LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — It has been 20 years since the Nevada Department of Corrections carried out an execution.
In April, the Clark County District Attorney’s Office asked the courts to issue warrants for the execution of three long-time death row inmates. Then, in July, the office reversed course and paused those requests, citing pending litigation.
So why has it been so long since Nevada carried out the ultimate punishment? FOX5 Investigates wanted to find out.
Drug shortage stalled executions
Daryl Mack was the last to die by lethal injection, in April 2006. Nevada uses a combination of sedatives, synthetic opioids and paralyzing agents for executions.
After Mack’s death, those drugs became harder to find as pharmaceutical companies refused to sell them for executions. The Death Penalty Information Center says that in 2016, the Department of Corrections sent out 247 proposals to drugmakers but received no bids.
Two years later, drugmaker Alvogen filed a lawsuit to recover the drugs in the state’s stockpile. In 2020, Nevada gave them all back. In a May court filing, state attorneys admitted the Department of Corrections has none of the drugs it needs and that previously obtained drugs have expired.
The drug shortage, the lawsuits and the cost of decades-long appeals raised a question: why do Clark County prosecutors still pursue the death penalty at all?
Scott Coffey, a longtime criminal defense attorney in Las Vegas and former chief of the Clark County Public Defender’s homicide unit, discussed the issue.
“At any given time, my team would handle 80 to 100 murder cases, including a dozen or more capital cases,” Coffey said.
No move toward alternative methods
Nevada has not moved toward a different way of carrying out executions, even as other states test new drug combinations or alternative methods.
“I don’t know that there’s much of an appetite in Nevada for alternative methods of execution. Part of that has to do with the problems you’ve had in other states… Ohio, Georgia, other places where executions have been botched,” Coffey said.
“As soon as you start experimenting, it gets more difficult… I’m not sure there is much of an appetite to change the method of execution in Nevada. In fact, I’m almost positive that there’s not,” Coffey said.
Prosecutors sought execution dates for three inmates
Nevada cannot find the drugs and has no appetite to change methods, but Clark County prosecutors went back to court this spring, asking judges to set execution dates for three of the state’s longest-serving death row inmates: Zane Floyd, Donald Sherman and Sterling Atkins.
Floyd killed four people in a mass shooting at a Las Vegas grocery store in 1999. Sherman bludgeoned a retired doctor to death with a hammer in 1994. Atkins raped and killed a North Las Vegas mother in 1994.
All three have exhausted their standard course of appeals. For Floyd, that process took 21 years.
In July, the Clark County District Attorney’s Office asked judges to pause those execution requests, citing pending litigation but offering no further explanation.
Cost of appeals
The Death Penalty Information Center estimates the price of death row appeals ranges between $1 million and $3 million. Coffey said that cost and the time are built into the system and are necessary.
“If you’re going to execute somebody, you want to make darn sure the process is done right, that their due process rights are protected. And that takes time,” Coffey said.
“By the time you add all those things together, it is very expensive because you have multiple investigations, you have multiple court time,” Coffey said.
More than half of death sentences overturned
Since the 1970s, Nevada has sentenced 190 people to death. More than half of those sentences have been overturned on appeal for reasons including ineffective defense work and new evidence.
“We’ve got 190 death sentences in Nevada. More than half of those have been overturned by the courts for whatever reason it might be… failure of counsel to do what they should have done at trial, failure to investigate. Sometimes people are actually innocent, right?” Coffey said.
Why prosecutors keep pursuing it
Coffey offered a theory on why prosecutors continue to seek the death penalty despite the cost and complications.
“That is a good question and one that makes me scratch my head on occasion. Why do prosecutors continue to seek the death penalty?” Coffey said.
“To understand the death penalty in Nevada, you have to understand geography. Whether or not someone seeks the death penalty is more dependent on where are shots fired than what actually happened in the crime,” Coffey said.
“That’s because Clark County has the money to pursue the death penalty. We pursue it at a higher rate than any place else in the country,” Coffey said.
Data from the Death Penalty Information Center shows Clark County ranks fifth in the nation for new death sentences over a recent five-year period.
Over nearly five decades, Nevada has executed 12 people, 11 of them inmates who gave up their appeals. Dozens more remain on death row in a state that hasn’t carried out an execution in 20 years and still has no clear path to resume them.
FOX5 Investigates has reached out to District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s office several times over the past several months. Thus far, they have not responded. The Department of Corrections also failed to respond to questions about the status of its execution preparedness.
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