Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-09-02817/USCOURTS-ca8-09-02817-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 510
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Vacate Sentence
Cause of Action: 

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1

The Honorable James B. Loken stepped down as Chief Judge of the United

States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit at the close of business on March 31,

2010. He has been succeeded by the Honorable William Jay Riley.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

_______________

No. 09-2817

_______________

John William Gool, Jr., * 

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the 

* Southern District of Iowa.

United States of America, *

* [UNPUBLISHED] 

Appellee. *

_______________

Submitted: February 8, 2010 

Filed: May 28, 2010

_______________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge,1

 GRUENDER and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

_______________

PER CURIAM.

During the 1990s, John William Gool, Jr., lived next door to his sister-in-law

and her family in Clinton, Iowa. While his sister-in-law’s family was on a vacation,

Gool surreptitiously installed a video camera in their residence and connected the

camera to his house through a coaxial cable. Gool used the camera to videotape his

sister-in-law and her children undressing outside their basement shower. Gool

recorded dozens of such videos over a period of several years and converted some of

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The Honorable John A. Jarvey, United States District Judge for the Southern

District of Iowa.

3

Gool subsequently expanded his motion to dismiss to include Count II. The

parties do not dispute that the statute of limitations analysis is identical with respect

to Counts I and II.

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the recordings to digital format. Gool and his wife divorced in 2004. In 2006, Gool’s

former wife found a videotape showing A.R. and K.R., two of her sister’s daughters,

getting in and out of the shower. She showed the videotape to A.R. and K.R., who

then contacted the police. A search of Gool’s house revealed a cache of videotapes

recorded by Gool’s hidden camera and more than sixty thousand images of child

pornography stored on a computer. 

A federal grand jury indicted Gool on two counts of sexual exploitation of a

minor, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) (Counts I and II), one count of receiving

child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2) (Count III), and one count

of possessing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B) (Count

IV). Following his indictment, Gool filed a motion to dismiss Count I, arguing that

it was barred by the five-year statute of limitations set out in 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a). In

particular, Gool alleged that A.R. had stated to law enforcement officers that she was

wearing braces in the relevant videotapes and that her braces were removed in 1996,

when she was fourteen. Gool further alleged that K.R. had told the police that all of

the videotapes in which she appears show her without a navel piercing, which she

obtained before her seventeenth birthday on July 10, 2001. Gool argued that because

he was not indicted until July 11, 2006, all of the conduct charged in Count I took

place outside of the five-year limitations period. 

Noting that Gool had made a “logical argument concerning a violation of the

statute of limitations,” the district court2

 ordered the Government to identify the

specific videotapes on which it intended to rely to prove the allegations charged in

Count I of the indictment.3

 Before the Government responded to this order, Gool and

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the Government negotiated a plea agreement. Under the agreement, Gool agreed to

plead guilty to Counts III and IV and waive his right to appeal his sentence, and the

Government agreed to move to dismiss Counts I and II. Gool pled guilty to Counts

III and IV on April 24, 2007. 

Before sentencing, the United States Probation Office prepared a Presentence

Investigation Report (“PSR”). The PSR reported that A.R. and K.R. had made

statements to law enforcement officials that were substantially similar to the

statements Gool alleged in his motion to dismiss. The PSR also identified dental

records confirming that A.R.’s braces had been removed more than five years before

Gool was indicted. Gool’s attorney did not seek to withdraw Gool’s guilty pleas after

reviewing the PSR. On April 18, 2008, the district court sentenced Gool to 220

months’ imprisonment on Count III and 120 months’ imprisonment on Count IV,

ordering the sentences to be served concurrently. On the Government’s motion, the

district court then dismissed Counts I and II. 

The Supreme Court issued three significant sentencing decisions during the

period between Gool’s guilty pleas in April 2007 and his sentencing in April 2008:

Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338 (2007), Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38 (2007),

and Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85 (2007). After his sentencing, Gool

appealed, challenging the reasonableness of his sentence in light of Rita, Gall, and

Kimbrough. The Government moved to dismiss Gool’s appeal, arguing that the

appeal waiver prohibited Gool from appealing his sentence. We granted the

Government’s motion and dismissed Gool’s appeal. United States v. Gool, No. 08-

2135 (8th Cir. Aug. 6, 2008) (unpublished order). 

Gool then filed a counseled motion to vacate, correct, or set aside the sentence

under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Gool argued that the prosecutor’s failure to disclose that the

conduct alleged in Counts I and II took place more than five years before Gool was

indicted amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. Gool also argued that his defense

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attorney was ineffective for failing to “move to reform or withdraw the plea agreement

or the guilty plea itself.” Gool maintained that on reviewing the PSR his attorney

should have recognized that the district court would have dismissed Counts I and II

on statute of limitations grounds even without the Government’s motion and that Gool

therefore received no consideration in exchange for agreeing to waive the right to

appeal his sentence. Consequently, Gool argued that his attorney should have

“move[d] to withdraw the appeal waiver in order to preserve [Gool’s] right to appeal

the sentence” under Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough. The district court denied Gool’s

motion but granted Gool a certificate of appealability on his ineffective assistance of

counsel claim. 

In his briefs on appeal, Gool focuses almost exclusively on his prosecutorial

misconduct claim. We will not consider this issue, however, because “[w]e limit our

appellate review to the issues specified in the certificate of appealability.” See Harris

v. Bowersox, 184 F.3d 744, 748 (8th Cir. 1999). In fact, we specifically denied Gool’s

motion to expand the certificate of appealability to include his prosecutorial

misconduct claim, and we are troubled by his attempt to resurrect it.

