Nevada Supreme Court upholds convictions in Clark County incest, sexual assault case

A man’s convictions for both incest and sexual assault are not mutually exclusive and do not amount to double jeopardy, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The high court’s seven justices unanimously affirmed the convictions of Delbert Roy Douglas, who specifically challenged his incest convictions in the Clark County case.

“He argues that incest requires mutual consent while sexual assault is, by definition, nonconsensual, making the two crimes mutually exclusive,” according to the opinion. “We hold, as the majority of courts have held, that incest condemns sex between close relatives without regard to whether the intercourse was consensual.”

The court began its review with the text of Nevada’s incest statute, which states, “Persons being within the degree of consanguinity within which marriages are declared by law to be incestuous and void who intermarry with each other or who commit fornication or adultery with each other shall be punished for a category A felony by imprisonment in the state prison.”

According to the opinion, which was authored by Justice Kristina Pickering, the statute “omits any express mutual consent requirement.”

Nevada’s prohibition on incest dates to 1861, according to the ruling. Though the penalty has changed over time, Pickering wrote, “the words used to describe incest’s elements have not varied.”

Much of the 14-page opinion examines the definitions of various words and phrases in the statute.

Douglas argued that “fornication” signifies consensual sexual intercourse, but the high court disagreed. The court also rejected his double jeopardy argument, concluding that each crime contains an element not contained in the other.

Sexual assault makes the lack of consent by one party a clear condition for conviction, Pickering wrote, while incest does not. In addition, incest requires a familial relationship.

“The text of neither statute suggests that a conviction under one precludes a conviction under the other,” according to the opinion. “Thus, Douglas’s convictions for both incest and sexual assault did not violate double jeopardy.”

According to the Nevada Department of Corrections website, Douglas is 47 and an inmate at the Lovelock Correctional Center, about 90 miles northeast of Reno. He was represented on appeal by the Clark County public defender’s office.

Douglas forced his victim to have sex with him when she was 12 and again after she turned 18, according to the Supreme Court opinion.