Backstory on the Gould mandatory minimum case recently taken up by SCOTUS

A helpful readers forwarded to me this new Texas Lawyer story headlined “Gunning For a Mandatory Minimum,” which provides the background and backstory concerning the Supreme Court’s recent cert grant in a case involving the application of an important federal mandatory minimum statute.  Here is how the piece starts:

Carlos Rashad Gould may be the luckiest federal inmate in the state of Texas.  Few indigent prisoners have a team of expensive, big-firm civil lawyers working pro bono on their appeals, as Gould does.  Still fewer get their cases heard at the U.S. Supreme Court, as Gould learned on Jan. 25 that he would when the high court granted his petition for writ of certiorari.

Gould’s cert writ in Gould v. United States stems from a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that involves the most common type of case decided by that court: a defendant’s appeal of a trial court’s sentencing decision. [See Gould’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari.]

“To have it go up on a valid cert petition and one that gets granted, Mr. Gould’s case has had a pretty unusual life in the appellate courts,” says David Horan, a partner in the Dallas office of Jones Day who the 5th Circuit appointed to represent Gould in 2007.

At the Supreme Court, Gould’s case has been consolidated with a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case, Abbott v. United States.  If Gould and Kevin Abbott win at the high court, their cases could shave several years off the prison sentences of countless inmates convicted of carrying firearms in the commission of crimes of violence or drug trafficking.

The relevant statute, 18 U.S.C. §924(c)(1)(A), provides mandatory minimum sentences for defendants convicted of carrying firearms while committing crimes of violence or drug trafficking crimes.  The issue in Gould and Abbott involves statutory interpretation: Does the mandatory minimum sentence in §924(c) apply when a defendant is convicted of a related crime that carries a higher mandatory minimum sentence?

Gould and Abbott argue in their cert petitions that the answer is “no.”  While an opinion from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes to that conclusion, rulings in the 5th Circuit and 3rd Circuit do not.

Though I would not describe being “the luckiest federal inmate in the state of Texas” as a Lou Gehrig type accomplishment, I do suspect that a good number of fellow federal inmates will be watching the Gould case closely and will be hoping that Carlos Rashad Gould’s lawyers hit a grand slam when they step up to the SCOTUS oral argument plate in a few months.  (Is it obviously I am already eager for the start of spring training?)