15 September 2019 :

Paul Browning released after 33 years on death row. On August 21, 2019, Clark County District Judge Douglas Herndon — who in March had dismissing murder and related charges against Browning — ordered state corrections officials to release Browning from custody pending the outcome of the prosecution’s appeal of his order dismissing the charges. Browning’s lawyer, Tim Ford, had questioned Browning’s continued detention, arguing: “How can Mr. Browning be sitting on death row, as he is now, when this court has said all charges against him are dismissed? He’s not even a pretrial detainee, and he’s on death row. That can’t be.” Browning, now 63, Black, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1986 for the robbery and murder of Las Vegas jeweler, Hugo Elsen. Browning was represented at trial by a lawyer who had been practicing criminal defense for less than a year and failed to interview the police who responded to the scene, examine the evidence against Browning, or investigate the crime. The Nevada Supreme Court overturned Browning’s death sentence in 2004 as a result of counsel’s ineffective assistance in the penalty phase of trial, but a second jury — hearing the same evidence against him — resentenced Browning to death in 2007. In 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned Browning’s conviction based on “extreme malfunctions” during the trial. With the death of prosecution witnesses whom Browning’s trial counsel had failed to adequately cross-examine at trial, Judge Herndon dismissed the murder and related charges against Browning, saying “a fair trial consistent with due process is no longer possible.” Browning has consistently maintained his innocence. In his post-conviction appeal, he presented evidence that police and prosecutors had withheld evidence of a bloody footprint found at the scene that did not match Browning’s shoes or foot size, misrepresented blood evidence in the case, manipulated eyewitness testimony, failed to disclose benefits it offered to a key witness who may have committed the murder and framed Browning, and that the stab wounds suffered by Elsen did not “coherently coincide” with the knife prosecutors claimed Browning had used to commit the killing. Browning also argued that a minimally competent defense investigation would have revealed the flaws in the prosecution’s evidence and the falsity of the representations the prosecution had made to the jury. The prosecution’s case unraveled in the post-conviction proceedings. Prosecutors had told the jury that Elsen’s blood had been found on a tan jacket owned by Browning. However, Elsen — who was able to describe his assailant before he died — told police the killer had worn a blue jacket and later DNA testing showed that of the blood on Browning’s jacket was not Elsen’s. Elsen also said his assailant had shoulder-length Jheri curls, which was completely inconsistent with Browning’s Afro-styled hair. Elsen’s wife failed to identify Browning in a lineup, but later testified at trial that he was the killer. A white witness who worked near the crime scene told police she had seen a man run by after the murder and thought it could have been Browning, but when police asked if she could be “more sure” about whom she had seen, she said, “No, I wouldn’t think so. No … They all look the same, and that’s just what I think when I see a black person, that they all look the same.” At trial, though, she unhesitatingly testified that Browning was the man she had seen. Following his release, Browning told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I just want to find a little bit of peace after coming through all this madness.” Speaking about his time on death row, he said: “Being in there that long, you see a lot of things that affect you. You get to know people, no matter how horrendous their crimes were. You see a lot of death — natural causes, suicide. It affects you.” He also spoke about the misconduct in his trial: “It’s about me sitting there in court, starting with the preliminary hearing, and you see the witnesses testifying against you — all of the misconduct that occurred during trial. It’s just unjust. And it kind of hits you, right here in your gut. And that’s what has driven me.”

04 July 2019 :

U.S. District Judge James Mahan reversed Avram Nika’s death sentence. A Washoe District Court jury convicted Nika of murder in July 1995 and sentenced him to death for the Aug. 24, 1994 murder of Edward Smith. Judge Mahan upheld the guilty verdict against Nika, 49, White, a Serbian national, but ruled that Nika's defense didn't present a full picture of his circumstances that might've swayed a jury against voting for the death penalty, and overturned the death penalty sentence. The Nevada Attorney General’s Office has 60 days to file a response. They can either impose a non-capital sentence or grant him a new penalty-phase trial, which means jury selection would need to start within 180 days. The Washoe County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday it had not reviewed the decision and was not ready to comment on what it would do next.

20 May 2019 :

A Washoe County jury has sentenced Tracy Petrocelli, 67, White, to death for the second time. Petrocelli, convicted in 1982 of killing Reno car salesman James Wilson during a test drive in March 1982, was granted a new sentencing trial by a federal appeals court that ruled his rights had been violated during the original trial's penalty phase. Petrocelli also was convicted of kidnapping and fatally shooting girlfriend Melanie Barker, 18, in the Seattle area in late 1981, and in 2008 he was convicted of murder in the 1981 shooting of 30-year-old Dennis Gibson in California. Washoe District Judge Egan Walker has not set a sentencing date.

07 January 2019 :

Scott Dozier, Who Pushed For Execution, Dead of Suicide in Cell. Dozier, 48, White, was found hanging from a bed sheet attached to an air vent in Ely State Prison, according to a news release. No one else was in the cell. “Responding staff made immediate notification to medical staff and attempted to provide emergency medical care until help arrived,” Department of Corrections spokeswoman Brooke Santina told the press. “Dozier was pronounced dead at approximately 4:35 p.m. by emergency medical staff at the scene.” Dozier was arrested on June 25, 2002, in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2005 in Arizona Dozier received a 22-year sentence in the July 27, 200 killing of Jasen Green. After being extradited to Nevada, he stood trial for the April 18, 2002 killing of 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller, who was one of Dozier’s drug associates (methamphetamine).  He was convicted of the murder in September 2007, and received a death sentence on October 3, 2007. Dozier had waived his appeals and told the court that he would rather be put to death than spend more time on death row. The death sentence was upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court on January 23, 2012. Dozier was first slated to be executed on November 14, 2017, and then on July 11, 2018, but his lethal injection was called after the maker of one of the drugs (Alvogen, maker of Midazolam) sued to stop its use. He was placed on suicide watch after the execution was called off. This fall, according to the Marshall Project, he was placed in solitary confinement for mental health reasons, with just some clothing and an anti-suicide blanket. Nevada has not executed an inmate in more than 12 years. When Dozier dropped his appeals, the state had to come up with a new protocol for a lethal injection. That process was complicated when the drug manufacturers objected to their products being used as instruments to death and took legal action.