Governor Steve Sisolak made a rare off-year State of the State address. We examine the priorities he laid out in the speech. A court battle over an inmate on Nevada’s death row is again highlighting the debate about the death penalty in Nevada.
SEASON 4: EPISODE 34| Airdate: 3/4/2022
The State of the State Address
In a rare, off-year speech, Gov. Steve Sisolak outlined the state of the state.
“Because of you, the state of our state is resilient and getting stronger every day. Nevada is on the move,” the governor said, during his speech from Allegiant Stadium on Feb. 22.
April Corbin-Girnus is a reporter from the Nevada Current. She said the governor’s office decided to have the off-year speech because of the pandemic and because of the huge amount of money the state is getting in American Rescue Plan Act funding.
One of the initiatives that the governor announced in the speech is called “Home Means Nevada.”
“The plan boosts housing construction and homeownership opportunities,” Gov. Sisolak said, “It will help seniors retrofit their homes, to lower their costs, improve their property, and stay where they want to be. And we are developing a new partnership with the AFL-CIO through our state infrastructure bank, to help fund new housing developments. This announcement marks the single largest investment in housing in our state’s history.”
Corbin-Girnus said affordability and affordable housing is a huge problem in Nevada and across the country really. She said the $500 million designated for the initiative will help but there is still a lot of need.
“It’s worth noting that that gets you maybe on a generous estimate a few thousand homes that get built and that’s obviously huge for those people but our affordable housing crisis in Nevada is just massive and I don’t think people appreciate that,” she said.
Estimates put Nevada’s need for affordable housing at around 100,000 units, she said. So even a large amount will only put a small dent in the problem.
Another initiative was childcare.
“And today, I’m announcing a further investment of $160 million to help lower costs for parents and keep childcare workers on the job,” the governor said, “This investment will double the number of families we support because I believe every family from West Wendover to North Las Vegas should have access to great childcare.”
Corbin-Girnus said childcare is again another area where every little thing helps. She said that according to the governor’s office estimates the new initiative will double the number of families who can get childcare subsidies, which is a substantial amount.
The response from the Republican Party was done by State Senator James Settelmeyer, who is from Minden.
“The Governor has so far relied on how Nevada will spend the $6.7 billion dollars in pandemic relief assistance from the federal government, but spending money is not leadership,” Settelmeyer said, “Leadership is about making our government more efficient and effective for the people. This money will be spent to grow the size of the government but with no thought of how to fund that growth when the money is gone but the new programs continue. This undisciplined spending is a contributing factor to the inflation and skyrocketing cost of living that is harming so many Nevadans.”
Corbin-Girnus noted that his argument is a smart one to make because the Democrats have control over where those federal dollars are going. She also said that is a valid concern. People will get used to programs that help them and might want to keep them after the money runs out in a few years.
The Death Penalty in Nevada
Nevada is one of 27 states that have the death penalty, but it is currently not able to execute anyone.
Mark Bettencourt with the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty said drug makers don’t want to have their medications used to kill people. They are not selling their drugs to departments of correction around the country, including in Nevada.
In addition, Katie Durante, an assistant professor at Nevada State College, said when a department of corrections comes up with a drug cocktail to be used for lethal injection, drug companies and defense attorneys sue. Drug companies because they don’t want their drugs used for lethal injection and defense attorneys because they don’t want to see their clients used as ‘guinea pigs.’
With those factors in play, Durante doesn’t believe Nevada will be able to execute someone in the next five years.
“I think it’s incredibly unlikely although not impossible,” Durante said.
A case that is in the middle of a legal battle is highlighting this problem. Zane Floyd was sentenced to death in 2000 for walking into a Las Vegas grocery store and shooting and killing four people, wounding a fifth. That same morning, he kidnapped and raped a woman.
However, he and his lawyers are fighting his execution because of the drug cocktail. A drug used in the cocktail recently expired putting his execution on hold.
Despite the fact that executions in Nevada are not currently being carried out, the Clark County District Attorneys’ office recently announced it would pursue the death penalty in the case of Jesus Uribe. Uribe is accused of killing one man who was waiting in a car outside a convenience store in Las Vegas in November 2021. Police say Uribe then when inside the store and opened fire. No one else in the store was hit, but he’s being charged with three counts of attempted murder.
Nevada Week invited District Attorney Steve Wolfson to be part of the discussion but he was unable to participate.
During an Assembly hearing in 2021 on a bill that would have abolished the death penalty in Nevada, Wolfson explained why he did not support the bill.
“We seek the death penalty in killings involving children, where extreme torture or mutilation is involved or where there are multiple decedents,” he said, “We don’t make these decisions lightly. The criminal justice system relies upon graduated punishment, and if the appropriate punishment for a single murder is life without parole, how do you punish a person who commits multiple murders? Should we punish a person who kills one person, the same as someone who kills two, three, ten or sixty? I say no.”
Wolfson said the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst in the criminal justice system. Durante takes issue with that assessment.
She said if you look at the people on death row they disproportionately suffer from either a mental illness, brain injury or damage, or some other type of diminished capacity. Of the 11 people executed last year, she noted that 10 of them were deemed mentally deficient in some way.
Besides that, there are noted racial and socioeconomic disparities in the way the death penalty is handed out in the United States, she said.
“So is it the worst of the worst? Or is it the people who had the worst defensive council and the people who have the most diminished capacity to defend themselves?” she said.
Zane Floyd had both post-traumatic stress disorder from his time as a Marine and fetal alcohol syndrome. Durante is not saying Floyd didn’t commit horrific crimes, but she believes there are mitigating factors in his case that need to be considered.
Durante says the death penalty is often used as a bargaining chip by district attorneys as a way to get someone to plead guilty to a crime without having to go through the process of going to trial.
Bettencourt also takes issue with the idea that the district attorney’s office is being judicious about when it decides to use the death penalty. He said Clark County has one of the highest rates of new death sentences in the country.
