In a rare off-year speech, Governor 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.

Plus, once again legal wrangling over an inmate on Nevada's death row is sparking debate about the death penalty.

Is it time for Nevada to abolish capital punishment?

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

We'll explore the reality of Nevada's death penalty in a moment, but first we start with Governor Steve Sisolak's State of the State address which he delivered at Allegiant Stadium last week.

Joining us to break it down is Nevada Current reporter April Corbin Girnus.

April, welcome.

-Thank you for having me.

-The Nevada Legislature meets every other year.

We are in an off year and typically the governor does not speak in an off year, but what were the circumstances surrounding this speech he gave?

(April Corbin Girnus) So usually the State of the State is an introduction of the governor's recommended budget for the legislature to consider.

Obviously that's not happening since they're not meeting this year, but the governor's office said that because of just the pandemic and the overwhelming changes in the state and the huge influx of American Rescue Plan dollars, there's $6.7 billion coming into the state over the next few years to help with economic recovery, and $2.7 billion of that is really flexible money that the state has a lot of leeway in spending it, so he felt it was important to update the state on how that money was being used and his plan for it, and that's kind of how he framed it.

-Coronavirus and an influx of federal money; it makes sense to have an off-year speech.

I think the last time before this that that happened was when the economy had crashed.

-Yes.

It was in 2010, and Jim Gibbons held a State of the State in an off year and at that time, he used the State of the State to announce that he was going to have a special session later that month because the state had to fix its budget; it had to correct it.

They didn't have the benefit of the American Rescue Plan back then, so he said that they needed to, you know, make tough decisions.

So it's an interesting contrast between that economic crisis where they had to make some really tough decisions versus this one where the federal government has really stepped in with a massive amount of money.

So it's an interesting contrast which definitely Republicans have pointed out and Democrats have pointed out.

-I agree.

It's the federal government stepping in and saying here's some money.

Some of those initiatives that Governor Steve Sisolak talked about using that money for is "Home Means Nevada."

Let's hear what the governor had to say about that first.

-The plan boosts housing construction and homeownership opportunities.

It will help seniors retrofit their homes to lower their costs, improve their property and stay where they want to be.

And we're developing a new partnership with the AFL-CIO through a state infrastructure bank to help fund new housing developments.

This announcement marks the single largest investment in housing in our state's history.

-Now $500 million, that's a lot of money to throw at this issue, affordable housing.

Rent is expensive right now, house prices are through the roof.

What is this money going to do?

-You know, when Sisolak is saying "affordable housing" in that clip, we're referring to a very structured definition of affordable housing, right?

So it's a certain percentage of area median income that makes you eligible for low-income housing, right?

So this is a $500 million investment in that, which is-- I think it's like $300 million of it is earmarked for building new buildings, new apartment complexes where people will be able to live.

There's money that's devoted to keeping seniors in homes and preserving existing ones.

So all of that is huge, and 500 million is not insignificant at all.

It's a huge amount of money, but it's worth noting that gives 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.

You know, we've seen estimates that we need 100,000 affordable housing units in the state, so it's still only going to make a small dent in the grand scheme of things.

So we'll see how big and how much impact it's really-- you know, we still have a long way to go on that issue but this certainly helps.

But one thing that the State of the State didn't cover is affordability.

So like you mentioned rent being so high.

There's no rent control laws here in Nevada, so apartment landlords can raise the rent, you know, 400% overnight and it's legal, and there's nothing that can be done.

There was a lot of pressure on Sisolak to try and do something about that.

I think some people were hoping to hear that in the State of the State speech, but he didn't really address that.

He mentioned inflation kind of generally and said we're going to try to help, but there was nothing concrete of what can be done to help the fact that it's so hard to find a home and that you're competing with out-of-state, rental landlords and things like that, so we haven't heard a lot of that, unfortunately.

-And when you talk about affordable housing and what he is talking about and building those homes, it would just be for low-income individuals.

-Correct, low-income and fixed-income individuals who obviously need the most help.

But again the need is so much greater than that.

-Perhaps, for middle-class families trying to decide to continue paying rent or to buy a house, they're stuck.

There was another initiative he spoke about, and this kind of translates with that, childcare.

Here's what he had to say about that.

And today I'm announcing a further investment of $160 million to help lower costs for parents and keep childcare workers on the job.

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.

We discussed this issue a few weeks ago on Nevada Week, and the advocates we had on talked about $365 million they had gotten from American Rescue Plan funds to help existing childcare centers to sustain, to survive the pandemic in which they had really low enrollment but they said boy, we still need a lot of help.

It was already considered a childcare desert here in Nevada with not enough facilities.

So $160 million compared to $365 million they already got, how much help does it truly provide?

