By S. Alex Spelman

In the heart of a civil rights movement demanding radical transformation, the abolition of the multi-million-dollar, ineffective, racially skewed death penalty calls out as common sense for this year’s special session. Ending this practice would be a critical step on the long march to equality and justice for our communities of color and, in fact, would benefit all Nevadans. In a state facing a drastic budget crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic, a state that regularly ranks dead last in the nation for the quality of our public education, and where our largest mental health facility is the Clark County Detention Center, the immense, multi-million dollar savings from abolishing the death penalty can and should be reinvested into our communities in a way that would actually result in safer, more prosperous lives.

Like so many other aspects of our criminal “justice” system, Nevada imposes the death penalty disproportionately upon our Black community. Research shows that the two primary factors that decide whether a person will be sentenced to die are geography and race. The reasons for this are many, but one example is the pattern of prosecutors excluding people of color from juries. Indeed, just here in Nevada between the years 2012 and 2017, the Nevada Supreme Court has needed to reverse convictions four times because prosecutors unconstitutionally removed African-Americans from the jury without providing a reasonable explanation for why they were being removed. Three of those were cases in which the jury sentenced the defendant to death. 

Another cause of racial disparity on death row could be that “Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than white people,” as researchers found at the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of California, Irvine, Newkirk Center for Science & Society, University of Michigan Law School, and Michigan State University College of Law. All told, the factors leading to racial disparity on death row are too complex and numerous for the purposes of this short article, but the end result is chilling: while the Black community represents merely 8 percent of our state’s total population, they constitute nearly 40 percent of the people on our death row. 

Take a moment to let that sink in.

The racially disparate, legalized killing of Black Nevadans is more than enough of a reason to demand this practice be ended immediately. 

The flaws don’t end there. The death penalty is a multi-million-dollar expenditure. According to a 2014 study commissioned by the Legislature, the cost of a case can nearly double when the prosecution chooses to seek the death penalty. On average, adding together the cost of pre-trial proceedings, trial, appeals, and incarceration, a death penalty case will cost over half a million dollars more than if the prosecution were to simply seek life imprisonment. In fact, we spend nearly a half million dollars more on death penalty cases even when the jury ultimately refuses the prosecution’s request to sentence the defendant to death.

The huge costs of seeking the death penalty are especially troublesome when you consider that in the past decade alone, in Clark County, prosecutors sought the death penalty in more than 130 cases, but juries returned a verdict of death in just 18. The estimated added cost of all of this to the taxpayer was $60 million—money that could have gone to mental health services, resources or housing for the homeless, education, or other social services designed to improve lives in our marginalized communities. This multi-million-dollar program is an incredible, irresponsible waste of money.

Yet Clark County prosecutors stubbornly persist in seeking the death penalty to this day despite the fact that we are in the middle of an unprecedented budget crisis in our government—facing the possibility of massive layoffs or salary cuts—and that Nevada does not even have the necessary drugs to carry out an execution. It needs to stop.

Of course, the problems with the death penalty do not end with its exorbitant cost. Research shows zero link between the death penalty and crime prevention. You read that right, there is no evidence that the death penalty makes us safer. Studies suggest the psychological and emotional wellbeing of victims is actually better served in jurisdictions without the death penalty. We continue to discover a growing number of innocent people on death row, saved before their executions only by the fortuitous discovery of exonerating evidence after their trials. The death penalty disproportionately targets Black people, communities of color, those unable to afford legal representation, and those living with mental illness or suffering from past abuse or trauma. And it carries a multi-million-dollar price tag even though juries do not return a death verdict in the vast majority of cases in which prosecutors seek it — and even when juries have returned a death verdict, Nevada still hasn’t formally executed anyone in over a decade. 

Yet Nevada recently spent nearly one million dollars on a new execution chamber even though drug manufacturers refuse to provide their drugs to the state for executions, so the state is unable to execute anyone. This long list of deep issues with the death penalty might help explain why the United States is the only industrialized Western democracy that still has it. This program is a disaster from every perspective. Its abolition would mean a huge windfall both for civil rights and our budget in a time when Nevada needs victories on both these fronts.

Yet, despite the clear benefits to abolishing the death penalty, I am deeply concerned that our political leaders do not have their fingers on the pulse of the current political moment. Most of them earned their stripes during a bygone era of centrist, “tough on crime” politics. But this is not Nevada anymore. Look out the window. We are in the middle of perhaps the largest civil rights movement in some of our lifetimes. Protests against police brutality and structural racism in our criminal “justice” system persist all over the world, every day, including right here in Nevada. Yet make no mistake—as Will Smith pointed out, “Racism isn't getting worse; it's getting filmed.”

And while abolition of the death penalty alone would not resolve all the structural racism in our racially oppressive institutions, it is still a vitally important piece of the puzzle. In the words of Mark Bettencourt, Director of the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty, “the death penalty serves as the crown jewel of dehumanization, discrimination, and wasteful government spending” in our criminal legal system. Its abolition would do an immense amount of good for the advancement of equality and justice in Nevada, especially for communities of color.

I would humbly suggest that in this special legislative session—not next year, and not the session after—that the Legislature abolish the death penalty in order to stop this racist, unreliable institution from causing further harm to our society. The multi-million-dollar savings can do so much good re-invested directly into our communities. This money could be a lifeline during an unprecedented government budget crisis, to maintain the basic social services our local governments already provide and to invest needed funds into increased mental health services, job services, housing, and other much-needed social services that have actually been proven to make our society safer and more prosperous. 

Now is the time to act, not after the November election. If you are a legislator and believe waiting to act on this will help your chances in November, I would encourage you to consider two things. First, recent elections and mass protests show you have a mandate for meaningful, radical reform to our criminal legal institutions now, in the heart of this civil rights moment. Second, calls to wait are nothing new, but in the ears of civil rights advocates and voters alike, “This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never,’” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explained in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Yet as he also explained, “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.” 

I believe at this time in Nevada’s history, it is inaction that voters would not forgive, and bold action that will actually win their support and respect in November. Our community deserves—in fact, demands—bold progress now.

S. Alex Spelman is a public defender who represents Nevada death row inmates in state and federal post-conviction proceedings. The views expressed herein are his own and not the views of his employer.