Panel: More training on death penalty cases

Monday, Oct. 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A committee studying death penalty issues wants more training for district judges and defense attorneys to avoid errors at trial that trigger long appeals and sometimes freedom for killers.

One of the major arguments advanced by those sentenced to death is that their lawyer was incompetent at trial.

District Judge Mike Fondi, head of the death penalty committee, said Friday that the law changes and "we have got to keep up."

Fondi's committee, now putting the final touches on its recommendations, will ask the Nevada Supreme Court to change its rules to require lawyers who represent criminal suspects in capital cases be "death penalty qualified."

Washoe County District Attorney Dick Gammick, who has tried five death penalty cases, said, "Everything is under a microscope." He said everything from the selection of the jury to the aggravating circumstances used to judge whether the death penalty is warranted is watched closely.

Standards, he said, must be set for defense lawyers. And judges, who may see a death penalty case once every five years, should get retraining, Gammick said.

The comments were made to a legislative committee studying ways to speed up handling of death penalty cases in Nevada.

The death penalty committee, appointed by the Nevada Supreme Court and headed by Fondi, said it found the delays are not in the state's judicial system but in the federal courts.

Michael Pescetta, a deputy federal public defender and an expert in the death penalty, said most of the difficulties arise at penalty hearings over what to consider mitigating and aggravating evidence.

A jury must hear the testimony and then decide if the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating evidence to justify the death penalty.

As an example of the need for lawyer training, Pescetta cited a 14-year-old case of a convicted killer who now has been found to be mentally retarded. That probably should have been unveiled during the trial and used as a mitigating circumstance against imposing the death penalty.

District judges, Fondi said, are being asked by defense lawyers for more money for everything from doing "blood splatter analysis" to researching whether the murder suspect might have been the victim of fetal alcohol syndrome.

This training may be more expensive in the short run, Fondi said, but it will pay off in the long run, possibly shortening the time for appeals and requiring fewer retrials.

Fondi said it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide if it wants to change its rules to require this training.