Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 | 4:18 p.m.
CARSON CITY — The Nevada Supreme Court ruled today that Javier Righetti should stand trial for the torture slaying of a 15-year-old girl in Las Vegas and that the prosecution could seek the death penalty.
The court, in a unanimous decision written by Justice Kristina Pickering, rejected arguments to block consideration of the death penalty.
Righetti is accused of the rape and killing of Alyssa Otremba as she headed home from school in September 2011. Righetti previously pleaded guilty in the case without negotiations with the District Attorney’s Office, but he did not plead guilty to one count that the killing was “willful, deliberate and premeditated,” according to court records. That would limit the prosecution from seeking the death penalty.
A judge later approved a motion to invalidate the guilty pleas.
Defense attorneys argued a District Court judge had no right to invalidate the guilty pleas.
Pickering said a previous court decision holds a defendant does not have a right to plead guilty to a lesser offense than that charged in an indictment without the consent of the prosecution.
The court also rejected an argument that Righetti faces double jeopardy by pleading guilty to all but one of the counts and the judge could not toss out the guilty pleas.
Pickering said the double jeopardy protection “is not to shield defendants like Righetti from their decisions to gamble on a novel interpretation of law which ultimately proved unsuccessful.”
