State high court denies pursuit of death penalty

CARSON CITY -- An effort by the Clark County district attorney's office to seek the death penalty in a murder-for-hire case involving the son of a former owner of a North Las Vegas strip club was rejected Thursday by the Nevada Supreme Court.

In the case involving Luis Hidalgo III and Anabel Espindola, facing trial in the slaying of Timothy Hadland, the court found that the act of solicitation to commit murder is not a crime that can be used as an aggravating factor to seek the death penalty.

The court rejected another aggravating factor the district attorney's office had sought to use in the case. With no aggravating factors left, the court rejected the notices of intent to seek the death penalty filed by prosecutors.

Hidalgo III is the son of Luis A. Hidalgo Jr., the former owner of the Palomino Club on North Las Vegas Boulevard. Espindola is the longtime girlfriend of Hidalgo Jr.

Hidalgo III and Espindola are charged with murder in the May 2005 shooting of Hadland, a former Palomino employee, who was slain near Lake Mead.

Authorities allege the defendants hired two men to kill Hadland, possibly because he was bad-mouthing the club to cabdrivers who might bring customers to the business.

The aggravating factors were sought based on charges of solicitation to commit the murders of two alleged witnesses to Hadland's death. They would have been applied during the penalty phase assuming a jury had returned guilty verdicts on the charges.

But the court said that solicitation to commit murder, although it solicits a violent act, is not itself a felony crime that can be used to seek the death penalty. The solicitation counts were proposed to be used under a provision for crimes involving the use or threat of violence.

"Obviously, the nature of the crime petitioners allegedly solicited is itself violent," the court majority said.

"But this does not transform soliciting murder into threatening murder within our view of the meaning of the statute."

Chief Justice Bill Maupin disagreed that the solicitation counts could not be used as aggravating circumstances to seek the death penalty. A crime of solicitation to commit murder does involve the communication of a threat of violence to another person, he said.