-Yes.

I mean, again it's one of these scenarios where every bit helps, and a day before the State of the State speech, the state actually held a grand opening for a new Child Services Support Center to help the childcare industry so people who are interested in maybe opening an in-home daycare to, you know, watch some of the kids in the neighborhood, and also people who want to open a stand-alone facility that they can come in and get the resources to help set that up because if you talk to people that work in childcare, that can be a really bureaucratic process.

Obviously you have to go through safety checks and all sorts of background things so it's a multi-step process, and they're trying to make that easier so they can build that capacity.

So one of the great things about the $160 million that he announced was that it's supposed to double the number of families who are able to receive subsidies for the state, so that's not insignificant.

That's a big number of people that are going to help because we all know if you have a kid how expensive childcare can be.

It can cost more than in-state college tuition here in the state, and it's not changing anytime soon.

-We have to make sure that we get in the GOP response.

State Senator James Settelmeyer talked about this is a one-time use of money.

Here's what he had to say.

(James Settelmeyer) The governor has so far relied on how Nevada will spend the $6.7 billion in pandemic relief assistance from the federal government, but spending money is not leadership.

Leadership is about making our government more efficient and effective for the people.

This money will be spent to grow the government's size but with no thought of how to fund that growth when the money is gone.

But those new programs will continue, and this undisciplined spending is a contributing factor to the inflation and skyrocketing cost of living that is harming so many Nevadans.

-What do you think about what he had to say?

-You know, I think it's smart to make that comparison if you're the minority party here in the state.

The Democrats have all the control over this massive amount of money, and I think there is valid concern that if you implement a bunch of great programs and then in 2025 when this money runs out, people are going to be upset and they're going to go well, maybe we should keep this.

These things are benefiting us.

Like oh, it's great that we're putting more people in homes.

It's great that we're focused on teacher recruitment because we've had teacher shortages for how long in this state, right?

Like when this money goes away, there's going to be a case to be made about well, maybe we should keep some of these things, right?

And that's going to be a highly political debate which we could go on for a whole long time.

But that is definitely a concern, and they're right to point it out from their perspective because it hasn't really been a bipartisan process because it hasn't had to be and because they just have different priorities in things.

So we'll see how it plays out.

But that's the weird thing about this timing is that it's an off year.

We have an election coming up that may change the makeup of the Nevada Legislature.

We may have a new governor that would agree more with Settelmeyer than with Sisolak.

So who knows what happens.

It's a lot up in the air right now.

-How political were these two speeches in an election year?

-It's funny because, you know, our comparison for an off year is Gibbons from 2010 where there was a crisis and we were going to have to cut things and we were trying to figure out how to survive, and now the opposite is we just have all of this influx of money.

So it really did look like Sisolak's speech really had a feel of a campaign event too of just saying look at how much we're helping and look how much money.

It's not a thing we normally see in government.

-Nevada is one of 27 states that has the death penalty, but because of various legal issues has been unable to execute anyone on death row in more than a decade.

The case of Zane Floyd is highlighting the strange state of the death penalty in Nevada.

In 1999, Floyd walked into a Las Vegas grocery store and shot and killed four people after kidnapping and raping a woman that same day.

A jury sentenced him to death in 2000, but more than 20 years have passed and in the most recent development, a drug that was set to be used in his lethal injection expired.

Joining us to help make sense of the death penalty in Nevada is Katie Durante, an assistant professor at Nevada State College, along with Mark Bettencourt, project director of the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Whether the death penalty is morally right or wrong is something that I want to try to avoid, but to be up front with our viewers, both of you do oppose the death penalty.

The purpose of this conversation though is the state of the death penalty in Nevada and whether it actually exists.

The law says it does, but there are 65 inmates on death row in Nevada, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, yet 2006 was the last time someone was executed.

So Zane Floyd's case, he wants to stay alive.

He's been using the legal system to delay his execution.

It could have happened in February, but a drug that was going to be used in his injection expired.

So why does the state not have any other drugs that it can use in his case, Mark?

(Mark Bettencourt) Thank you, Amber.

I think there's a lot of reasons why, and this is a phenomenon we're seeing across the country, is drug manufacturers don't want to see their drugs used to take lives.

They want to see them saving lives.

And this is the same thing we saw in Nevada, and really in many ways we're in the same place after these drugs expired for Mr. Floyd's potential execution.

Three years ago the state of Nevada was struggling to move forward with an execution in the case of Scott Dozier, a gentleman who unfortunately took his own life while in the care of the Department of Corrections.

But the drug manufacturers eventually settled out of court with the state of Nevada and handed over those drugs that were acquired through ill-gotten means or subterfuge, as the courts put it.