The discussion of ineffective assistance of counsel in Gool’s briefs essentially

is limited to the following sentence: “If Attorney Treimer had taken steps to expose

the running of the five-year limitation, Mr. Gool could have pled open to Counts

Three and Four, or entered a plea agreement to those counts that did not require an

appeal waiver.” From this statement, we discern that Gool does not want to go to trial

on Counts III and IV. Rather, Gool seeks to plead guilty to those counts without

waiving his right to appeal so that he can then challenge the reasonableness of his

sentence in light of Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough. The basis on which he seeks to obtain

this relief is less than clear from his briefs. As best we can tell from his § 2255

motion, Gool’s theory is that his attorney was ineffective for failing to move to

withdraw Gool’s guilty pleas to Counts III and IV before sentencing because the

dental records identified in the PSR supported his motion to dismiss Counts I and II.

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Gool’s argument is premised on the assumption that the district court would have

inevitably dismissed Counts I and II, which purportedly leads to the conclusion that

Gool received no consideration in exchange for waiving his right to a direct appeal.

“We review the district court’s denial of § 2255 relief de novo.” United States

v. Davis, 508 F.3d 461, 463 (8th Cir. 2007) (citing Williams v. United States, 452 F.3d

1009, 1012 (8th Cir. 2006)). To prevail on his ineffective assistance of counsel claim,

Gool must establish that his attorney’s performance was deficient and that he was

prejudiced by this deficient performance. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668,

687 (1984). We turn first to his attorney’s performance.

“Reasonable performance of counsel includes an adequate investigation of

facts, consideration of viable theories, and development of evidence to support those

theories.” Lyons v. Luebbers, 403 F.3d 585, 594 (8th Cir. 2005) (quoting Foster v.

Lockhart, 9 F.3d 722, 726 (8th Cir. 1993)). In reviewing counsel’s performance, we

“must indulge a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range

of reasonable professional assistance; that is, the defendant must overcome the

presumption that, under the circumstances, the challenged action ‘might be considered

sound . . . strategy.’” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689 (quoting Michel v. Louisiana, 350

U.S. 91, 101 (1955)). 

We reject Gool’s suggestion that his attorney was ineffective for failing to

realize, based on the marginal additional information contained in the PSR (i.e., the

dental records), that Gool received no consideration in exchange for his appeal waiver.

Gool’s motion to dismiss reveals that his attorney was aware of, and actually asserted,

the potentially valid statute of limitations defense (and significant facts supporting this

defense) before Gool accepted the plea agreement. While the dental records identified

in the PSR tended to corroborate the assertions made in Gool’s motion to dismiss, the

PSR did not present a novel basis for the statute of limitations defense—indeed, the

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The Government disputes whether the statute of limitations had run on the

crimes charged in Counts I and II, arguing that an extended statute of limitations

applies to these counts because they involved the sexual abuse of children. See 18

U.S.C. § 3283 (“No statute of limitations that would otherwise preclude prosecution

for an offense involving the sexual or physical abuse, or kidnaping, of a child under

the age of 18 years shall preclude such prosecution during the life of the child, or for

ten years after the offense, whichever is longer.”). Gool counters that sexual

exploitation does not qualify as physical or sexual abuse and that § 3283 is therefore

inapplicable. Because we conclude that Gool has failed to demonstrate ineffective

assistance of counsel regardless of the applicable statute of limitations, we need not

decide whether § 3283 applies to the crime of sexual exploitation of a minor.

5

Although the district court ultimately sentenced Gool to a term of

imprisonment exceeding fifteen years, the plea agreement allowed Gool’s attorney to

request a sentence of 97 months’ imprisonment, or just over half of the 180-month

mandatory minimum sentence he would have faced under Counts I and II.

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motion to dismiss asserted that A.R.’s braces had been removed more than five years

before Gool’s indictment. 

Moreover, it was far from certain that the district court would have dismissed

Counts I and II on statute of limitations grounds.4

 Thus, the Government’s agreement

to move to dismiss those counts removed any residual uncertainty. Because Counts

I and II each carried a fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence, see 18 U.S.C.

§ 2251(e), the dismissal of these counts was a substantial benefit to Gool.5

 In

addition, not only did the Government move to dismiss Counts I and II, it also agreed

not to pursue any further charges against Gool arising out of its investigation of this

case. Accordingly, we conclude that Gool received valuable consideration in

exchange for his agreement to plead guilty and waive his right to appeal. Under the

circumstances, Gool has not shown that his counsel’s decision not to move to

withdraw Gool’s guilty pleas after reviewing the PSR fell outside “the wide range of

reasonable professional assistance.” See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689; see also

Williams v. United States, 343 F.3d 927, 928-29 (8th Cir. 2003) (per curiam) (“It was

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a reasonable strategy for the lawyer to advise Williams to maintain his guilty plea

because . . . [i]f Williams had withdrawn his guilty plea . . . and had been convicted

of trafficking any quantity whatsoever of powder cocaine, his Guidelines

imprisonment range . . . would have been [significantly higher] . . . .”) (citation

omitted).

Because Gool has failed to demonstrate deficient performance, we need not

address prejudice. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 697 (“[T]here is no reason for a court

deciding an ineffective assistance claim to approach the inquiry in the same order or

even to address both components of the inquiry if the defendant makes an insufficient

showing on one.”). 

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s denial of Gool’s § 2255

motion.

______________________________

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