Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Close look at death row

Friday, April 14, 2000 | 9:53 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

RECENTLY THERE HAS BEEN a storm of protests against the use of capital punishment. Much of it has resulted from the revelation that some people held on death row weren't killers. Several such cases were revealed in Illinois, and as a result the governor has put a hold on future executions. Considering the situation he had on his hands, it was a good decision and cried out for taking a second look at that state's capital convictions.

At the other end of the scale of justice Texas continues to exact the punishment of death for capital crimes -- more than 120 executions during the past five years. Not long ago the execution of Karla Faye Tucker brought more heat than light down upon the Lone Star officials. There was no doubt that the lady claimed she experienced pleasure using a pickax to help kill a sleeping couple. The problem Karla presented was she was now a Bible reader and the first woman to be executed in that state since 1863.

Closer to home, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the 1979 murder conviction of John Francis Mazzan. Immediately the Associated Press quoted several anti-death defense lawyers asking for Gov. Kenny Guinn to call a stop of executions in this state. Mazzan's conviction was overturned because the prosecutors withheld information that should have been given the defense.

The Associated Press reported:

" 'I would call upon the governor to issue a moratorium on executions until we can be sure that innocent people aren't being killed,' said Patrick Flanagan, Washoe County Bar Association president."

Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick called Flanagan's request a "bunch of bull."

Jo Nell Thomas, Mazzan's attorney, went so far as to say that there "are flaws in every one of the cases" now holding 87 people on Nevada's death row. Wisely she added, "I'm not saying that every person on death row is innocent, but I am saying there was inadequate attention paid to their cases at trial." Not a kind evaluation of Nevada lawyers and judges.

Nevada's handling of capital punishment isn't in the same category as Texas or Illinois. Deputy Attorney General Dorothy Nash Holmes, writing in Nevada Lawyer magazine of the State Bar of Nevada, reassures Silver State residents that their state system is working.

Holmes asks, "Does Nevada execute too many people and do it too quickly? There have been a total of 50 executions in Nevada since 1905, eight of them since 1977. Four other death row inmates died from illness or suicide awaiting their appeals. For 18 years, there were no executions in Nevada, and then in 1977 capital punishment was reinstated. Since then, more prisoners have been killed by other inmates (17), or have died by their own hand (41), than have been executed (8). With less than 9 percent of Nevada's 992 murderers being sentenced to death and so few actually being executed, Nevada can hardly be characterized as a 'bloodthirsty' state."

Holmes goes on to look at the appeals process and writes, "All but one of the inmates executed since 1977 voluntarily curtailed their own appeals at various states of the process. Four of those inmates appealed less than a year and a half. One inmate appealed nearly five years and another finally accepted his fate after 11 years of appeals. The inmate executed in 1998 experienced nearly eight years of appeals. Alvaro Calambro, who was executed in April 1999, was in the system less than five years. Given those facts, it cannot be said that Nevada rams its death penalty cases through the appellate system, trampling willing litigants."

Holmes then looks at the inmates on death row:

"As to the question of whether all Nevada's convicted murderers are innocent, all were convicted by juries that found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Sixteen of the 87 capital inmates confessed to the killings. One death row inmate later confessed to seven murders and several attempted murders in other states. Nevada's sole female death row inmate, Priscilla Ford, was convicted of six murders and 23 attempted murders. Thirty-seven of the 87 inmates had multiple victims, and four other inmates tried to kill an additional victim who, fortunately, survived. Eight of Nevada's 992 convicted murderers have been sentenced to death in other states for murders committed there, too. Few of Nevada's murderers allege actual innocence in their habeas corpus cases; most dispute their own attorney's competence and argue that death was not the sentence they deserved."

No, Nevada isn't on the Texas fast track to the death chambers, nor is it fraught with the problems identified by Illinois.