There has not been a death-penalty execution in Nevada since 2006—but the issue is again making headlines.
Before we get into the details, it’s worth looking back at the RN&R‘s cover story 28 years ago this week. The death penalty was making headlines then, too, as D. Brian Burghart explained.
Here’s the first portion of that story:
With the anticipated execution of Reno U-Haul killer Alvaro Calambro, the issue of the death penalty is again a headline-grabbing topic of discussion.
Calambro’s execution has been delayed until sometime after Aug. 10, when state and federal courts will rule on his mental competency.
His fate is being played out on TV and in newspapers, but not in the political arena.
That might seem strange, since this is a political year.
In Nevada and across the country, an anti-capital punishment stance is—pun intended—a kiss of death for candidates. As Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis learned in 1988, the suggestion that a candidate could be soft on criminals is political suicide.
In that year, Dukakis was asked during a debate by panelist Bernard Shaw whether he would remain opposed to the death penalty even if Dukakis’ wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered.
Dukakis’ wishy-washy answer—he didn’t demonstrate outrage or a desire for revenge—contributed to his losing to George Bush.
A decade later, one of the most important political issues of our time never even comes up.
Until now.
State Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas and a candidate for governor, is the only serious statewide candidate in recent memory to oppose the death penalty.
The leading Republican gubernatorial contender Kenny Guinn supports the death penalty. Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, the leading Democratic challenger, did not return repeated calls for comment.
Even so, Neal is not expecting his stance to become an issue. With public support for the death penalty on the rise, Neal thinks it will be a long time before it becomes a political football again.
“All of the laws seem to be in place at the moment (in Nevada) for the death penalty, and nobody is attempting to repeal it,” he says. “I would not attempt to change those laws. I don’t think there would be an interest in the state Legislature to change them.”
In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down capital punishment laws nationwide, but four years later the court reinstated the death penalty. The Nevada Legislature adopted a new death-penalty statute in 1977. Currently, 38 states have the death penalty
Neal says no Nevada politician is eager to carry the anti-death-penalty banner anymore.
“No one has had an appetite to go back and fight those battles,” Neal says. “In the early ’70s, there was a movement across the country to discontinue the use of the death penalty. I was very much a part of the group that was trying to accomplish that.”
With that kind of record, Neal could be hurt worse politically by flip-flopping rather than by simply saying that during the years since he joined the state Senate in 1972, he has voted against capital punishment in every instance except for provisions dealing with hate crimes.
“You can be tough on crime without having the death penalty,” Neal says. “I think our legislators over the years have demonstrated that they’re very tough on crime in terms of increasing the penalty for certain crimes. For example, if you attack an older person, you get double the punishment.”
One candidate who supports the death penalty is Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, who is seeking re-election.
“The reality is most people who run for this job, and most people in the state of Nevada, are actually pro death penalty,” Del Papa says. “I’ve never heard of anyone running for either the attorney general or most other positions in this state who have not been supportive of the death penalty. Nevada is a death penalty state. That is the law in the state of Nevada. Anyone who assumes office in this state takes an oath to uphold the laws of the state of Nevada.”
Del Papa, a Democrat, will likely face Republican Scott Scherer in the Nov. 1 general election. Scherer, a gaming attorney and former assemblyman, is also a death penalty supporter. He says Nevada needs to streamline the capital punishment process to come into line with the new federal appeals system.
Neal says most candidates jump on the tough-on-crime bandwagon hoping that support of the death penally will help propel them into office.
“Right now, you’ve got (gubernatorial candidate) Kenny Guinn who’s come out and said that he favors the death penalty,” Neal says. “I look at that like ‘the death penalty is not an issue in this state, so why would he come out and say that he favored it?’ I don’t know whether it would have been an issue in this campaign unless he had anticipated that I was going to be his opponent, and I have been in opposition to it.”
Neal says the death penalty doesn’t stop crime and could lead to the wrong person being executed.
“I don’t see how you could execute one innocent person and say that law is a success,” he says.
In Nevada, at least one apparently innocent man has been executed.
