Nevada Assembly votes to abolish capital punishment

There are currently more than 70 men on Nevada’s death row. AB395 would also convert those sentences to life in prison without parole.

The vote was along party lines 26-16 with Republicans opposed to the bill.

Sponsor Assembly Judiciary Chairman Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, said now is the time to end executions in Nevada.

“The death penalty is broken,” he said.

He said since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 189 people have been sentenced to die in Nevada but that more than half of those sentences have been reversed by the courts and only one of the 12 men executed since that time was executed against his will. The other 11 were volunteers who gave up their remaining appeals.

Yeager also pointed out that 35 percent of those in Nevada’s death row are African American despite the fact just 8.6 percent of Nevadans are black, and over half of those death row inmates are men of color.

Yeager said legislative auditors report that each death penalty case costs a half million dollars more than a murder case where the death penalty isn’t sought.

Nevada’s last execution was 15 years ago and the state was legally unable to carry out an execution two years ago because the drug companies refused to allow the use of their drugs for lethal injection.

Republicans led by Jim Wheeler of Minden pointed out that capital punishment is used very sparingly when the crime is particularly egregious. He said it’s also a tool in cases of multiple murders because prosecutors can take execution off the table if the defendant admits his crime and shows law enforcement where the other bodies are buried.

Assemblywoman Annie Black of Las Vegas recited several horrific cases, including the murder of Brianna Denison in Reno, saying the killers gave their victims death and deserve the same themselves.

But Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen, D-Las Vegas, described the death penalty as “a relic of an era where cruel and unusual punishment was common.”

She, too, cited the pervasive racial prejudice in the nation’s legal system.

AB395 goes to the Senate for consideration.