And we're in the same place now where manufacturers and the manufacturer of ketamine, Hikma, doesn't want to see these drugs used and has already sent a cease and desist letter to the Attorney General's office, and yet here we are still trying to move forward with this execution and now we see these drugs have expired and we're seeing the same thing happen across the country.

-I'm glad you brought up Scott Dozier because unlike Zane Floyd, Scott Dozier waived his appeal and said okay, I would like to die, yet it still couldn't happen and he ended up taking his own life.

Why can't there be another method used to execute Zane Floyd or any of the other prisoners on death row?

(Katie Durante) Yes.

So in the state of Nevada, the only legal mechanism or the only legal modality for executions is lethal injection, and it is up to the Nevada Department of Corrections to decide which drugs are most appropriate for executions.

However, what we know is that historically, states used to rely on the same three-drug cocktail, but as Mark said manufacturers no longer want their drugs associated with executions.

Pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers want their drugs saving lives and not to be associated with taking lives, so it makes it really difficult to find a replacement.

And when we talk about alternatives which have been proposed, experimental drug cocktails, that opens up the State of Nevada for lawsuits both from defense attorneys defending their clients saying that you're using them as human guinea pigs, experimenting with these drug cocktails, as well as pharmaceutical companies who, as we said, don't want their drugs associated with execution.

So they're kind of getting it both ways.

-And there is an example in Arizona.

How are they trying to pursue the death penalty or utilize it?

-Yes.

There's a new phenomenon happening in Arizona where they've faced similar problems moving forward in acquiring drugs, and now they're trying to attempt to use cyanide gas, which was employed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust in gas chambers, to now execute individuals on their death row in Arizona.

-All right.

So that's the case in Arizona.

But in Nevada the law states it has to be lethal injection, yet the state cannot get access to any of these drugs.

How likely is it, would you say, that an inmate on death row in this state is going to be executed within let's say the next five years?

-I think it's incredibly unlikely, although not impossible.

I think it is unclear that the state of Nevada has any legal way to perform an execution.

That being said, things can change.

-I'll ask you the same question.

-Yes.

I'll mirror what Katie said.

I think that there's-- it's never impossible, and the history of the death penalty is a history of jurisdictions trying to find new creative ways to carry out state-sanctioned murder and I don't think that there's anything that would prevent the state from seeking-- continuing to seek the execution of Zane Floyd, as we've seen.

They've been looking to carry out the execution for almost a year at this point and they still haven't managed to, but I don't think anything will stop the state from trying to seek that and ultimately costing us tens of millions of dollars in litigation and appeals that could have been better spent being put back into our communities to prevent these violent crimes from ever having happened in the first place.

-Will you explain a little bit more about the costs associated with appeals, because these are attorneys, I mean, at least within the prosecutor's office, that are already being paid to do this work.

You're saying that it would be better for them to be working on something else as opposed to this?

-Not necessarily.

The death penalty itself incurs a lot of costs, not necessarily just in appeals, but right up front.

There are a lot of specifics that actually mean there have to be more lawyers present, and there are a lot of other things that actually are kicked into gear once someone has decided to seek the death penalty, and that decision is left explicitly up to the prosecutor's office.

We've heard former prosecutors testify to the fact that oftentimes that decision is being made by one, sometimes two individuals who really have that power over life and death.

-Katie, you said the likelihood is low for someone to be executed here in the state within the next five years, so that begs the question, why does the death penalty continue to be sought?

Just last month prosecutors with the Clark County District Attorney's Office did seek the penalty against Jesus Uribe.

We invited Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson to come on the show to talk about that, but he was unable to participate.

Here is what he said during Nevada's legislative session last year in opposition to Assembly Bill 395, which would have abolished capital punishment.

-We seek the death penalty in killings involving children, where extreme torture or mutilation is involved, or when there are multiple decedents.

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 someone who kills one person the same as someone who kills two, three, ten or sixty?

I say no.

-Hmmm.

There are a lot of aspects he includes: Fairness.

Implying whether it's a deterrent-- if you're going to kill one person versus two people, would you think you're going to get a harsher punishment?

Also, he claims judicious use of seeking the death penalty, that his office does not seek it very often.

Of all that he included, let's start with you, Katie.

What do you want to respond to?

-I would first say I would question how we quantify and define who is the worst of the worst.

When we look at who is on death row and who is executed, what we see is these people are disproportionately suffering from mental illness.

They're suffering from diminished intellectual capacity.

Last year in the United States, 11 people were executed and 10 of them had serious mental illness or intellectual disabilities.

So I think I have to question who we're really sentencing, which to me points to systemic issues.

We also know that juries are more likely to vote to execute somebody who is-- or vote to sentence somebody to death who is a black defendant, and we also know that if the victim was white, juries are also more likely to sentence them to death.

