State Supreme Court lifts stay on executions

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 | 2:14 p.m.

CARSON CITY – The Nevada Supreme Court has lifted its stay on executions.

The court issued the stay on Oct. 15, 2007, while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky’s use of lethal injection and whether it violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Thirty-five states, including Nevada, use lethal injection. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s use of lethal injection.

There are 83 inmates on Nevada’s death row but Howard Skolnik, director of the state Department of Corrections, said there are no prisoners close to getting the death needle unless one volunteers.

Las Vegas killer Patrick Castillo was scheduled to be executed last October and he had given up his appeals. But the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of Castillo. The execution was put on hold.

The ACLU has since dismissed its petition to the court. But Castillo, who was sentenced to death for the tire-iron slaying of 86-year-old Isabelle Berndt in her home in Las Vegas in 1988, has changed his mind and has started a new round of appeals.

There have been 12 executions in Nevada since 1976.

The Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C. said only 8 percent of those sentenced to death have been executed. Almost as many inmates on death row die from natural causes as from being injected with a lethal dose of drugs.

Edward Wilson, now 49 years old, is the inmate who has been on death row the longest – since 1979. He was convicted of the killing of a Reno police officer.

Those awaiting execution are confined to the state prison in Ely. But the executions are carried out at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.