Supreme Court rejects mother’s appeal in Calambro death penalty case

Brendan Riley

Saturday, Sept. 26, 1998 | 10:14 a.m.

CARSON CITY - The mother of death row inmate Alvaro Calambro has lost a Nevada Supreme Court bid to stop his execution, but one justice accused the high court majority of a "rush to judgment."

Lydia Calambro sought what's known as "next friend" legal status so she could try to stop her son's death by injection for killing two people at a U-Haul business in Reno. Calambro has said he wants to die for the murders.

Lydia Calambro argued her son is mentally ill and doesn't know what he's doing. If he's incompetent, "next friend" petitions would be allowed.

But the Supreme Court's majority decision Friday said his mental illness "has not rendered him incompetent" and so his mother can't intervene.

Calambro, 25, may hear voices, be borderline mentally retarded and suffer from schizophrenia, but that doesn't mean "he could not distinguish reality from any delusions," the high court majority added.

Chief Justice Charles Springer dissented, accusing fellow justices of "a rush to judgment" to get rid of Calambro as quickly as possible.

Springer added the majority's "inexplicable willingness to order the death of a mentally ill person ... results from the court's having succumbed to public clamor and media pressure."

The decision, upholding a finding by Washoe District Judge Steve Elliott, returns Calambro's case to U.S. District Court in Reno, where Judge Howard McKibben has scheduled arguments Oct. 5.

Calambro was sentenced to die for the January 1994 murders of Peggy Crawford, who had a tire iron driven through her skull, and Keith Christopher, whose head was crushed by a hammer.

The killings occurred during a $2,400 robbery at the U-Haul business where Calambro's crime partner, Duc Huynh, had just been fired. Huynh also got the death sentence but hanged himself at Ely State Prison.

After the killings, Huynh and Calambro fled and were arrested following a crime spree that began in Sacramento and ended with a high-speed highway chase, the kidnapping of a woman security guard in Los Angeles, and a 9 1/2 -hour standoff.

Calambro's family has maintained he wasn't to blame and that Huynh was responsible for the murders. Family members also said Calambro, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1982, had no earlier record of serious crimes and managed to get along until meeting Huynh, who they described as violent and mentally disturbed.