Judges cleared of illegal sentencing allegations

Public defenders in Clark and Washoe County say contrary to an August report claiming Nevada judges imposed illegal sentences in more than 12 percent of cases, a thorough review of those cases found almost no errors.

The issue was raised before the Commission on the Administration of Justice last month after consultants headed by James Austin examined 10,871 criminal cases.

District Judge Douglas Herndon said at the time he found the error rate unbelievable.

Matt Leone of the University of Nevada's Sawyer Justice Center admitted he and other researchers also questioned the data, believing there must be something else in play.

After the public defenders made a more thorough review, they found some typographical errors but no sentences that were outside the statutory mandates for the crimes involved.

"Zero," said Supreme Court Justice James Hardesty, who heads the commission.

Leone told the commission Monday the problem is in how the data on those cases was reported. He said, for example, all burglaries are listed under the Nevada statutory citation for that crime. But he said burglary covers a laundry list of different crimes that have a variety of penalties and range from simply grabbing something out of an open car to an armed break in of a person's home.

He and Austin told the commission the criminal cases don't include the section, paragraph and sub-paragraph numbers so that the exact crime the person was sentenced for can be determined.

"It's crazy the way we've set up the data system here," Austin said.

He said all the Department of Corrections and Parole and Probation need to do is expand that data field to include the exact statutory citation for each criminal case.

Director of Corrections Howard Skolnik said his computer system already has enough space in that part of the case file to record the entire citation and that his department can begin doing so as long as they get the data from the court.

The commission split over proposed rules for preserving biological evidence in criminal cases. The majority led by Hardesty supported requiring biological evidence be kept until the prison sentence has expired. But five of the 12 members expressed concerns that would put a huge burden on crime labs around the state. They backed requiring evidence to be kept only through the period for filing for post-conviction relief and allowing defense lawyers to ask the court to order the evidence not be destroyed once an appeal is filed.

Hardesty said they will take up the issue again in October.

Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.