So we also see racial disparities and socioeconomic disparities, so is it the worst of the worst, or is it people who had the worst defense counsel and the people who have the most diminished capacity to defend themselves?

-Talking about diminished mental capacities, how does Zane Floyd fit into that?

-Yes.

Zane Floyd is somebody who has documented PTSD as well as fetal alcohol syndrome, but that's not to say he didn't commit horrific crimes.

He absolutely did.

But I think we need to consider the mitigating circumstances and the life circumstances that would lead somebody to commit such a terrible action.

-Mark, from what the District Attorney said, what stuck out to you?

-Yes, and if I might add one thing about Zane Floyd, it's the fact that there are also significant mitigating factors that Katie's talking about that weren't actually explained in detail to the jury that decided Mr. Floyd's fate, and they still haven't.

There's never been an opportunity for that, and hopefully the Board of Pardons and Governor Sisolak will eventually hear his plea for clemency.

But back to District Attorney Wolfson's comments, I of course follow what my compatriot is saying but I would like to also add that the District Attorney's Office specifically in Clark County has not been judicious with its use of the death sentence.

It is a fact that here in Clark County, we have one of the highest rates of new death sentences sought in the country.

And we are in fact only below four other counties-- and that's counties, not states, counties-- in the country for new death sentences over the past three or four years.

And that's not new, and in fact since 2012, we've seen that District Attorney Wolfson's office has actually sought death sentences against people of color, specifically black people, at a significantly higher rate and a disproportionate rate in our state.

And just to put a final pin on it, I think that as Katie pointed out, there is a lot of discretion in the District Attorney's Office, and there are also aggravating factors that the District Attorney is supposed to follow which are not specifically around.

While there is one aggravating factor that specifically focuses on the number of people who have become victims, that is not the only aggravating factor, and we know for a fact that the death penalty is not reserved for people who have murdered more than one individual.

-I want to talk about Assembly Bill 395 from the last legislative session.

It did not pass.

It got through the Assembly but after that, before going to the Senate, Governor Steve Sisolak said no, no.

Quote, at this time there is no path forward for Assembly Bill 395 this legislative session.

I've been clear on my position that capital punishment should be sought and used less often, but I believe there are severe situations that warrant it.

I understand there are those who will be disappointed by this outcome; however, the process of determining which crimes are severe enough to warrant this punishment deserves thoughtful consideration.

Okay.

If that is the case, what else is there though for prosecutors that-- does this empower them in any way to have access to the death penalty?

-Yes.

So the death penalty can be used as a plea bargaining chip, right?

I think we need to think of courts through the lens of bureaucracy.

Courts are bureaucracies.

They have the goal of processing as many cases as they can as fast as possible as being efficient, and this means it requires a vast majority of cases to be pled out instead of ever going to trial.

So this allows the prosecutor to say hey, instead of seeking the death penalty, we'll give you a life sentence, and people are making the hard decision to forego their trial in order to save their own lives.

And the problem with this to me is do we want to live in a state, do we want to live in a country where people are deciding to spend their lives in prison because they're afraid of the state seeking to kill them?

And in return the state isn't even held liable to prove their case, right, because in this case if they're pleading out, they don't ever have to prove that the person is actually guilty of the crimes they committed or they're being accused of having committed.

-And we also understand as we mentioned earlier that the people who are, you know, having the death sentence sought in their cases are in most cases the most vulnerable people who are coming into the courtroom.

They are people who need defense appointed.

They're indigent at the time of their trial.

They're people who, at least in Nevada, a quarter of which have mental illness, intellectual disability, past trauma or abuse, and these are the people who are having that very terrifying and in some ways impossible choice.

-One last question for both of you.

Public opinion is changing, but a Pew Research poll from last year showed that a majority of people still favor the death penalty.

What do you believe is behind that support?

-Yes, excellent question.

I think one thing I would point out is historically, coming from that academic research background, we know the way those questions are asked are highly indicative of how people will answer them.

So I think it's that we can't draw any conclusions from a single poll.

I would also say I think the death penalty isn't an institution that most Americans are thinking about regularly so that's something to consider, as I don't think people are very familiar with the issue.

-Anything you want to add?

-Yes.

I would add that there was also a new recent poll that showed a majority of Americans, bipartisan, in the 60 percentile, actually opposed the death penalty and executions of people who have mental illness, veterans with PTSD like Zane Floyd, and when we look at the cross section of who is receiving the death penalty and the reality of the death penalty, we see that a majority of Americans actually oppose these executions and oppose the use of the death penalty.

-Mark and Katie, thank you so much for your time.

And thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on this show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

♪♪♪