Fifth District Judge John P. Davis dies at 76
In two decades on the Nevada bench, John P. Davis earned a reputation as a fair judge and a dogged campaigner who went door-to-far-flung-door to talk to voters across his central Nevada judicial district.
Davis died in Yerington on Wednesday after battling cancer for several years. He was 76.
A former mining engineer, Davis was in the midst of his fourth, six-year term in the Fifth Judicial District, which includes all of Esmeralda, Mineral and Nye counties. He continued to work, and jog, until the day before he went into the hospital earlier this month.
In a written statement Thursday, Michael Douglas, chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court, said Davis served "with distinction and honor."
"His hard work and thoughtfulness will be missed," Douglas said.
According to a profile of the judge published by Nevada Lawyer magazine last year, Davis was born in New York City in 1934.
He first came to Nevada as a mining engineer in 1961 and returned to the state in 1972 after law school.
He moved to Tonopah in 1987 in hopes of winning a District Court seat once Fifth District Judge Bill Beko retired. He was first elected in 1990.
Longtime Nye County Public Defender Harry Kuehn said he first met the judge in 1984, when Davis was justice of the peace for Smith Valley in Lyon County.
"I appeared in front of him it seems like thousands of times. He was always fair to me," Kuehn said.
Former Assemblywoman and Esmeralda County District Attorney Patty Cafferata also argued in front of Davis. "Sometimes not too successfully," she said with a laugh.
Cafferata said Nevada's rural courts tend to be more "down to earth," but Davis was a stickler about dress code and decorum, especially when it came to big city lawyers from Las Vegas.
"You never sat at the table and addressed him. You stood up," she said.
Cafferata said Davis was very knowledgeable about the law, particularly in the areas of mining and land use, and he wasn't shy about proving it.
"If a lawyer -- not me, of course -- tried to get away with something, he stopped them and explained to the jury what the law said," she said.
Davis' job required him to cover a lot of ground. The Fifth District takes in more than 25,000 square miles, an area larger than West Virginia but with a population of about 52,000 people.
It's 270 miles from the courthouse in Hawthorne to the one in Pahrump. Davis often traversed the district with his rat terriers in tow.
He also was an athlete and avid outdoorsman right up until his death.
He regularly swam laps in Tonopah's community pool, and he loved to hunt and ride horses.
During his lunch breaks in Goldfield, the judge would climb down the courthouse fire escape and "run around the town," Cafferata said. "He was a great jogger."
He authored a 128-page guidebook for hikers called "Scrambles in the Great Basin."
Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley described Davis as a "consummate gentleman" who loved rural Nevada and Tonopah in particular.
The courthouse won't be the same without him, she said.
"If there was only one way that I could describe Judge Davis, it's that he was a lover of the truth," Eastley said.
No services have been announced.
On Thursday, Gov. Brian Sandoval ordered all state flags to half staff until sunset today in remembrance Davis.
The Nevada Commission on Judicial Selection will begin the process to fill Davis' seat once it receives formal notice of the vacancy from the governor.
The post is open to licensed Nevada attorneys with a minimum of 10 years of experience as a lawyer, two of those in Nevada.
The commission will nominate three finalists and Sandoval will make the appointment.
The appointed judge must run and win in the 2012 election to retain the seat.
