Court rejects petition of man facing death row

By Cy Ryan

Friday, Jan. 9, 2009 | 4:14 p.m.

CARSON CITY — The Nevada Supreme Court has rejected the pretrial petition of Curtis B. Bonilla, a Las Vegas man charged with a 2006 shooting death on the Strip, who argued the state’s motion to seek the death penalty is defective.

The court said the notice to seek the death penalty filed by the Clark County District Attorney’s Office meets the requirement of the law. It said Bonilla would be able to raise the issue after the trial if he is convicted and sentenced to death.

Bonilla is accused of the fatal shooting of Philip A. McElreath, 43, Reno, in February 2006 in a hotel room on the Strip. Bonilla is also accused of firing a gun at law enforcement officers and was involved in a standoff for six hours at Harrah’s before officers stormed the room and took him into custody.

In another order Friday, the court denied the petition of Oscar Williams Jr., sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison without parole for killing his wife in 1984 in Las Vegas.

That petition was at least the fifth post conviction appeal filed by Williams, who is now 52 and is housed at the Southern Desert Correction Center in Clark County.

The court said Williams “previously pursued multiple post-conviction petitions and he failed to demonstrate that he could not have raised these claims in any of those petitions.”

The court also denied the appeal of Marcus Campbell, who was sentenced to a life term for shooting and killing a rival gang member and wounding a bystander in Las Vegas in 2007.

Campbell, 19, who is being held at the state prison in Ely, contended the prosecution made improper remarks in his opening statement and presented transcripts of a video.

The court said the arguments by Campbell were without merit and there was “overwhelming evidence of guilty was presented” at the trial.

Campbell, a reported member of the hybrid gang “Squad Up” was found guilty of the shooting of Patrick Russum, a member of the Wood hybrid gang. And he was convicted of wounding a man playing basketball at the time with a stray bullet.