On Feb. 19, 1878, J.W. Rover was hanged for the murder of his business partner, I.N. Sharp. His other business partner and accuser, F.J. McWorthy, confessed to the killing on his death bed. Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha says this is the only documented example of an innocent person receiving capital punishment in the state’s history.
However, in 1996, Roberto Miranda was released after spending 14 years on Nevada’s death row for the 1981 murder of Manuel Rodriguez Torres. Miranda was released because his public defender did not produce the witnesses who could have cleared him in his first trial. The lawyer who won his release, Laura FitzSimmons, said she has lost touch with him.”
Calambro was executed on April 5, 1999. Since then, Nevada has put to death four other inmates—but none since Daryl Mack on April 26, 2006, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
There are 57 people currently on death row in the state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. (A 2021 piece by the Las Vegas Review Journal listed 64 men on death row, and included details on each.)
So why hasn’t the state put anyone to death in more than two decades? It’s rather difficult to pull off a legal and “humane” lethal injection.
According to a 2022 explainer piece by The Associated Press, the drugs for lethal injections are difficult to acquire; many medical professionals don’t want to have anything to do with executions; and the process itself can often go haywire, for reasons including difficulties finding usable veins. One example, according to that piece: “In Oklahoma in 2014, condemned inmate Clayton Lockett writhed, clenched his teeth and attempted to lift himself up from the gurney after he had been declared unconscious when the state used a new drug, the sedative midazolam, in its three-drug method. Although prison officials attempted to halt the execution, Lockett was declared dead 43 minutes after the procedure began.”
Earlier this year, Tennessee had to call off an execution, as reported by the Tennessee Lookout:
In a demand for “full transparency and accountability” from the Department of Correction, eight GOP senators sent a letter Monday to Gov. Bill Lee requesting that he initiate a review of the botched execution of Tony Von Carruthers on May 21. The letter obtained by the Lookout is signed by Senator Majority Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin, Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, Sen. Becky Massey of Knoxville, Sen. Richard Briggs of Knoxville, Sen. Tom Hatcher of Maryville, Sen. Dawn White of Murfreesboro and Sen. Ken Yager of Kingston.
Lee called off Carruthers’ execution when medical personnel failed to find veins for a backup line to administer lethal drugs and a central line as part of the state’s execution protocol. But he has declined to delay other executions, despite requests from death penalty opponents.
“The effort dragged on for well over an hour before the execution was called off. This was a failure of the State of Tennessee to carry a lawful sentence of its own courts,” the letter to Lee says.
The senators want a full accounting of how medical personnel for the execution were selected, including their credentials and qualifications for performing the procedures.
Despite these difficulties, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson is determined to get Nevada’s death-penalty system back up and running. However, he continues to face setbacks—most recently due to legal proceedings. As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on July 15:
Prosecutors are pausing execution warrant requests for two death row inmates from Clark County, making it unlikely that the defendants will be executed this year.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson announced in April that his office would seek execution warrants for Donald Sherman, 62, Zane Floyd, 50, and Sterling Atkins, 52.
Prosecutors formally asked judges to sign off on execution warrants for Floyd and Sherman in May but have not requested a warrant for Atkins since the announcement. …
One of the Nevada Supreme Court cases in which the two sides are watching for a decision deals with whether it is unconstitutional for the Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners to deny capital inmates access to clemency. The other case claims Nevada’s execution manual is an invalid regulation.
Both have been before the high court since 2025, and other litigation involving Sherman and Floyd continues.
(Assistant District Attorney Alex) Chen said his office believes the defendants have already exhausted their appeals. … It is unlikely that Sherman or Floyd will be executed this year, he added.
Both men are convicted murderers who have spent decades behind bars.
Floyd killed four people at a Las Vegas Albertsons supermarket in 1999.
Sherman bludgeoned a retired doctor to death with a hammer in 1994 while the victim slept in his Sun City Summerlin home. At the time, Sherman was on parole for a previous killing.
Despite the myriad death-penalty difficulties in Tennessee and across the country, will Nevada get back in the execution business? We will if Wolfson gets his way.
—Jimmy Boegle
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