The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed executions in four states, including Texas where the prisoner volunteered for the death penalty, pending its decision in a case challenging lethal injections.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada wants the state to also put a hold on executions, at least until the high court rules in a case in which death penalty opponents take issue with the three chemicals used in Kentucky in lethal injections — the same three drugs used in Nevada.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in January on the Kentucky case and is expected to rule this spring. The Nevada Supreme Court has not set oral arguments in the case in which the ACLU is seeking to block the execution of Las Vegas killer Patrick Castillo.
Castillo was sentenced to death for the November 1998 tire-iron slaying of 86-year-old Isabelle Bernd in her Las Vegas home. He stole money, a VCR and silverware afterward. Castillo had given up his appeals and was ready to be executed in October, but the ACLU obtained a writ from the Nevada Supreme Court stopping the execution.
Nevada injects the condemned inmate with sodium thiopental to render him unconscious. It then administers pancuronium bromide or Pavulon to stop involuntary spasms. Then the death drug — potassium chloride — is injected.
The Nevada attorney general’s office argues that the drugs ensure the inmate is unconscious so he cannot feel pain.
But ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein says Pavulon masks whether the condemned man feels any pain. It “acts as a chemical veil” to hide the inmate’s physical reactions, concealing whether he is in pain when the final drug is administered.
If not enough sodium thiopental is given, the Pavulon stops witnesses from seeing any reaction to pain during the execution, Lichtenstein said.
“This case involves restrictions on the ability of execution witnesses to observe the inmate’s manifestation of pain and of the press to serve its watchdog function by reporting such manifestations,” Lichtenstein said.
Gary Taylor, an assistant public defender representing Castillo, said the inmate is “watching the pleadings” but has not changed his mind on pursuing further appeals.
Thirty-six states and the federal government use lethal injection as a method of execution. Twenty states and the federal government have filed briefs in the Kentucky case backing the method. Nevada joined in Texas’ brief supporting lethal injection.
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The Nevada Supreme Court has overturned the extortion conviction of a couple for trying to shake down $13.5 million from the husband of entertainer Celine Dion to keep silent over a sexual assault allegation against him.
The court said the couple should have been allowed to present their version of the truth about the alleged March 2000 assault of Yun Kyeong Sung by Rene Angelil in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Sung and her husband, Ae Hoe Kwon, were sentenced to 12 to 48 months on extortion and conspiracy convictions, overturned by the court. But the court left standing a conviction on a charge of a witness soliciting a bribe.
Angelil paid $2 million to the couple in June 2000 and in return received some physical evidence and a confidentiality agreement.
In March 2002 an attorney for the couple filed a civil suit alleging rape and demanding $20 million, an HIV test and an apology from Angelil. The couple also filed a complaint with the police.
Attorneys for the couple eventually asked for $13.5 million and a meeting was set up between both sides. Detective Mike Wilson, posing as Angelil’s business agent, was at the meeting. After about a one-hour discussion that was taped, Sung and Kwon were arrested.
At the trial prosecutors maintained there was no rape and that Kwon intended to publish a libelous book about the allegations. District Judge Jackie Glass ruled that the couple could not present evidence that showed whether the sexual assault actually occurred, saying it had no relevance to the extortion charges.
Defense attorneys Robert Langford and Lisa Rasmussen argued to the Supreme Court that the couple had the right to introduce evidence intended to prove that the rape took place, and had a right to seek money in exchange for not publishing a book about the incident.
The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice Mark Gibbons, said that “truth is a defense to an extortion charge based upon a libel theory.”
The trial judge also erred, Gibbons wrote, in not giving the jury an instruction that accurately defined libel.
Both Sung, 52, and Kwon, 55, have been discharged from their extortion convictions and are now serving a 28-to-108-months sentence on the witness charge — Sung at the Southern Nevada Women’s Correctional Center in North Las Vegas and Kwon at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City.
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