Clark County, Nevada, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es per capi­ta than any oth­er urban coun­ty in the coun­try. According to a review by Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice (NACJ), Clark County (Las Vegas) cur­rent­ly has 80 tri­als in which pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing the death penal­ty. By com­par­i­son, Maricopa County in Arizona has the most pend­ing death cas­es (130), but it has twice the pop­u­la­tion of Clark County. Los Angeles County, California, has 33 pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es, with 5 times Clark’s pop­u­la­tion. Recently, the cost of the death penal­ty has become a con­cern for state leg­is­la­tors. Assemblyman Tick Segerblom is pro­mot­ing a leg­isla­tive study on the costs of cap­i­tal cas­es in Nevada. He said, ​“At this point it’s a finan­cial issue. David Roger is over bud­get, and yet he has 80 death penal­ty cas­es pend­ing. Washoe County only has one. Why is he wast­ing our mon­ey pur­su­ing the death penal­ty when there is no mon­ey and it’s vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to actu­al­ly put some­one to death?” Other stud­ies esti­mate that death penal­ty tri­als cost $1 mil­lion more than tri­als in which the pros­e­cu­tors seek life with­out parole. ​“The cost of killing killers is killing us,” said Paola Armeni, pres­i­dent of NACJ.

Armeni attrib­uted the unusu­al case­load to Clark County District Attorney David Roger’s use of the death penal­ty as a nego­ti­at­ing tool to secure life-with­out-parole plea bar­gains. Only about 2 or 3 death sen­tences are hand­ed down each year. Chris Owens, assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, cred­it­ed the large num­ber of pend­ing cas­es to lengthy appeals and to judges who post­pone tri­als. Nevada has not had an exe­cu­tion since 2006. It cur­rent­ly has about 77 inmates on death row. 

(J. Morrison, ​“Death penal­ty num­bers add up for dis­trict attor­ney, tax­pay­ers,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 26, 2011). See Arbitrariness and Cost.

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