The Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is the appeals court that has jurisdiction, or legal power, to review cases decided by less powerful courts in the 5th Circuit. These less powerful courts are called United States district courts. They are federal trial courts. If someone wants to appeal a decision that one of these courts made, they would have to appeal to the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
These are the United States District Courts that are located in the 5th Circuit:
The Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit handles appeals from every one of these District Courts.
The Court has 17 judges. The main court building is located in the John Minor Wisdom United States Court of Appeals Building in New Orleans, Louisiana. The court clerk's office is at the Felix Edward Hébert Federal Building in New Orleans.
The Court met for the first time on June 16, 1891, in the Customs House in New Orleans.
The Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decided a landmark case called "Gates v. Collier", which stopped the severe physical abuse of prisoners by "trustys" at Mississippi State Penitentiary (then called Parchman).
Steven Sample
Steven Browning Sample (November 29, 1940 – March 29, 2016) was the 10th president of the University of Southern California (USC). He became president in 1991 and was succeeded by C.L. Max Nikias on August 3, 2010.
Before he was president at USC, he held the same position at the University at Buffalo (UB) in the State University of New York (SUNY) system from 1982 to 1991. He was succeeded by William R. Greiner.
In 2001, Sample was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but said he still felt able to serve as president of USC. On March 29, 2016, Sample died at the age of 75. He had lived in San Marino, California.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the largest of the 13 appeals courts in the United States's federal court system. It hears cases from federal trials courts in nine western states and two Pacific Island jurisdictions.
It is a U.S. Federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:
It also has appellate jurisdiction over the following territorial courts:
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the Ninth Circuit is by far the largest of the thirteen courts of appeals, with 29 active judgeships. The court's regular meeting places are in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Pasadena. Panels of the court occasionally travel to hear cases in other locations within the circuit. Although the judges travel around the circuit, the court arranges its hearings so that cases from the northern region of the circuit are heard in Seattle or Portland, cases from southern California are heard in Pasadena, and cases from northern California, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii are heard in San Francisco. For lawyers who must come and present their cases to the court in person, this administrative grouping of cases helps to reduce the time and cost of travel.
The large size of the current court is due to the fact that both the population of the western states and the geographic jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit have increased dramatically since the U.S. Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1891. The court was originally granted appellate jurisdiction over federal district courts in California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. As new states and territories were added to the federal judicial hierarchy in the twentieth century, many of those in the West were placed in the Ninth Circuit: the newly acquired Territory of Hawaii in 1900, Arizona upon its admission to the Union in 1912, the Territory of Alaska in 1948, Guam in 1951, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 1977.
The Ninth Circuit also had jurisdiction over certain American interests in China.
The Philippines were never under the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction. Congress never created a federal district court in the Philippines from which the Ninth Circuit could hear appeals. Instead, appeals from the Supreme Court of the Philippines were taken directly to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In 1979, the Ninth Circuit became the first federal judicial circuit to set up a Bankruptcy Appellate Panel as authorized by the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978.
The cultural and political jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit is just as varied as the land within its geographical borders. In a dissenting opinion in a rights of publicity case involving the "Wheel of Fortune" star Vanna White, Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski sardonically noted that "[f]or better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit." Judges from more remote parts of the circuit note the contrast between legal issues confronted by populous states such as California and those confronted by rural states such as Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada.
Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld, who maintains his judicial chambers in Fairbanks, Alaska, wrote in a letter in 1998: "Much federal law is not national in scope...It is easy to make a mistake construing these laws when unfamiliar with them, as we often are, or not interpreting them regularly, as we never do."
Action Comics
Action Comics is an current comic book series. Superman first appeared in it. It is one of the longest comic series in America. It started in 1938.
Ricardo Goulart
Ricardo Goulart Pereira or simply Ricardo Goulart (; born 5 June 1991), is a Brazilian footballer who plays for Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao in the Chinese Super League as an attacking midfielder.
Mitigating factor
When a person commits a capital crime, a mitigating factor is something that might help the person avoid getting the death penalty. ("To mitigate" means "to decrease." A "factor" is something that causes something else. So, in law, a mitigating factor is something that can cause punishment to decrease.)
Mitigating factors do not automatically result in decreased punishment. Judges and juries also think about aggravating factors things that are likely to cause a more severe punishment.
Also, mitigating factors are not an excuse for committing a crime. They may help explain what caused a person to commit a crime, but they do not mean the person did nothing wrong.
Sixteen countries in Africa have "abolished" the death penalty (made it illegal in the country). Another 22 countries have not used the death penalty in over 10 years, or have a moratorium (a temporary stop) on the death penalty.
According to Cornell University's Law School, as of 2015, only one of the countries in Africa that still uses the death penalty has laws about mitigating factors. That country is Botswana.
In Botswana, a person convicted of murder is given the death penalty unless they can show mitigating factors. However, the law in Botswana does not say what these mitigating factors could be, or give examples. This means it is up to each individual judge to decide whether something is a mitigating factor.
For example, in the past, judges have decided that mitigating factors include:
The law in Botswana does not allow judges to consider mitigating factors from "before" the murder. For example, if a person was abused as a child, or was abused by their victim, these could not count as extenuating circumstances. Only things that happened right at the time of the murder are considered as mitigating factors.
Nine countries in Africa that use the death penalty have mandatory death sentences for certain crimes. This means courts will not consider any mitigating factors, no matter what.
These countries are:
Only two countries in the Americas have executed a person in the past ten years: the United States and St. Kitts and Nevis. The rest have abolished the death penalty or have a moratorium in place.
St. Kitts and Nevis's last execution was in 2008.