Once a year or so, the U.S. Supreme Court appoints a lawyer to advocate a legal position that none of the active parties in the case favor but that needs to be addressed.
The justices did just that Thursday when they chose Kirkland & Ellis partner Kasdin Mitchell of Dallas to defend a technical procedural decision in a criminal case decided last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Mitchell, who clerked for Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor Jr. and then U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has authored or co-authored briefs for a half-dozen clients in cases that were pending at the Supreme Court, including successfully representing health insurers in a 2020 Supreme Court decision that reversed the lower courts and secured a $12 billion victory for her clients.
The case, Bowe v. United States, involves an imprisoned criminal defendant’s multiple efforts for postconviction relief under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which placed unprecedented restrictions on death row inmate appeals. The Eleventh Circuit decision on whether the rule on successive challenges applies to both state and federal prisoners is a split from other federal circuit courts.
“I am grateful to Justice Thomas for recommending me and to the Court for entrusting me with this opportunity — and to Kirkland & Ellis and my family for all of the support,” Mitchell told The Lawbook. “I will do my best to present the strongest case in support of the decision below to help the Court resolve the conflict among the Courts of Appeals.”
A 2012 graduate of Yale Law School, Mitchell has argued cases before four federal circuit courts of appeal and has successfully tried several large complex commercial cases to verdicts. She also played a role in more than a half-dozen major pro bono matters, including serving as appellate counsel in 2019 for a class of plaintiffs who challenged the constitutionality of Houston police arresting and detaining individuals without a warrant or establishing probable cause.
The Supreme Court case that Mitchell is handling is Bowe v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 24-5438.