OUTLIER COUNTIES: Official Misconduct, Race Bias Permeate Death Penalty in Clark County, Nevada

The geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness, high rates of offi­cial mis­con­duct, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and poor defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion char­ac­ter­is­tic of out­lier juris­dic­tions that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly seek and impose the death penal­ty in the United States are all present in Clark County, Nevada​’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penalty. 

From 2010 through 2015, nine death sen­tences were imposed in Clark County, while no one was sen­tenced to death in any oth­er coun­ty in Nevada dur­ing that same peri­od. In an analy­sis by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project of the 16 coun­ties that imposed the most death sen­tences in the United States over that peri­od, Clark exhib­it­ed the high­est lev­els of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, with the Nevada Supreme Court find­ing mis­con­duct in 47% of the Clark County death penal­ty cas­es it reviewed on direct appeal since 2006. 

Part of this, accord­ing to the Fair Punishment Project, is attrib­ut­able to the ​“slop­pi­ness that comes along with overex­tend­ed lawyers,” but that overex­ten­sion was itself a by-prod­uct of prosecutorial decisionmaking. 

In 2011, Clark County had more pend­ing cap­i­tal cas­es per capi­ta than any oth­er coun­ty in the nation. David Roger, who was District Attorney until 2012 when he resigned to become coun­sel for the Las Vegas police union, refused to offer or accept plea deals in death penalty cases. 

At that time, Clark County exhib­it­ed anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic present in many coun­ties that over­ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: police vio­lence against civil­ians. The coun­ty was the sub­ject of numer­ous cit­i­zen com­plaints describ­ing police bru­tal­i­ty, dead­ly force, and exces­sive use of force dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly direct­ed at racial minori­ties, and the ACLU and NAACP had peti­tioned the Justice Department to inves­ti­gate what it called a pat­tern of civ­il rights abus­es by law enforcement. 

In 2015, Clark ranked fourth in the nation in the per capi­ta rate of police killings of civilians. 

Racial bias also plagues Clark County death penal­ty cas­es: the Nevada Supreme Court over­turned two con­vic­tions in less than two years because of race dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion by Clark County pros­e­cu­tors. In the peri­od cov­ered by the Fair Punishment Project report, 71% of vic­tims in cas­es that result­ed in a death sen­tence were white, though only 33% of mur­der vic­tims in Las Vegas, which com­pos­es most of Clark County, were white. 

The exon­er­a­tion of Roberto Miranda high­lights anoth­er sys­temic prob­lem in Clark County death penal­ty cas­es: inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Roberto Miranda spent 14 years on death row before being exon­er­at­ed, and lat­er sued the coun­ty for poor pub­lic defense prac­tices, includ­ing assign­ing inex­pe­ri­enced attor­neys to cap­i­tal defen­dants. In a court fil­ing, the coun­ty respond­ed, ​“As a mat­ter of law, attor­neys who have grad­u­at­ed from law school and passed the bar should be con­sid­ered ade­quate­ly trained to han­dle cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es.” Over the peri­od of the Fair Punishment Project study, the case for life pre­sent­ed by defense lawyers in the cas­es that result­ed in death ver­dicts last­ed an aver­age of only 1.1 days. 

Clark County’s death penal­ty prac­tices have also been extreme­ly cost­ly. A University of Nevada-Las Vegas study esti­mat­ed in 2012 that the 80 cap­i­tal cas­es pros­e­cut­ed in the coun­ty would cost $15 mil­lion more than if they were to be pros­e­cut­ed with­out the death penalty.