The Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned one death sentence while upholding the sentence in two other cases.
Frederick Paine's death sentence for shooting a Las Vegas cab driver was overturned after the high court unanimously ruled the two aggravating circumstances used to justify it were invalid.
Paine and an accomplice robbed two cab drivers in January 1990, shooting both in the back of the head. While one survived, Kenneth Marcum died.
In his petition to the high court, Paine's lawyers argued execution would be a miscarriage of justice because under other recent high court rulings, two aggravators must be thrown out. The Supreme Court agreed.
The first of the two violated the ruling that a felony cannot be used to both establish first degree murder and to justify that murder for a death sentence.
The second charged that the killing was committed at random and without apparent motive. The court ruled that can't apply in a case where the motive was clearly robbery.
"Therefore Paine is not eligible for the death penalty and his sentence of death must be vacated," the court ruled.
James Chappell and William Witter, however, were denied their petitions to throw out their death sentences.
Chappell, of Las Vegas, murdered his ex-girlfriend Deborah Panos. After raping her, according to the high court, he stabbed the victim 13 times then robbed her. The murder occurred after what the court described as a decade-long abusive relationship.
Chappell raised more than a dozen claims of ineffective counsel, prosecutorial abuse and other arguments, all of which were rejected by the Supreme Court in affirming his death sentence.
Witter was convicted of stabbing James Cox to death when Cox tried to stop Witter from raping his wife in a Las Vegas parking garage. The court upheld aggravating circumstances in that case including Witter's previous conviction for stabbing a man and that the murder was committed while Witter was engaged in attempted sexual assault.
The court also noted Witter's long history of arrests for such things as drug offenses, burglary, arson and, when he was a juvenile, rape. Based on the facts of the case and his history, the court upheld his death sentence.