City of Reno's cost to defend against councilmember Jenny Brekhus' lawsuit jumps to $150k

RGJ voter guide: Meet the six Southern Nevadans seeking spots on the state Supreme Court

Races features two former state lawmakers and the court's sitting chief justice

James DeHaven
Reno Gazette Journal

One thing’s certain about the June 9 race for the Nevada Supreme Court: The winners will be from Las Vegas.

All six contenders for a seat on the high court currently reside in Southern Nevada, though a few will be familiar to northerners who closely follow headline-grabbing murder cases and criminal justice reform efforts at the state Legislature. 

Here’s what we know about the hopefuls, based on their statements from the campaign trail and interviews with the Reno Gazette Journal.

Supreme Court Seat D

The three-way race to replace retiring Chief Justice Mark Gibbons might be the most contentious judicial contest on the June 9 ballot.

Two-term Assemblyman Ozzie Fumo, D-Las Vegas, has pitched himself as the most dynamic candidate in the race, noting he’s the only hopeful with firsthand experience in “writing legislation, trying death penalty cases, and effectively arguing cases to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.”

The longtime public defender decided he wanted to represent the accused after his own brush with the law in 1988, when he was briefly jailed for a traffic offense and found himself shocked at how he and other inmates were treated.

“They treated me like I had committed a murder,” Fumo said. “That treatment made me think I’ve got to do something to help these people.”

Fumo spearheaded a number of progressive criminal justice reforms as a state lawmaker, including bills that would’ve banned the death penalty and limited the use of cash bail — measures he’s used to bolster his case as the populist pick for the job.

The Nevada Supreme Court has upheld a $1 million verdict against a security firm accused of not doing enough to prevent the fatal attack of a man in a crime-riddled Las Vegas Wal-Mart parking lot.

He has also sought to heighten the contrast with his best-known opponent, seasoned prosecutor and District Court Judge Douglas Herndon.

Herndon may be the most recognizable of the pair after presiding over a string of high-profile cases in the late '90s and early 2000s.

The 55-year-old Texas native made headlines after a bomb was found at his home in 1997. Nine years later, he presided over the famed Darren Mack murder case that sent cable news cameras scrambling to the Biggest Little City. Two years after that, Herndon upheld the state’s controversial indoor smoking ban, a case that he said prompted by far the most vitriol he’s faced in his time on the bench.

Assemblyman Ozzie Fumo, D-Las Vegas, pictured in an undated campaign photo.

Early in his career, Herndon also helped prosecute Fred Steese, a recently pardoned long-haul truck driver who spent more than two decades in prison after being wrongfully convicted for the 1995 murder of a Las Vegas casino worker.

Herndon and his colleagues were accused of withholding evidence from defense attorneys that would have proved Steese was not in Nevada at the time of the murder.

That has none gone unnoticed by his opponents.

“The Supreme Court is no place to learn on the job,” Fumo said of the case during a May virtual town hall hosted by the Washoe County Democratic Party. “The last time (Herndon) was learning on the job he was a young district attorney, three years out of law school and he was caught hiding evidence that kept a man in prison for 22 years for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“My opponent knew that, he hid the evidence and Nevada taxpayers will pay $2.2 million for the time (Steese) spent in custody.”

Herndon would later offer tearful testimony in support of a 2019 law that allows former prisoners to seek compensation for wrongful convictions.

He said the Steese case weighs heavily on him every day.

“There’s a lot of time that could be spent dissecting that case,” Herndon said in an interview with the Reno Gazette Journal. “I think there’s several things people don’t know from reading a newspaper article. I came onto that case a week before the trial. I had no involvement in the investigation, in evidence exchanges, anything like that.

“A lot of times, mistakes happen. … I didn’t intentionally or deliberately hide evidence in that case or any other.”

Douglas Herndon

Herndon has cast himself as the most experienced choice for a state Supreme Court seat, regularly pointing out that Fumo has never served as a judge or argued a case before the Supreme Court. 

“I don't think I would be the one learning on the job,” he added.

But Herndon and Fumo do see eye-to-eye on a few things.

Both agree the state Supreme Court, if given the opportunity, should look to reduce prison time for nonviolent offenders.

Each has also proposed ways to speed up courtroom operations, with Fumo pushing to streamline the case-transferring process and Herndon arguing for the use of settlement conferences in criminal cases.

Erv Nelson — a Republican former Assemblyman from Las Vegas and the third contender for Seat D — did not return requests for comment.

Nevada Supreme Court candidate Erv Nelson pictured in an undated courtesy photo

Supreme Court Seat B

This race pits sitting Chief Justice Kristina Pickering against personal injury attorneys Esther Rodriguez and Thomas Christensen.

Pickering, a Reno High School graduate who has served on the court since 2008, has emphasized fairness, impartiality and experience in her latest effort to keep a seat on the high court. 

The 67-year-old Yale graduate described herself as a vocal advocate for access to justice, adding that the coronavirus has taught the state’s court system “a good lesson” in the power of virtual court proceedings.

Chief Justice Kristina Pickering

Pickering said her most important moment on the court came in 2015, when she helped free a Las Vegas man wrongfully convicted of murder in 1994. 

She also said there “perhaps ought to be a wider dialogue” about Nevada’s oft-criticized practice of electing judges, especially when it comes to determining how to get rid of jurists who aren’t doing a good job.

Pickering said she couldn’t identify the philosophical differences between herself and her two opponents, in large part because neither has spent time on the bench.

She named U.S. Supreme Court Justices Robert Jackson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Thurgood Marshall  among the jurists she most admires.

Rodriguez, a Tulane law school graduate, wants to speed up the state’s notoriously sluggish court system by expanding access to the arbitration system.

The 54-year-old former judge pro tem has built a campaign platform focused on “creating a dialogue” with rural Nevadans. She’s filmed commercials in Fallon and stumped in small towns such as Caliente, casting herself as the candidate who will represent the whole state, not just Las Vegas.

Esther C. Rodriguez

Rodriguez hopes that will help set her apart from her opponents.

“We’re coming at this from an entirely different perspective,” she said of her campaign during an interview with the RGJ. “That really distinguishes me, because I have advocated my entire career for the average person on the street.

“That’s what I’m bringing to the bench: Empathy and understanding.”

Rodriguez has also raised concerns about the ongoing politicization of the state and federal judicial system, highlighting the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s recent reversal of that state’s stay-at-home order as one example of a ruling that seemed to “exacerbate political tensions.”

Christensen, a three-time state Supreme Court contender, estimates he’s represented over 4,000 clients over a nearly 40-year legal career.

Most of that time was spent in civil practice, but Christensen said he thinks that would help bring new perspective to the high court’s handling of criminal matters.

The Las Vegas-based attorney is the only Supreme Court hopeful who’s sworn off campaign contributions. Christensen considers donations to be one of several problems with electing judges, though he said he’s also opposed to appointing jurists.

“I’m trying to help repair the system, and campaign contributions are a problem,” he told the Reno Gazette Journal. “I think the thing to do is see what can do to elect people without raising a bunch of money.”

Washoe County voters have already received ballots for the June 9 all-mail primary election. Elections officials have said they will count every vote postmarked by that date. Information on marking and returning ballots is available on the county Registrar of Voters’ website and at nvsos.gov.

Nevada Supreme Court candidate Thomas Christensen pictured in an undated courtesy photo

James DeHaven is the politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal. He covers campaigns, the Nevada Legislature and everything in between. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com right here