Gall Before High Court

The U.S. Supreme Court begins its 2008 term this week. Tomorrow, the justices will hear arguments in an Iowa case that could affect criminal sentences in every federal courtroom in America.

The outcome of Gall v. the United States will have a particularly profound impact on Brian Gall, a native of Eldridge and graduate of the University of Iowa who made what he freely admits was a poor choice in 2000 when, as a 21-year-old student, he got involved with a drug conspiracy as a low-level dealer of so-called "ecstasy" tablets.

After about seven months, he parted company with the drug dealers, quit selling the drug and turned his life around. He finished college and started a construction business in Arizona. Alas, his past came back to haunt him two years later when federal agents showed up at his door. In 2004, Gall pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Des Moines to conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

At that point, Gall's story took the first of several unusual turns that would put his case before the Supreme Court and squarely in the cross hairs of a national debate among federal judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers over criminal-sentencing laws.

When a case before the court last year on this issue was dismissed because the defendant was killed, the court looked through the pile of pending appeals for another presenting the same question. It picked Gall's.
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