KVIG Informative

Clark County spent nearly two years rebuilding how it investigates people killed by police, adding an ombudsman and lawyers for officers to a process the public had stopped trusting. The Nevada Supreme Court threw out the entire rebuilt system in one ruling — over a single sentence nobody flagged until officers sued.

Nevada law lets a county board of commissioners create a coroner’s office, under NRS 244.163. Clark County set out its coroner’s-inquest duties in the Clark County Code of Ordinances, Title 2, Chapter 2.12, according to the Nevada Supreme Court’s own case summary of the dispute that followed. The chapter defines an “officer-involved death” as one in which an officer, acting in an official capacity, used force that may have contributed to the death, along with certain vehicle crashes an officer helped cause and deaths with reasonable grounds to suspect an unnatural cause, the summary states.

Under the ordinance, the coroner calls an inquest after an officer-involved death, and the chief judge of the township appoints a “qualified magistrate” — defined as a justice of the peace who is a Nevada-licensed attorney — to preside, according to the same summary.

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By 2010, that process had lost public confidence, according to testimony Nevada lawmakers heard the following year. A review panel formed that year voted 8-2 to recommend changes, according to minutes of an April 14, 2011, hearing before the Assembly Committee on Government Affairs. Panel members named in the minutes included then-Nevada Supreme Court Justice Bill Maupin, Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy, then-District Attorney David Roger, then-Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, Phil Kohn, Richard Boulware, Chris Collins, law professor Christopher Blakesley and Jose Solorio.

The panel’s recommendations, described in that same testimony, added an ombudsman meant to balance the proceedings, gave officers legal representation and refocused hearings on factual findings rather than assigning fault. The Clark County Board of Commissioners adopted the changes, and Gillespie accepted them, according to the minutes.

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Nevada Highway Patrol officers facing their own inquests under the revised ordinance sued, arguing it violated their constitutional rights, according to the Nevada Supreme Court’s summary of the case. Clark County’s district court consolidated their complaints, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the inquests, and then upheld all but one provision of the ordinance. The officers appealed.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in the officers’ favor on Oct. 25, 2012, in Hernandez v. Bennett-Haron, 128 Nev. Adv. Op. 54. The court found the inquest process itself did not violate due process, since it is investigative and fact-finding only — it cannot adjudicate legal rights, recommend charges to prosecutors, or assign fault or guilt, the opinion states. But one provision, Clark County Code section 2.12.010(l), required a justice of the peace to serve as the inquest’s presiding officer. The court ruled that provision unconstitutional: only the Legislature sets justice court jurisdiction, and NRS 259.050(4) doesn’t allow a justice of the peace to take part in inquests run by a county, like Clark, that has an appointed coroner.

That presiding-officer provision couldn’t be separated from the rest of the ordinance, the court found, so striking it down left Clark County’s entire inquest scheme for officer-involved deaths with no legal presiding officer at all. The county had spent two years rebuilding a process meant to restore public trust in how it investigates police killings. One sentence about who could run the hearing erased it in a single ruling.