Gilbert v. United States

In 1997, Ezell Gilbert (defendant) was convicted in federal court of possession with intent to deliver crack cocaine. At that time, judges were required to impose mandatory federal sentencing guidelines, and the normal range for Gilbert’s sentence was 151 to 188 months of incarceration. However, Gilbert qualified as a career offender, which enhanced Gilbert’s normal sentencing range to 292 to 365 months. Gilbert was classified as a career offender based on two prior convictions, but Gilbert contested that one of the prior convictions, carrying a concealed weapon, was not a violent crime that qualified as a career-offender conviction. The district court sentenced Gilbert to the minimum possible sentence of 292 months, but the judge wanted to give Gilbert a lesser sentence. Federal courts denied Gilbert’s direct appeal and pro se 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motions. In 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that carrying a concealed weapon was not a violent felony that counted toward the career-offender sentencing enhancement. Gilbert then filed a habeas petition challenging his sentence. Gilbert argued that (1) he needed to file a habeas petition because he was barred from filing a successive § 2255 motion and (2) he qualified for an actual-innocence exception to the successive-petitions bar because he was actually innocent of being a career offender. The district court granted Gilbert’s habeas petition, but the Eleventh Circuit reversed. The Eleventh Circuit then agreed to rehear Gilbert’s case en banc.