Lawmaker questions cost of new death room



Penalty is used rarely, he says, so why spend $1.6 million?

By Cy Ryan

Fri, Mar 6, 2009

CARSON CITY — Building a new prison execution chamber north of Las 
Vegas would cost $1.6 million to $1.7 million, and one state 
legislator wants to know: Why the high cost when it’s seldom used.

“Don’t we just need four walls?” Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las 
Vegas, said of the death chamber, which is part of a proposed $221 
million new prison.

The execution chamber is now at the 147-year-old Nevada State Prison 
in Carson City. Gov. Jim Gibbons is recommending that prison be 
closed and the new prison be built about 35 miles north of Las Vegas.

Howard Skolnik, director of the state Corrections Department, told 
the joint Senate and Assembly budget subcommittees the present 
chamber is “very intimidating” to the family of victims and there is 
no access for the handicapped.

For that reason, the current death penalty chamber could be ruled 
unconstitutional, resulting in no death chamber at all, Skolnik said.

There is a bill in the Legislature to delay executions for two years 
to allow a study on the cost of the death penalty. There are 82 men 
on death row now. The last person executed, by lethal injection, was 
Daryl Mack in April 2006.

Skolnik said the likelihood of abolishing the death penalty in Nevada 
is “not good.” When the bill comes up, he said, he will seek to keep 
capital punishment in effect for those who kill a member of the 
prison staff.

Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, asked: Why not build the death chamber 
at the prison in Ely, where death row inmates are housed. Skolnik 
said these inmates are on death row for 15 to 20 years and the staff 
gets to know them.

Gus Nunez, director of the state Public Works Board, said Nevada’s 
plans mirror a new, “constitutionally correct” execution chamber in 
California, built at the direction of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals. He said his staff and correction officials toured the facility.

Skolnik said Nevada can’t legally send inmates to another state to be 
executed and the death chamber has to be acceptable to the courts.

Nunez told the subcommittee of the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways 
and Means committees it would cost $71 million to rehabilitate the 
Nevada State Prison in Carson City but recommended against it.

“It’s like sprucing up a Model T,” he said. “At the end of the day 
you still have a Model T.”

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar/06/lawmaker-questions-cost-
new-death-room/