Death row inmate has no ‘significant mental disorder’

Tuesday, April 10, 2001 | 10:18 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Death row inmate Thomas Nevius is borderline mentally retarded, but his thought processes are logical, says a prison psychiatrist who examined the convicted killer last month.

But the supervising psychologist at the state prison in Ely said there is no evidence "to suggest that Mr. Nevius has any significant mental disorder."

The reports on Nevius' mental state were filed last week with the state Board of Pardons, which meets Wednesday to hear a request to commute the death sentence. The two new reports were added to the two mental examinations filed by defense lawyers who said Nevius is mentally retarded.

Nothing in Nevada law prevents a mentally retarded person from being executed, although a bill in the Legislature would ban the death penalty in such cases.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a North Carolina case involving a mentally retarded man.

Nevius, now 44, was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting in Las Vegas in 1980 of David Kinnamon during a failed home burglary and an attempt to rape Kinnamon's wife Rochelle, who has since died.

Dr. Eric Sohr, a psychiatrist for the prison, examined Nevius March 26 and found him "fully alert and cooperative." The psychiatrist said Nevius had many opportunities to exaggerate his symptoms but his answers were factual and to the point. Sohr said he did not find any hallucinations or obvious delusions in Nevius' thought content.

Nevius, according to Sohr, does not meet the criteria for having major depression and his sadness is due to his being in prison and on death row.

The examination showed Nevius has low self-esteem, partly because he can't read. He is unable to do simple math problems.

"He was able to name three cities in the United States," Sohr said. "He was concrete in thinking but able to express similarities between apples and oranges. He was unable to tell why rivers ran to the ocean."

A.T. Vogt, the supervising psychologist at the prison, said Nevius has had few contacts with mental health services at the prison until 1997.

"He was put on mental health monitoring in the Ely State Prison Infirmary for three days because of situational depression related to his sentence and court appearances," Vogt said. "A mild medication was prescribed for two years to help him deal with a sleep problem.

"There is no evidence found on either the clinical interview, institutional file or medical file to suggest that Mr. Nevius has any significant mental disorder," Vogt concluded.

Nevius was examined by defense experts -- David Schmidt, a clinical neuropsychologist at UNLV, and Denis Keys, an associate professor of special education at the University of Charleston in South Carolina. They paint a dismal picture of his childhood in which his mother spent money on liquor rather than food for her children.

Nevius had early learning problems, and he changed schools five times in three years as the family moved to different locations in New York City and then to Philadelphia. He quit school in the eighth grade and had an IQ of 64, which increased to 77 the following year.

In his mid-teens, Nevius shot to death a rival gang member in Philadelphia and spent time in a prison for youthful offenders.

Schmidt said Nevius is "mildly mentally retarded but more importantly, he is brain damaged and in the mentally retarded range of mental functioning. He reads at second grade level and is functionally illiterate, so he cannot review the written material in his case."

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger has filed a brief with the Pardons Board in which he says the level for a case of mild mental retardation ranges from 50 to about 70.

"A low IQ test score, alone, does not prove that a person is mentally retarded," Roger said.