Feds may race Grim Reaper in gang case

By Jeff German (contact)

Thursday, July 31, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Federal prosecutors rarely seek the death penalty, but they believe they have the perfect candidate in Ronald “Joey” Sellers, the reputed leader of Nevada’s most violent prison gang.

Authorities allege Sellers, who is serving a sentence of life without parole for murder, gave marching orders to the Aryan Warriors, a white supremacist criminal organization that stretches beyond prison walls.

After charging Sellers with a prison slaying in a new racketeering indictment against the gang two months ago, federal prosecutors now want a judge to sentence the 40-year-old to death if he is convicted.

Sellers and his court-appointed attorneys, however, counter that unsanitary conditions and a lack of medical care in the Nevada prison system may have done the job for the feds.

In court briefs filed this month, First Assistant Federal Public Defender Michael Kennedy and Indianapolis attorney Richard Kammen, a capital case specialist, disclosed that Sellers, who has lost 40 pounds in the past few months, may be dying of complications from hepatitis C. Nevada prison physicians, they said, concluded that Sellers is in the final stages of liver failure and may need a new liver to survive.

If he is dying and cannot get a transplant in time, the attorneys argued, there is no sense in prosecutors spending a year or more — and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars — going through the rare and complicated process of obtaining the U.S. attorney general’s permission to seek the death penalty.

Before the Sellers case would even land on the attorney general’s desk, federal prosecutors in Las Vegas would have to send a detailed memo, with input from defense attorneys, to Washington explaining the circumstances of the case. Then, a special Justice Department review committee would have to meet with defense attorneys in the nation’s capital and listen to their arguments against the death penalty.

The process winds up costing at least $1 million for each case because “it involves a lot of time and investigation,” said Kevin McNally, director of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which is part of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Sellers’ health has attracted the interest of U.S. Magistrate Peggy Leen, who is sorting out pretrial matters in the criminal case. On July 18, Leen ordered U.S. marshals, who have Sellers in custody under tight security at a California detention center, to find a liver specialist to examine the defendant and report back to her at an Aug. 15 hearing.

In the meantime, defense attorneys have opened another front in their efforts to save Sellers.

Sellers is charged in the new indictment with participating in the December 2006 slaying of inmate Anthony Beltran as part of a violent gang ritual at the state prison in Ely.

But in other court papers this month, Kennedy and Kammen argued that the government, so far, has not produced any evidence that lays out Sellers’ alleged role in the prison killing.

Another Ely inmate, Douglas Potter, is facing state murder charges in Beltran’s death, the attorneys noted.

“Mr. Beltran was killed in a cell by Mr. Potter while at least one guard watched helplessly, as Beltran was murdered,” the attorneys wrote. “Mr. Sellers was in another cell in another unit, well removed from where Potter killed Beltran.”

Defense attorneys have asked Leen to order the government to turn over records that could shed light on the slaying.

All of that, on top of Sellers’ health, should result in the conclusion that “this is not the type of case that should be the first authorized federal death case in Nevada,” Kennedy told the Sun.

Since 1988, when Congress revived the death penalty, McNally explained, none of the 17 federal capital cases from Nevada has won the attorney general’s approval.

Over the past two decades, the attorney general has authorized pursuit of the ultimate punishment for 446 defendants across the country, he said.

Of those defendants, McNally said, 61 were sentenced to death, and only three, including convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, have been executed.