Las Vegas murder defendant could become lone woman on Nevada’s death row

The Las Vegas defendant on trial for the slaying of her estranged husband could become the only woman on death row in the state.

Jeremiah Merriweather admitted to stabbing 32-year-old Joe Stutzman 15 times, leaving him for dead, with a severed ring finger, inside his northern Las Vegas Valley home.

But Brandy Stutzman faces capital punishment because she persuaded Merriweather, then 19, to kill her husband, prosecutors said in opening statements of her trial on Friday.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Frank Coumou called Brandy Stutzman, 31 at the time, “the temptress” who convinced Merriweather that “she would be well off” if her husband was killed.

“He did it because Brandy Stutzman wanted it done,” the prosecutor said.

Merriweather, who has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and burglary, is awaiting sentencing.

He and other area teens would visit Brandy Stutzman when her husband was on military deployment as an aircraft mechanic, Coumou said.

She turned their home into a “flop house,” the prosecutor said, allowing teenagers to party freely, while providing them food and alcohol.

“This house became the eyesore of the neighborhood,” Coumou said. “The moment that Joe Stutzman left to go overseas, the flop house began. The moment he returned, it was a normal house — husband, wife, child — at least from outward appearances.”

Brandy Stutzman told police she found her husband dead on the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2010, at his home at 7952 Quail Prairie St., near U.S. Highway 95 and Grand Teton Drive.

Brandy Stutzman had been arrested for domestic violence earlier that same year, police said at the time, and was living with a friend while the couple tried to work things out.

The prosecutor played a 911 call from a neighbor, Nicole Prichard, who called police after a hysterical Brandy Stutzman walked next door and said her husband was “gone.”

Stutzman took the phone.

“What happened?” the operator asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, crying.

Stutzman eventually handed the phone back to her neighbor.

“I don’t know what she did,” Prichard said, adding that she did not believe Joe Stutzman would hurt himself. “They’ve been going through a messy divorce.”

Defense lawyers declined to give opening statements Friday but, through questioning of Prichard, tried to show that Stutzman was not romantically interested in Merriweather.

The trial is expected to wrap up some time next week.

Priscilla Joyce Ford, who was the lone woman on Nevada’s death row for more than 20 years, died Jan. 29, 2005. The state hasn’t executed anyone since 2006.

One of the 81 death row inmates, Scott Dozier, recently wrote to a Las Vegas judge, asking that his execution be carried out, but the Nevada Department of Corrections can’t acquire the drugs to perform lethal injection.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.