9th Court of Appeals Comes to Idaho Falls

IDAHO FALLS — For the first time, the 9th Court of Appeals will hold a special session in Idaho Falls to hear two criminal cases.

It will be on October 18 at 9:30 a.m. in the Centennial Courtroom at the Bonneville County Courthouse.

“The 9th Circuit is the largest circuit court in the country,” Judge Ryan Nelson said in an interview with EastIdahoNews.com. “It’s a really unique opportunity where three judges — it’ll be a panel of three judges — from the 9th Circuit will be in Idaho Falls.”

The nation’s 13 appellate courts are the highest federal courts in the country, after the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 9th Court of Appeals covers nine states and two U.S. territories, including Idaho, Alaska, California, Arizona, Montana, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

The court consists of 29 active judges who “hear appeals from decisions in cases decided by U.S. district courts,” according to its website.

Nelson is the only active judge on the court from Idaho, succeeding Judge Randy Smith of Pocatello. He is also the first judge to serve on the Idaho Falls court with chambers.

He was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018.

“This is a great opportunity for the public to familiarize themselves with what is essentially the premier court in the West,” Nelson said. “For most federal court litigants in the West, this is going to be the last court they can go to unless they can go to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Most lawsuits are heard in San Francisco, Pasadena, Portland, or Seattle.

Still, the court will hold special sessions five to 10 times a year at locations across the circuit, usually at law schools, Bill Cracraft, communications specialist for the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, said in an email Tuesday.

Previous hearings were held in Boise, Pocatello and Moscow.

The judges will hear arguments in two Idaho criminal cases at the Bonneville County Courthouse, according to the agenda:

• Johnson v. Gentry – “An Idaho inmate appeals the denial of her habeas corpus petition, challenging her life sentences for two counts of first-degree murder.”
• US v. Alizadah Nawai – “Appeal from conviction of attempted coercion and enticement, sexual exploitation of a minor child, and transmission of obscene material to a minor.”

“These are some big criminal cases, and it’s going to be interesting,” Nelson said. “We don’t get a lot of criminal cases where you get a life sentence, so these are obviously important cases for the court and important cases for the parties involved.”

Nelson has served on the court for nearly six years. Before his appointment, he was general counsel for Melaleuca. He has extensive legal experience in the federal government, having served in the White House and the Justice Department.

According to the Federalist Society, he served as “special counsel for Supreme Court nominations for the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and as deputy general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget.”

Nelson graduated from Idaho Falls High School in 1991, from Brigham Young University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in English, and from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School in 1999. He clerked for Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, for Senate General Counsel Tom Griffith during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, and for Judges Richard Mosk and Charles Brower at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague.

He is the second Idaho Falls High School graduate to serve as a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The first was Thomas Nelson, who was appointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 and served until 2004.

The public, students and legal officials are cordially invited to attend the special session, which is expected to last approximately one hour.

The appeal

The judges and their clerks review each case, conduct research, study the court’s opinion and formulate a judgment, he said.

“By the time it gets to a hearing, all the judges in that case have done a lot of preparation,” Nelson said.

The court’s rulings set a precedent for the entire circuit.

“So when we decide a case, and we issue a published opinion, that published opinion is binding on all future panels of the 9th Circuit, and also on all the district court judges in all nine states throughout the circuit,” Nelson explained.

The court decides about 12,000 cases a year, he said, of which only 10 to 15 are reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Everyone has an automatic right of appeal to the 9th Circuit, but after the 9th Circuit the only appeal you can have is to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Nelson said.

The Supreme Court hears about 60 cases each year from appellate courts across the country.

Nelson said that’s why Congress requires three judges to sit on a panel that reviews every case brought to the court on appeal.

“It’s just an extra layer of protection to make sure that those cases get a thorough review,” Nelson said. “It’s worth noting that for 99.9 percent of the cases that we hear in the 9th Circuit, this is the last chance that they’ll have their case heard.”