By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The Mesquite Municipal Court held the first jury trial in its history on Tuesday, Aug. 18.
Judge Ryan Toone presided over a trial involving an incident of Domestic Violence which occurred last August. A jury of six people, assembled from all across Clark County, ended the day-long proceeding with a verdict of guilty.
Toone said that he was pleased with the court’s first foray into the world of the jury trial.
“I think it went very well with only a few hiccups,” Toone said. “Everybody did a good job and things went smoothly and without any trouble.”
State Supreme Court ruling
Because the Mesquite court deals mainly with misdemeanor charges, the need for a jury trial had not ever arisen before. Most of the cases handled, being considered minor in nature, can be handled with a simple bench trial before the judge.
But last year, the Nevada Supreme Court made a decision that changed that. In September, the seven-member court ruled that people accused of misdemeanor Domestic Violence should have the right to a jury trial.
The ruling stemmed from a state law enacted by the 2017 Legislature requiring those convicted of Domestic Violence charges to give up their firearms. In view of this law, the Justices decided that the threat of losing the Second Amendment right made the misdemeanor Domestic Battery charge a more serious offense.
“Given that the Legislature has indicated that the offense of misdemeanor domestic battery is serious, it follows that one facing the charge is entitled to the right to a jury trial,” the decision stated.
Because small municipal courts have not previously been equipped to run a jury trial, many courts are simply charging these cases as Simple Battery in order to avoid the trial requirement altogether, said Mesquite City Attorney Bob Sweetin.
“Municipal courts like Henderson, North Las Vegas and Las Vegas just don’t have the facilities to do jury trials,” Sweetin said. “They would have to lease facilities elsewhere to hold them. So they’ve decided, since it is going to take forever to get these through the system, they just won’t be doing them.”
But Sweetin and Judge Toone take Domestic Violence very seriously in Mesquite.
“Reducing the charge to avoid a trial just basically gives these people a freebie Domestic Violence incident,” Sweetin said. “So my position has been, let’s just do the jury trials.”
That makes the City of Mesquite one of only three jurisdictions in the state that are following through with jury trials. The other two are the City of Reno and Clark County.
When jury trials are needed in the outlying county justice courts like Moapa Valley or Moapa, those proceedings would be held in a Clark County Justice Court facility in Las Vegas.
Jury Selection
The whole morning on Tuesday was spent in selecting the jury for the proceeding.
Assembling a jury in a small town like Mesquite has some particular challenges, Sweetin said.
“At first, we talked about pulling jurors from only a local pool,” Sweetin said. “But how hard is that going to be to find someone who doesn’t know the me as the prosecutor, or the judge, or the defendant, or the victim, or the public defender, or the witnesses? In a small town like Mesquite, that would be difficult.”
So the Mesquite court has made an agreement with the County District Court to tap into its county-wide jury pool for selection. For that the court pays a rate per jury summons that is sent out, Toone said.
The county’s jury services sent summons to 200 people for the Mesquite trial. Of those, only about 50 were confirmed. A total of 35 showed up at the court on Tuesday. That had to be narrowed down to a 6-person panel with one alternate juror.
One of the jurors had travelled all the way from Laughlin to serve in the Mesquite court.
Trial and Verdict
The trial began at 1:00 pm. On trial was David Hilty of Las Vegas on an incident which took place on August 16, 2019 at the Casablanca Resort.
The prosecution called two witnesses. The first was the alleged victim in the case, the defendant’s former girlfriend.
According to her testimony, the couple had come to Mesquite for a five-day holiday celebrating her birthday.
Both had been drinking heavily since the early afternoon and returned to their room at about 8 pm.
According to the victim’s testimony, the defendant had woken up agitated making comments about his ex-wife. She said that he then had struck her on her right cheek with his fist. Then he hit her in the nose while holding a glass beer bottle in his fist, she said.
This caused heavy bleeding from the victim’s nose. The defendant handed her a towel and left the room, according to the victim’s testimony.
The prosecution submitted photos of the victim’s face after the incident as well as photos of the blood-stained bed as evidence.
The victim testified that she cleaned herself up as best she could, took a shower and then called the police about 45 minutes later.
Mesquite Police officer Steve Bruehl was called upon to testify what he had seen in the room when he responded to the call. His testimony generally matched what the victim had said. He testified that he had taken the photos that had been entered into evidence as he was taking the statement from the victim.
Bruehl said that he left the room to locate the defendant and found him in the hallway on the way back to the room. Because of something that the victim had said, he was concerned that the defendant might be armed. So he did a search for a weapon and found none.
Upon being questioned about the incident, the defendant had denied hitting the victim or causing the bleeding.
During the defense presentation, the Defendant chose to waive his 5th Amendment rights and testified in the case.
The defendant claimed that it all had been an accident. He said that his girlfriend had tried to wake him up by poking him and that she then bit him hard on the arm. This caused a reflex action of striking her on the cheek with his hand, he said.
The defendant claimed that the bite had not broken the skin but had been hard enough to cause a welt on his arm. On cross-examination, Sweetin drew this into question by showing an image from the police bodycam which clearly showed the defendant’s arm without any apparent mark.
On the injury to the nose, the defendant testified that he had been holding the beer bottle in his hand, and emphatically telling the victim that she needed to stop drinking so much, when she lunged forward as his hand was motioning toward her. This caused an accidental strike to the nose, he said.
The blood stains covering the bed were caused by the victim blowing her bloody nose on the sheets, he added.
The jury deliberated for about 45 minutes and then announced the guilty verdict.
Toone set a later court date for sentencing.
Where from here?
The Mesquite court is scheduled to hold jury trials on Domestic Violence cases every other Tuesday. But Sweetin said only a very small percentage of cases are likely to end up at trial; probably less than 10 percent.
Often Domestic Violence cases can be over relatively minor matters, Sweetin added. And with jurors travelling so far and investing so much time, he wants to make sure that the cases merit that sacrifice.
“We have to find a balance between wasting people’s time and just letting defendants off on these cases completely,” Sweetin said. “I think we can do that.”
