Three unopposed in busy Eighth Judicial District

Kim Smith

Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2000 | 9:17 a.m.

When Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were tried for the September 1998 murder of gambling figure Ted Binion, they were tried in the Eighth Judicial District Court, the largest in Nevada.

The same is true of Zane Floyd, the young man accused of gunning down five people in a local grocery store.

And when Judy Richardson Yeats decided to sue a co-worker for allegedly stealing her $1 million winning Pepsi bottle cap, she too, took her case to the Eighth Judicial District Court.

The Eighth Judicial District is one of the busiest courts in the United States. In 1997 Clark County was sixth in the country in terms of the number of cases filed for each of the 27 judges. That year, the latest for which statistics are available, an average of 2,254 cases were filed in each judge's courtroom.

Clark County's judges handle everything from family affairs to juvenile crime, civil lawsuits and criminal cases.

The court's business is handled within two courthouses in the downtown area. Nineteen District Court judges handle civil and criminal cases in the Clark County Courthouse on Third Street, while juvenile and family matters are taken care of in the Family Court building on North Pecos Road by the remaining eight judges.

Last year alone, more than 16,000 civil cases and 8,300 criminal cases were filed in the Eighth Judicial District. The steady increase in caseloads prompted the construction of a new Regional Justice Center, which will be completed in January 2002.

Court officials hope the 17-floor, $123 million building will last the criminal and civil courts at least 10 years.

The heavy caseloads also caused the judges to split up their calendars in the hopes specialization would speed up the wheels of justice. Ten of the judges handle civil cases, and nine strictly criminal cases.

Three of the civil judges are up for re-election this season, and all three are unopposed. They are:

Vega received her bachelor's degree from California State University and law degree from the University of Southern California's Law Center.

Parraguirre received his law degree from the University of San Diego.

Mahan received his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School.