Defense lawyers call for execution moratorium

But Jack Finn, a Guinn spokesman, says the governor hasn't received a request from them and won't consider the matter unless he receives one.

The lawyers' call follows a Jan. 27 Nevada Supreme Court decision overturning the 1979 murder conviction of John Francis Mazzan in Washoe District Court for the 1978 murder of Richard C. Minor Jr.

The high court said prosecutors withheld information that might have helped Mazzan's defense.

"I would call upon the governor to issue a moratorium on executions until we can be sure that innocent people aren't being killed," said Patrick Flanagan, Washoe County Bar Association president. Flanagan was responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Nevada's old mandatory death-penalty law and has handled numerous death-row appeals, including the first one for Mazzan.

"If Nevada wants to continue to impose the death sentence, it has to do it in a fair manner," Flanagan said. "That means providing full disclosure to defense counsel to adequately defend against the charges, providing adequate funding for investigators and other expert witnesses in order to level the playing field."

Federal Public Defender Frannie Forsman and Washoe County Public Defender Michael Specchio joined him in the call.

Washoe District Attorney Richard Gammick characterized the moratorium call as "all a bunch of bull."

"We have a system in this country now that gives people due process and gives people everything that is required by law," he said. "All this is is another opportunity for people in the death-penalty defense community to try to stop them again."

Illinois Gov. George Ryan recently put on hold all executions in his state, which in the past 20 years has freed more inmates from death row - 13 - than it has put to death. Illinois became the first of the 38 states with the death penalty to issue a moratorium on executions while the system is examined.

The Nebraska Legislature last year placed a moratorium on executions. The American Bar Association and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops also have called for a halt to executions.

Flanagan said he isn't calling for an end to the death penalty.

He proposes a task force appointed by the governor including representatives of the state public defender's office, the Nevada attorney general's office, the U.S. attorney's office, federal public defender's office and perhaps a governor's staff member.

Complete files on the cases would be assembled in a central location and examined in detail.

Nevada has 86 men and one woman on death row, but many have pleaded guilty and reviews of their cases would not be necessary, Flanagan said.

"I have some very, very serious problems and doubts about the fairness of the Nevada system, particularly when it comes to poor people, which are almost all if not all the people on death row," Forsman said. "The state has never devoted adequate resources to the defense of people charged with capital offenses.

"When we see them many, many years later in federal court, we are sometimes the first people to turn up evidence jurors should have heard the first time around before deciding a person should get the death penalty."

Specchio, saying he joins in the call, said it is "a good idea."

"I would hate to see anybody wrongfully executed in the state of Nevada or anywhere for that matter," he said.

"I applaud the effort. It's a political hot potato to try to attack this thing. I have to applaud the efforts of Gov. Ryan in Illinois for doing it and also Pat Flanagan for doing it."

"It would be morally reprehensible for us to turn our back on this issue because we're talking about the sanctity of human life," Flanagan said. "It's not an issue of whether you're in favor of the death penalty or not. Our Constitution reads 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' We just want to make sure that it's the guilty who are punished, not the innocent."

In the past decade Nevada has executed several people, but only those who waived appeals, essentially volunteering for lethal injection.

Last April, Alvaro Calambro was executed for the 1994 slayings of two people at a Reno U-Haul dealership. Saying he wanted to die, he waived appeals and resisted efforts by others to stop his execution.

Guinn did not try to stop his execution.

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