control Act

Prior to trial, the appellants unsuccessfully moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 (a)(6) and (b)(1) are constitutionally vague. They argued that these sections fail to give adequate and fair notice to a person of ordinary intelligence that certain conduct is unlawful. See Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 , 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2298-99 , 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972). We review this claim de novo, and we conclude that it has no merit.

The plain language of section 922(b)(1) unmistakably renders a juvenile ineligible to buy a firearm from a federally licensed dealer. Section 922(a)(6) makes it a crime to make any false statement in connection with such a purchase. Any ordinary person of reasonable intelligence reading these sections could not help but understand that they prohibit sham straw man transactions designed to obtain a gun for an ineligible juvenile.

The Fifth Circuit rejected an analogous argument that section 922(a)(6) was constitutionally vague as applied to a straw transaction in United States v. Brooks, 611 F.2d 614, 617 (5th Cir.1980), overruled on other grounds, United States v. Henry, 749 F.2d 203 (5th Cir.1984). In Brooks , a gun dealer was convicted for an illegal straw sale to a nonresident. The court found the statute’s ban on the knowing “sale” to a nonresident to be a sufficiently definite warning of the conduct proscribed by application of the straw transaction doctrine. The court found that the words “sell or deliver ... to any person who ... does not reside in the State” gave fair notice that the defendant could not make a sham sale where he knows the ultimate recipient is a nonresident. 611 F.2d at 617 .

Here, section 922(b)(1) reads that it shall be unlawful for firearms dealers “to sell or deliver ... to any individual who ... is less than eighteen years of age.” Under the reasoning of Brooks , this practically identical language makes it reasonably clear that sham transactions designed to procure a gun for a minor are unlawful. If Wiley was therefore sufficiently warned that the sham transaction he engaged in was an illegal sale to Bobby, he can be charged with the requisite knowledge that his answer on the form was deceitful. See United States v. Crooks, 804 F.2d 1441, 1448 (9th Cir.1986), (holding that signature on tax form was sufficient to show knowledge that false statements on return were, in fact, false), modified, 826 F.2d 4 (9th Cir.1987).

Appellants reintroduce Idaho Code § 16 -3302A (1990) into their void-for-vagueness argument. They claim that the vagueness of the federal statute’s ban on straw sales to minors is “compounded” by the Idaho law’s sanction of sales and transfers of firearms to *1467 minors under 16 with their parent’s permission. As discussed earlier in Part I, Idaho law has no “empowering” effect that alters federal law on the prohibition of the straw sale of firearms to minors. Appellants state that a reasonably intelligent person would be confused about the interplay of federal and Idaho law here, but they cite no authority to reinforce their theory that state law can unconstitutionally “compound” the vagueness of federal law. In this regard, we find the holding of the Supreme Court in United States v. Powell to be instructive:

423 U.S. 87, 94 , 96 S.Ct. 316, 321 , 46 L.Ed.2d 228 (1975). In Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., the Supreme Court declared:

455 U.S. 489 , 495 n. 7, 102 S.Ct. 1186 , 1191 n. 7, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982) (emphasis added). Here, the extension of the prohibition against the “sale” of firearms to minors to also include straw man purchases for minors is not standardless; it delegates no policy matters to policemen and juries, and most important, it is normatively comprehensible.

The record shows that both Mrs. Moore and Wiley understood their respective legal obligations in this case, even though they unlawfully sought to work around them. Mrs. Moore knew full well that a purchaser’s name went on “papers” and that fulfilling that role entailed grave responsibilities she did not want. Wiley, too, was aware of the unlawful nature of his conduct. He clearly appreciated the legal problems associated with arming a juvenile and used a ruse about his relationship with Bobby to circumvent them. When the clerk tried vainly to warn Wiley, who was employed as a private security guard, about the danger of putting even a supervised firearm in the hands of a juvenile and about the “trouble” that could ensue, Wiley’s dismissive response was, “I know the law.”

In short, we discern no arbitrary or unfair application of the Gun Control Act in this case, an Act clear on its face and in its impact with respect to false statements and juveniles.

IV

Acceptance of Responsibility

Mrs. Moore contends that the trial court erred by not granting her a two-point reduction in offense level for acceptance of responsibility. She correctly points out that by putting the government to its proof she did not foreclose such a reduction. U.S.S.G. § 3É1.1, comment., n. 2 (“In rare situations a defendant may clearly demonstrate an acceptance of responsibility for [her] criminal conduct even though [she] exercises [her] constitutional right to a trial.”).

The presentence report recommended denying such a reduction, pointing to Mrs. Moore’s initial lies to law enforcement about her involvement in the acquisition of the firearm and to her denials post-trial that she told the clerk Wiley was her son’s grandfather and that he would hold the gun until Bobby was 21. The district court agreed with the presentence report and found that her situation was not the rare one justifying such a benefit.

*1468 The findings of a sentencing judge as to acceptance of responsibility are entitled to considerable weight. United States v. Scarano, 975 F.2d 580, 587 (9th Cir.1992). We review such a denial under the “clearly erroneous” standard. Id. We do not perceive any defect in the district court’s decision in this case. We note that Wiley was awarded such a reduction, but that the trial court determined that Mrs. Moore’s conduct did not measure up to the required standard. Such a holding was not clearly erroneous.

AFFIRMED.

. The opinions of the three-judge panel are reported at 84 F.3d 1567 (9th Cir.1996).

. At the time this firearm was purchased, Idaho law did not prohibit the sale of a firearm to a minor so long as the minor had the consent of a parent or a guardian. Idaho Code § 18 -3302A (1990). Since these events, the Idaho Legislature amended section 18-3302A to require the written permission of a parent or a guardian. The Gun Control Act has also been amended to make it illegal for a juvenile to possess a handgun without a parent’s or guardian's written consent. 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 (x)(l)(A) & 922(x)(3)(A)(iii) (1994).

. Lawrence died during the pendency of the appeal rendering moot the case against him.