Nevada State Assembly Passes Bill to Repeal Death Penalty and Resentence Death-Row Prisoners to Life

The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty and resen­tence the pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on its death row to life with­out parole. It was the first time any death-penal­ty abo­li­tion bill had been report­ed out of com­mit­tee and con­sid­ered by either house of the Nevada legislature. 

AB 395 passed the Assembly on April 13, 2021 by a vote of 26 – 16, with all Democrats sup­port­ing the mea­sure and all Republicans oppos­ing it. The bill advances to the state sen­ate, where it faces uncer­tain prospects. SB 228, a less expan­sive bill that would have repealed the death penal­ty for future offens­es but left it in place the death sen­tences of those already on death row, failed when the Senate Judiciary Committee took no action on it before the dead­line for com­mit­tee pas­sage dur­ing the 2021 legislative session.

During argu­ment on the Assembly floor, the bill’s spon­sor, Las Vegas Assemblyman Steve Yeager, told his fel­low leg­is­la­tors that “[n]ow is the right time to end our cost­ly inef­fec­tive and inhu­mane death penal­ty.” ​“Nevada should join two thirds of the world’s coun­tries who have already banned the death penal­ty, many of whom have deter­mined that it vio­lates fun­da­men­tal human rights,” he said. ​“The gov­ern­ment sim­ply should not be in the busi­ness of death.”

If Nevada abol­ish­es the death penal­ty, it will be the 24^th state to do so, and the sec­ond this year. Virginia abol­ished the death penal­ty in March, fol­low­ing Colorado’s repeal of its death penal­ty in 2020 and New Hampshire’s abo­li­tion in 2019. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada hailed the Assembly’s vote, call­ing it ​“a his­toric moment” that brings the state ​“one step clos­er to end­ing this racist, bar­bar­ic prac­tice.” However, the next step, pas­sage in the Senate, remains problematic. 

While Democrats have a three-seat major­i­ty in the Senate, two of its most promi­nent mem­bers — Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and Judiciary Committee Chair Melanie Scheible — are employ­ees of the Clark County (Las Vegas) District Attorney’s office and their boss, District Attorney Steve Wolfson, along with sev­er­al oth­er dis­trict attor­neys and the Nevada District Attorney’s Association tes­ti­fied against the bill. Cannizzarro and Schleible wield sig­nif­i­cant pow­er over whether the bill will be con­sid­ered in com­mit­tee and on the House floor and, if the bill reach­es the floor, its sup­port­ers can afford only one Democratic vote against it unless they can attract sup­port from Republican senators. 

Clark County’s Historical Abuse of Capital Punishment

Clark County’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and his­to­ry of mis­con­duct in death penal­ty cas­es shines a spot­light on the poten­tial con­flict of inter­est fac­ing the sen­a­tors who have dual employ­ment in the Clark County D.A.’s office, as well as the out­sized influ­ence of pros­e­cu­tors in the leg­isla­tive process. A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of death-row data col­lect­ed by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund found that, as of October 1, 2020, the 52 peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal retri­als or resen­tenc­ings in Clark County were more than in all but six oth­er U.S. coun­ties. By itself, Clark County account­ed for three-quar­ters of Nevada’s death-row pop­u­la­tion. It is one of only four coun­ties in the nation — trail­ing Riverside, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and Maricopa, AZ — to have aver­aged more than one death sen­tence per year since 2012. All the oth­er coun­ties in Nevada com­bined have imposed just one new death sen­tence in the past decade.

A 2016 study by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project found that of the 16 most pro­lif­ic death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the U.S. in the years 2010 through 2015, Clark County had the high­est rate of con­vic­tions or death sen­tences over­turned as a result of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The Project report­ed that the Nevada Supreme Court had found mis­con­duct in 47% of the Clark County death penal­ty cas­es it reviewed on direct appeal dur­ing the previous decade. 

Two Clark County cap­i­tal defen­dants, Paul Browning and Roberto Mirando, have been exon­er­at­ed fol­low­ing wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions. Another, Ha’im Al Matin Sharif, spent 30 years on death row after being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of killing his girlfriend’s 11-month-old daugh­ter based on junk-sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny. Medical evi­dence lat­er revealed that the baby had actu­al­ly died from infan­tile scurvy. Clark County pros­e­cu­tors nonethe­less insist­ed that, to secure his release, Sharif plead guilty to less­er charges, leav­ing him a mur­der con­vic­tion on his record. 

In November 2017, the Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners par­doned Fred Steese, who had spent 21 years in prison wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der. Clark County pros­e­cu­tors had sought the death penal­ty against him while hav­ing in their pos­ses­sion — and with­hold­ing from the defense — evi­dence that Steese was not even in Nevada when the mur­der occurred. In 2012, a Nevada tri­al judge issued an Order of Actual Innocence, declar­ing that Steese didn’t kill any­one. However, Clark County pros­e­cu­tors refused to admit they had con­vict­ed an inno­cent man and agreed to release Steese from prison only if he entered a plea admit­ting that there had been suf­fi­cient evi­dence on which he could be convicted. 

Clark County pros­e­cu­tors also have a his­to­ry of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions. Between 2014 and 2017, the Nevada Supreme Court ordered new tri­als in three death penal­ty cas­es because Clark County pros­e­cu­tors had dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly exclud­ed indi­vid­u­als of col­or from jury service. 

Nevada has sen­tenced 189 defen­dants to death under its 1973 statute. The major­i­ty of those death sen­tences have been reversed on appeal. As of October 1, 2020, sev­en­ty peo­ple remained on the state’s death row or were fac­ing cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing retri­als. The state has exe­cut­ed 12 pris­on­ers since the 1970s but has not car­ried out any exe­cu­tions since April 2006. Eleven of the pris­on­ers it has exe­cut­ed waived their appeals. The state has not exe­cut­ed any­one who con­test­ed his con­vic­tion or death sen­tence since March 1996. 

In 2017, Clark County death-row pris­on­er Scott Dozier waived his appeals in an effort to force Nevada to exe­cute him. A Nevada tri­al court halt­ed the exe­cu­tion after drug man­u­fac­tur­er Alvogen sued the state, alleg­ing that the Nevada Department of Corrections had obtained the drugs ​“by sub­terfuge.” Dozier sub­se­quent­ly hanged him­self in his death-row cell.