Court Opinion

ID: 9538871
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:43:09.517488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:13.012361
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
dissenting:
I dissent to the judgment of conviction and to the death penalty judgment. With respect to the judgment of conviction I agree with the majority that the prosecutor was guilty of misconduct and that the language used by the prosecutor was “clearly inflammatory.” I agree with the majority that the prosecutor engaged in the use of “demeaning and unprofessional remarks” and that the prosecutor’s references to the defendant as a rabid animal were “wholly unnecessary.” Further, I agree with the majority that the “improper comments made by the prosecutor” were indeed “prosecutor’s misconduct.”
I would join with the majority in “admonish[ing] the prosecutor for suggesting that Jones’ violent tendencies could be visited *476upon individual jurors”; but I would not, like the majority, sweep all of this misconduct under the rug and let the prosecutor engage in all of this misconduct without paying any price for it.
The majority says that there is “overwhelming evidence” of guilt in this case. What the majority should have said is that there is overwhelming evidence of homicide committed by Jones. There is, of course, a big difference between the two. In this case, for example, proof that Jones is guilty of intentional, deliberated first-degree murder is anything but overwhelming; in fact, it is quite weak. This is a crime of passion. As stated in the majority opinion, Jones and Williams (his girlfriend) got into a fight and were “struggling . . . over what appeared to be a bank card.” The homicide was committed “after a night of drinking and smoking crack cocaine.” There is no question that Jones killed his girlfriend, but there is certainly a strong argument that the killing was committed in the heat of passion; and there is certainly ample ground to believe that this may not have been a premeditated murder. The majority asserts that it might have reversed if this had been a “weaker case.” This is a “weaker case.” Although there is no doubt that Jones killed his girlfriend, there are all kinds of doubts about his mental state at the time of the stabbing. Even, however, if Jones’ defense were “weak,” what I find to be “weak” is the majority’s admonition to the prosecutors, telling them, in effect: “Look out prosecutors, because one of these days we might hold you accountable for such things as telling the jury that the defendant is a rabid animal who, unless convicted, will come back to kill jurors.”
With respect to the death penalty judgment, it is very clear to me that multiple stab wounds do not, of themselves, constitute mutilation. Mutilation is intentional mayhem that goes “beyond the act of killing.” Browne v. State, 113 Nev. 305, 933 P.2d 187 (1997). The majority’s discussion of this aggravating factor is so superficial and incomplete that it is hardly worth responding to. Under the incomplete definition of mutilation recited in the majority any fatal gunshot to the head would be sufficient to constitute mutilation because, clearly, any such wound would “alter radically” the brain of the victim “so as to make [it] imperfect.” There is insufficient evidence of mutilation as an aggravator, and this, at the very least, should have been recognized by the majority. This case calls for a new penalty hearing.