Still serving sentence, but at home

By Jeff German

Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Former Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey is spending the remaining two months of her 30-month federal sentence at her North Las Vegas Home.

Since Dec. 16, she had been staying at Las Vegas Community Corrections Center, the federal halfway house at 2901 Industrial Road in the shadow of Circus Circus. But she was released to home confinement last week, according to John Casale, director of the halfway house, which is geared more toward inmates who need job programs or counseling to prepare them to reenter into society.

Casale says Kincaid-Chauncey is not getting any special treatment. She is one of 28 of his halfway house assignees under home confinement.

Kincaid-Chauncey, 70, will remain under supervision until she is paroled March 9, Casale says. She does not have any electronic monitoring but she must report to the federal facility twice a week and get approval before leaving her home. She has to submit her itinerary a week in advance. Halfway house officials also make random calls to her home to check on her whereabouts.

Before being transferred to Las Vegas, Kincaid-Chauncey spent nearly two years at a federal prison camp (“camps” are less than minimum security) in Victorville, Calif.

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Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto won’t seek the removal of Family Court Judge Robert Teuton.

Cortez Masto has responded in writing to Las Vegas Attorney Robert Lueck, saying she doesn’t share his opinion that Teuton’s Aug. 22 appointment expired on Monday.

Lueck, who had competed with Teuton for the appointment, sent a letter to the attorney general a month ago, arguing the appointment would expire because Teuton didn’t run for the seat in the November election.

But Cortez Masto sided with Secretary of State Ross Miller and lawyers for Gov. Jim Gibbons, who contended the appointment expires the first Monday in January 2011, when the term of the retiring judge he’s succeeding ends. Miller and the governor’s attorneys contend Teuton was appointed after the spring filing deadline and too late, by law, to get his name on the November ballot. The first general election in which Teuton, a former assistant district attorney, is able to run is in November 2010.

“Based on our review of the relevant statutes and case law, the appointment of Mr. Teuton ... for the term ending Jan. 2, 2011, is appropriate,” Cortez Masto wrote Lueck.

Lueck contends that people appearing before Teuton could challenge whether he has a right to hear their cases. “There’s a real question here,” Lueck says.

It’s a question that likely will surface in the 2009 Legislature when lawmakers, once again, debate a constitutional amendment seeking to clarify the judicial appointment process.

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District Attorney David Roger says the Career Criminal Unit he created in January 2003 has made headway.

According to statistics Metro Police provided to Roger, that unit, with the help of detectives, has obtained stiff prison terms for 249 habitual criminals since 2003.

Under state law, prosecutors can seek to have a defendant with at least three felony convictions declared a habitual criminal, making him eligible for a harsher sentence.

The number of habitual criminals the unit has sent to prison has steadily risen from 13 in 2003 to 72 last year, Roger says. The unit now has three full-time prosecutors who specialize in getting the maximum prison time for the worst of the worst.

If law enforcement experts are correct in estimating that 20 percent of the nation’s criminals commit 80 percent of the crimes, the unit is providing a valuable public service.

“It’s making sure that these criminals don’t fall through the cracks,” Roger says. “We have hard-nosed prosecutors on that unit who have a take-no-prisoners mentality.”

The concept of going after habitual criminals also is catching on throughout the Las Vegas Valley. The Henderson and North Las Vegas police departments recently followed Metro’s lead and established their own repeat offender units that work hand-in-hand with the Career Criminal Unit prosecutors.