Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Ruling could save Nevadan on death row

A recent opinion issued by an international human rights committee could bring a Las Vegas man a step closer to having his death sentence reversed.

Michael Dominguez is the only person on Nevada's death row who was a juvenile when he committed his crime.

Attorneys for Dominguez say an opinion issued Oct. 22 by the International Commission on Human Rights proves his sentence was unjust.

The 52-page opinion states that executing a person who was 16 or under when he committed his crime violates international law.

Deputy Public Defender Mark Blasky, who has worked on the Dominguez case since 1998, said the committee's opinion was a landmark one.

"This decision is the first written decision that confirms that this standard does violate international law," Blasky said. "When you look at what's going on in the world, we're the only ones that are executing juveniles. Pakistan and Iraq don't even execute juveniles."

The Dominguez case is one of many death penalty cases that exemplify the long-standing international debate over the juvenile death penalty. While international law states it is a violation of human rights to execute a person who was younger than 18 at the time he committed his crime, the U.S. Supreme Court has set the bar at 16.

The Supreme Court left it up to each state to decide the fate of people 16 and older. Nevada law echoed the Supreme Court's opinion, saying the state can execute anyone who was 16 and older at the time he committed his crime.

The international committee's decision comes in light of a June decision by the Supreme Court, which ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute the severely mentally retarded.

The high court recently declined to hear a similar case regarding the juvenile death penalty.

Dominguez, now 25, is currently on death row at the Nevada State Prison in Ely. He has not been given an execution date.

When he was 16, Dominguez was convicted of strangling Arjin Pechpho, 24, and stabbing to death her 4-year-old son during an attempted robbery.

The committee's opinion came after Blasky in 1999 filed a petition to the Inter American Commission arguing that Dominguez's sentence violated international laws.

Until then, the case had suffered setback after setback. The state court denied a request to overturn the sentence in 1998 and the Nevada Supreme Court denied it the same year.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1999.

Patricia Erickson, a private attorney who took over Dominguez's case about a year and a half ago, said she plans to refer to the committee's decision when she takes the case back to state court.

"I plan to argue all the reasons why juveniles shouldn't be given the death penalty that were not raised at trial," she said. "This is primarily about cruel and unusual punishment. Juveniles lack the ability to make good judgments."

But Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell said he doubts the committee's opinion will make a difference in reversing Dominguez's sentence.

"A number of members of the international community don't believe in the death penalty or don't believe in executing criminals under the age of 18," Bell said. "But the only law that makes any difference is the law that the Nevada state governor has signed."

Nevada prosecutors have avoided giving the death penalty to 15-year-olds who were convicted of brutal double murders, he said.

He said he remembered well Dominguez's case, calling his crime "brutal" and "horrible."

"Should there be a difference in consequence whether someone is 16 and three months or 16 and nine months?" Bell asked. "I'm not sure there should. At some level there has to be accountability for what you do."

Raquel Aldana-Pendell, who teaches international law and criminal procedure at Boyd School of Law, said the United States often signs into law ideas borne out of the international community.

In the international community the juvenile death penalty has been widely accepted as being a violation of human rights, she said.

The notion has become known as a "jus cogens," or a norm so widely accepted by most countries that it has become binding.

The nations represented in the international committee include most countries in Central and South America and in Mexico and the Caribbean.

But only five other countries, including Yemen and Saudi Arabia, execute people under 18, Aldana-Pendell said.

"If the U.S. dismisses this opinion completely, it will compromise its voice in the international community," she said.

While international decisions may not have an immediate effect on state law, Aldana-Pendell said, they are significant nonetheless.

"These decisions are important because they begin to put long-term pressure on the states and the federal government to move away from violating international law," she said. "It's one more tool to impose pressure to move in the direction that the rest of the world is moving."

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