Iverson bill comes under heated attack

Karen Zekan

Thursday, March 18, 1999 | 11:06 a.m.

The idea behind Nevada's proposed good Samaritan bill is social responsibility, making citizens responsible for reporting suspected crimes to police.

Yet such a duty has stirred tremendous concern among those who see within the language of the proposed law the potential for turning otherwise innocent people into criminals.

Concerned citizens, advocate groups and defense attorneys aired their arguments Wednesday to a joint judiciary committee of Assembly and Senate members meeting in Carson City on what has become known as the Sherrice Iverson bill.

The bill would make it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a nominal fine for anyone who witnesses or is aware of a possible crime and fails to report it to police.

Iverson, a 7-year-old girl from Los Angeles, was raped and strangled in a restroom at the Primm Valley hotel-casino by Long Beach, Calif., resident Jeremy Strohmeyer on May 25, 1997.

Strohmeyer, 20, was sentenced to life in prison without parole after eventually pleading guilty to the crimes of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder.

His friend, David Cash, however, escaped punishment. Cash saw his friend take Iverson into the restroom and testified that Strohmeyer confessed to him that he had raped the girl and "snapped her neck."

Assemblyman Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, drafted Assembly Bill 267 to make witnesses to crimes against children responsible to report them, closing a present loophole in Nevada law.

Those in support of the measure spoke from the heart, recognizing the suffering endured by Iverson's family because Cash never spoke up and made worse when Cash later made callous, remorseless statements about having little interest in the girl's death.

Perkins said his fellow lawmakers discouraged him from drafting a similar law in 1993 while a freshman in the Assembly. His motivations then were traced to his years spent as a detective with Henderson Police investigating crimes against children.

Perkins said he was stunned by the many family members and neighbors who declined to report or otherwise get involved with cases, including that of an 18-year-old woman impregnated five times by her stepfather since the age of 12 and another parent who publicly beat his child with a belt.

Those at odds with the legislation are seeking everything from language changes to rejecting the bill entirely.

Attorney Richard Wright, who has practiced criminal law for 25 years and defended Strohmeyer, questioned why Nevada needs the law -- a proposal he described as "feel-good legislation that really doesn't do anything."

"This law will not change how David Cash behaves," Wright said. "This statute creates a duty to stick your nose in someone else's business."

Wright offered the committee a hypothetical scenario to illustrate his point, that of observing children in his neighborhood engaging in some form of open and gross lewdness. Currently, he said, he would have four options to address the matter: talk to the parents, raise the issue with the children's church advisers, do nothing or call police.

"With this law, I can't use Secret Witness (an anonymous hotline for crime tipsters) or the other three options," Wright said. "I must call the police."

American law provides citizens the freedom of "staying in their own yard and doing nothing," he said. "It may be immoral, but we do not legislate morality."

Wright said Cash was not prosecuted because of a deal struck with the district attorney's office.

"There is no question (Cash) committed criminal acts," Wright said, including in his list of accusations that possibility of Cash being deemed accessory after the fact and falsifying his grand jury testimony.

"He could still be prosecuted today for felony offenses," Wright said.

Lucille Lusk of the Nevada Concerned Citizens organization and several defense attorneys testifying before the committee were unsettled by the provision requiring witnesses to report anything perceived to be a crime against a child within 24 hours or face prosecution and potential conviction whether or not the accused is convicted.

John Morrow of the Washoe County public defender's office described the requirement as going "against the grain that we punish the wrongdoers and this (witness) may not be wrong."

Lusk urged lawmakers to use great caution in considering the bill.

"Make sure," she said, "that the net you cast catches sharks and not dolphins."

Referring to the proposed legislation as the "Cash bill," Jeff Banks of the Clark County public defender's office predicted that what may have been born of good intentions if adopted would become a "judicial and legislative nightmare"

"I am not a David Cash fan," said Banks, adding that as an alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley he has contacted his alma mater about permitting Cash to remain enrolled there as an engineering student.

"But I am not a fan of the Cash bill, either," Banks said. "This legislation is going to force prosecutors to do the impossible and prove what somebody else saw ... Can prosecutors do that? I don't think so."

Howard Brooks of the Clark County public defender's office also opposes the bill. He testified that he would be spending the rest of the afternoon investigating a 17-year-old boy's murder in North Las Vegas -- a classic situation in which he expected to encounter numerous witnesses to the crime who are under 18, afraid of retaliatory crime for talking and would be liable for prosecution had Perkins' bill been in effect.