Death penalty study findings angrily disputed

Birusk Tugan

Thursday, June 15, 2000 | 10:58 a.m.

Prosecutors angrily disputed Wednesday that the death penalty is overused in Nevada.

A new Columbia University study showed Nevada as the state with the highest per capita use of the death penalty. The study, headed by Prof. James Liebman, revealed that nearly 11 people for every 100,000 Nevada residents were given death sentences and that two out of three convictions were eventually overturned.

The authors of the study wrote that the most common errors that resulted in reversals were generated by incompetent defense lawyers or police and prosecutors who discovered, but then suppressed, critical evidence that the defendant was innocent or did not deserve the death penalty.

"It's a presposterous claim," said Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell, responding to the findings, which "I would find hard to believe."

Never once in the last five years has there been an intentional suppression of evidence, he said.

"With all due respect, he is not here; he wouldn't know about cases here," Bell said, referring to Liebman, whose study covered the period from 1973 to 1995.

Like Bell, Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said that she has not seen the survey, however, "from what I read I don't know how he (Liebman) got his figures."

But assistant federal public defender Michael Pescetta, who "is involved in all 88 death penalty cases in Nevada," said the survey didn't surprise him.

"It confirms what I have been saying for years -- that the system works very badly," Pescetta said.

He claimed that prosecutors have concealed facts that could have changed the course of some cases.

"It is bad enough that the rules are skewed and that the government always has the resource advantage. It's even worse when overzealous prosecutors fail to follow the rules or don't play by the rules," Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said.

Pescetta and Peck both claimed that the situation with the death penalty in Nevada is similiar to that of Illinios, where Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in March after 13 men on that state's death row were cleared by new evidence.

They say there are cases even closer to home that also illustrate that people who don't deserve to die can be sent to death row.

The latest such case is that of John Mazzan, who was released on May 7 after spending 20 years of his life on death row.

The Nevada Supreme Court concluded in January that Washoe County prosecutors withheld evidence that could have shown other suspects with stronger motive, and that led to the man's freedom in the drug-related death of a local judge's son.

The court also overturned the conviction of Victor Maximilian Jimenez in the murder of two men in a North Las Vegas bar, after he shared death row with Mazzan for almost a decade. The court ruled that "evidence favorable to the defendant was improperly withheld" at his 1988 trial by police and prosecutors.

Jimenez is one of three men who were granted new trials due to judicial errors in the last seven years. Like him, Robert Miranda and Dewayne Stevens, too, made deals with prosecutors and got out of prison.

Liebman said that in states like Nevada with the highest rates of death penalty but lowest rate of execution -- 5 percent in Nevada -- prosecutors ask for the death penalty in cases that would not merit capital punishment in other states.

"Then you have cases with more error," he said.

Peck asked the governer to impose a moratorium on executions, and said "even the staunchest defender of the death penalty should pause to reconsider their position."