Bill on death penalty moratorium moves to Assembly

Friday, April 20, 2001 | 10:51 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The bill to impose a two-year moratorium on the death penalty in Nevada quietly left the Senate and is scheduled to land in the Assembly today.

Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, declined Thursday to move for reconsideration of the bill, which passed on a 13-9 vote Wednesday. He said he didn't have the votes to overturn the moratorium.

Rawson favors a two-year study on capital punishment, as is called for in Senate Bill 254. Still, he opposed the two-year ban on carrying out executions.

Under parliamentary procedure Rawson voted for the bill Wednesday. Because Rawson was in the majority he was allowed to ask for re-consideration. He said Wednesday he wanted to do some "soul searching" through the night, but he said he would make no further move to delay the legislation.

In the meantime, Las Vegas killer Sebastian Bridges maintains his desire to be executed Saturday ( 9 p.m.) at the state prison. He has spurned all offers to launch further appeals on his behalf, and Gov. Kenny Guinn said he would not issue a stay of execution; he said it was up to Bridges to make a legal move if he wanted to postpone it.

Bridges was convicted of the fatal shooting of Hunter Blatchford, the boyfriend of Bridges' estranged wife.

He is housed in a segregation unit with a television and access to a telephone. He is reported to be calm and apparently has had no contact with his parents, who live in South Africa.

Richard Siegel, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Bridges case points to problems surrounding capital punishment. "This case would not normally bring a death sentence," he said.

There are many persons serving life terms who committed more heinous crimes than Bridges, said Siegel, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Bridges is angry that the system failed him in the appeal process. He said he had money to hire his own appeal attorney, but a public defender was appointed to take his case to the Nevada Supreme Court.

The study, called for in the bill now in the Assembly, will look at the race, sexual orientation and economic status of those who are prosecuted and sentenced to death. Bridges is white. Six of the last eight people executed have been white. Of those on death row, 45 are white, 34 are black and seven are Hispanic.

The study would examine if those younger than 18 or mentally retarded at the time of the crime should be sentenced to death; the competency of the defense attorney at trial; if jurors had an adequate understanding of the law and jury instructions; whether capital punishment is a deterrent to murder; the impact of DNA testing, the number of those executed in comparison to those sentenced to death and the costs of death penalty cases and their appeals as opposed to the costs of a non-capital case of murder.