Highest court denies Nevada death row inmate

Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2000 | 10:33 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court without comment today denied a request for a hearing by Nevada death row inmate Roger Libby.

Libby was convicted and sentenced to death in April 1990 for the 1988 murders of Charles Beatty and James Robertson, whose bodies were found in the desert near Winnemucca in Northern Nevada.

Libby's lawyers had objected to the prosecutor using seven out of nine preemptory challenges to exclude women from the potential jury.

The Nevada Supreme Court remanded the case to district court in Humboldt County, but that court denied a new trial in December 1998 saying the state sufficiently explained the prosecutor's use of the preemptory challenges.

Prosecutor Jack Bullock had said he chose jurors based on whether he believed they would vote on a death sentence.

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